on following bliss
Moyers: You write in the Mythic Image about the center of transformation, the idea of a sacred place where the temporal walls may dissolve to reveal a wonder. What does it mean to have a sacred place?
Campbell: this is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don't know who your friends are, you don't know what you owe anybody, you don't know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.
Moyers: This sacred place does for you what the plains did for the hunter.
Campbell: For them the whole world was a sacred place. But our life has become so economic and practical in its orientation that, as you get older, the claims of the moment upon you are so great, you hardly know where the hell you are, or what it is you intended. You are always doing something that is required of you. Where is your bliss station? You have to try to find it. Get a phonograph and put on the music that you really love, even if it's corny music that nobody else respects. Or get the book you like to read. In your sacred place you get the "thou" feeling of life that these people had for the whole world in which they lived
The Python Paradox
"I didn't mean by this that Java programmers are dumb. I meant that Python programmers are smart. It's a lot of work to learn a new programming language. And people don't learn Python because it will get them a job; they learn it because they genuinely like to program and aren't satisfied with the languages they already know."
"Which makes them exactly the kind of programmers companies should want to hire. Hence what, for lack of a better name, I'll call the Python paradox: if a company chooses to write its software in a comparatively esoteric language, they'll be able to hire better programmers, because they'll attract only those who cared enough to learn it. And for programmers the paradox is even more pronounced: the language to learn, if you want to get a good job, is a language that people don't learn merely to get a job."
from "standing tall"
http://alexthegirl.com/2008/07/290
"Overcoming this has been more mental than physical. It's about retraining my brain to walk the right way, to stand tall, to look forward, to be at ease instead of hunched over and closed off. To erase the negative curves and the awkward position. To fight the old tendencies and embrace the new healthy ones where I'm looking at life instead of looking defeated.
Thinking of this made me think of other things in my life that I've passed off as not a problem instead of fixing it. Things that were perhaps not working right but went unchecked and then just became a nasty habit that my brain accepted as right."
the self is a kind of endless set of narratives
http://www.umass.edu/umassmag/archives/2001/winter2001/athens.html
the cultural theorist Stuart Hall puts it:
"I don’t think that we are whole subjects or whole identities or have a pre-formed experience outside of the process in which that experience is represented. I think we know ourselves when we see ourselves represented. . . . (We) recognize our evolving selves biographically in the stories we tell about ourselves – the self is a kind of endless set of narratives."
how to disagree
http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
DH0. Name-calling.
This is the lowest form of disagreement, and probably also the most common. We've all seen comments like this:
u r a fag!!!!!!!!!!
But it's important to realize that more articulate name-calling has just as little weight. A comment like
The author is a self-important dilettante.
is really nothing more than a pretentious version of "u r a fag."
critiques and observations
"the rum was like soy sauce. I'm serious. my cuba libre was fucking kikkoman and coke."
"their bean burritos taste like cat pee smells... kinda musty, kinda tangy."
"I generally don't have that much faith in the current justice system. I feel like 'justice' tends to be more about who has the better salesman."
"I'm going to poop a baby."
"there were a lot of hot older ladies in vancouver. we started calling it 'vancougar.'"
unrestrained repression
"I am not a box of porn hiding in the closet"
"my urethra is a wild goose."
"there's some irony in being hungry for hot dogs after a class on freud."
"if I were in charge of a day care, it'd be all strobe lights and air horns."
"the irritation of doubt causes a struggle to attain a state of belief" from c.s. peirce the fixation of belief
from some professors:
*ponders*"....you are both correct and incorrect....be proud of that, for that's complexity."
"and that is where counseling psychology and Madonna coincide: there is much discussion of the borderline, without any discussion of what exactly the borderline is between."
writing dirty
"I'll tell her you said, 'hi.'"
"okay, thanks"
"anything else you want to say?"
"'konichiwa, bitches.'"
"I don't understand how guys could do that."
"that's because you see women as actual people and not just life-support systems for vaginas."
"i'm glad you work here...it makes the days that my brain feels like it's about to fall out of my butt not so....brain butt falling."
the picture should probably be filed under "shit that's funnier when you're drinking." in a brazen display of "not being down with the lingo", we spent some time coming up with alternative meanings to the phrase "ridin' dirty." here is a selection:
-- winging it
-- making shit up as we go
-- paying with credit instead of cash
-- car full of drugs
-- sex with no condom
-- riding a horse with no underwear
-- riding a horse with no saddle
-- robbing a bank with no gun
-- riding a horse while drunk
-- refilling a beer glass without washing it
-- a car with only three working spinners
-- turning your underwear inside out instead of changing it
-- making out with someone after throwing up
-- flossing your teeth with hair
-- not washing your hands after using the bathroom
-- sitting down on an uncovered toilet seat
-- masturbating at a friend's house
-- sex with only boots or black socks on
-- dating someone's friend for revenge
-- sex in parent's bed
looking back, I like that some of them have ambiguous phrasing.
cogitate your dissonance
seek stillness, not denial
peace amid chaos
replug
"he hasn't really grown up, but he can buy pretty much whatever he wants. he's basically tom hanks in big."
"what is peru's national sport? laser tag?"
"everyone needs at least one pair of shoes that make them feel like jump-kicking someone in the face."
"which deodorant is that?"
"I dunno, the one with the flavor-stripe."
"....yes, but chomsky also said, 'you're fucking ridiculous and ridiculous really isn't enjoying it.'"
and other pickings from my notebook:
"the zen pimp asks 'what is the sound of one hand clapping?' just before slapping his ho."
things to master: 1 - totally backhanded compliments.
