And Norah will now, too. On command. It's pretty awesome that we can just say a word and she'll register its meaning and act in response. Like she's a real person or something.
She'll be seven months old tomorrow. It's hard to believe that it's gone this quickly.
Oh well.
Stay Gold!
MMK
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
The Genius of the Crowd
by Charles Bukowski -
there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day
and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace
those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love
beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average
but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect
like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock
their finest art
there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day
and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace
those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love
beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average
but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect
like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock
their finest art
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Idle Hands
I made some changes to the layout here tonight for a few different reasons:
1. I was bored.
2. I felt like we'd outgrown the old layout and that it no longer fit our needs for the use of this space.
3. I had already done the evenings dishes.
The format as it stands now will be fairly static for the foreseeable future. The color scheme is similar to what we've had here in the past, but the higher contrast present in the main text window should be a little easier on the eyes. I've also limited the number of posts present on the main page to three instead of the twenty posts that were listed here in the past. This should help with load times when there are image- or video-heavy posts.
In other news:
"kul-anaya fikr minh ka
abadan ahatmam enna ajab
hayya’alal falal qad qamadis alah
Haqq: la illaha il Allah"
Stay Gold!
MMK
1. I was bored.
2. I felt like we'd outgrown the old layout and that it no longer fit our needs for the use of this space.
3. I had already done the evenings dishes.
The format as it stands now will be fairly static for the foreseeable future. The color scheme is similar to what we've had here in the past, but the higher contrast present in the main text window should be a little easier on the eyes. I've also limited the number of posts present on the main page to three instead of the twenty posts that were listed here in the past. This should help with load times when there are image- or video-heavy posts.
In other news:
"kul-anaya fikr minh ka
abadan ahatmam enna ajab
hayya’alal falal qad qamadis alah
Haqq: la illaha il Allah"
Stay Gold!
MMK
Friday, November 27, 2009
1:39 AM
Hello everyone.
"If there was no way into God, I would never have laid in this grave of a body for so long." (look it up)
It's late (early) and this is what I'm doing with my time. Sarah is sleeping because she has to work at Target tomorrow. I am not sleeping because I can't stop watching the House Hunters marathon on HGTV. One of us clearly has their priorities straight.
The students all left yesterday for their four day Thanksgiving break and the building is wonderfully silent tonight. I'm never quite comfortable or settled during the first couple of days after my residents are gone. Living in a residence hall feels kind of lonely when you have 120 neighbors move out, you know? I'm sort of required to be always on the ready during the year when students are in the building, too, so their absence is unsettling in that it puts me in a place where I have absolutely no need to be thinking about what is happening elsewhere in the hall. Shifting my thought processes in this way will take a few days, but it will happen eventually. And by the time Sunday afternoon rolls around and the students start returning from their breaks, I'll just be getting adjusted to the fact that they were gone at all. And then I'll just be more disappointed than usual that Monday morning means working again. So it goes.
Today was Thanksgiving day and we took it fairly easy. Sarah cleaned the house. A lot. I helped out a little bit, but mostly tried to stay out of the way. She gets into this mode of operation where she becomes singly focused on organizing, wiping down, and cleaning virtually everything in sight. We have a small apartment, luckily, so these fits of cleanliness generally only last a few hours. My inability to understand her need to "just get it done" in order to "feel relaxed" can be like a match into the powder keg of those hours, though, so I've learned to smile and try my best not to say "let's just do that later." But the apartment looks wicked nice tonight after she worked all day, so I suppose I can't complain too much. You've gotta go for the ride if you want to get to the endpoint, right?
We had our Thanksgiving dinner with some Hall Director friends who also stayed on campus this weekend. Afterward, Sarah put up the Christmas tree while I watched football. The extent of my help with the tree was untangling ornaments and pointing from the couch where I thought some should go. I like having the tree up and shining, I just generally don't enjoy actually being a part of the setting-up process.
There are currently four presents beneath the tree. We haven't yet figured out where to hang our stockings. Mine is blue and is adorned with snowflakes.
I am going to sleep on the couch tonight because I do that sometimes but I haven't done it in awhile. It'll give Sarah a chance to have the whole bed to herself and me the opportunity to wake up tomorrow morning thinking "man, I really should have slept in the bed last night."
Back on the topic of hall directing for a moment -- I really like the three RAs I supervise this year. They're awesome people who compliment each other very well. They're engaged in each others lives and the lives of their residents, and they actually care about spending time with the people who live in this community. I'm sure it doesn't really matter to most of you, but I thought I'd put it out there anyway. A lot of RAs say that they're "people" people when they're saying why they want the job, but get really wrapped up in their own junk once they actually get into the job. My RAs this year haven't been that way at all. I just think it's a really nice and refreshing thing to see them being true to themselves in that way.
Oh man! How have I written this much tonight and not yet mentioned Norah?!
Did you know that velcro is, like, the most humorous thing in the world? It's true. I was changing Norah's cloth diaper the other night whence I captured this velcro-driven chuckle-fest:
I really want to go eat leftover Pumpkin Pie Cake out of the 'fridge, but I won't because I probably shouldn't.
Alright. Bedtime. AKA Couchtime.
Hope you all had a good holiday! Boycott Black Friday today. That whole affair is a ridiculous, greedy, empty mess.
Stay Gold!
MMK
"If there was no way into God, I would never have laid in this grave of a body for so long." (look it up)
It's late (early) and this is what I'm doing with my time. Sarah is sleeping because she has to work at Target tomorrow. I am not sleeping because I can't stop watching the House Hunters marathon on HGTV. One of us clearly has their priorities straight.
The students all left yesterday for their four day Thanksgiving break and the building is wonderfully silent tonight. I'm never quite comfortable or settled during the first couple of days after my residents are gone. Living in a residence hall feels kind of lonely when you have 120 neighbors move out, you know? I'm sort of required to be always on the ready during the year when students are in the building, too, so their absence is unsettling in that it puts me in a place where I have absolutely no need to be thinking about what is happening elsewhere in the hall. Shifting my thought processes in this way will take a few days, but it will happen eventually. And by the time Sunday afternoon rolls around and the students start returning from their breaks, I'll just be getting adjusted to the fact that they were gone at all. And then I'll just be more disappointed than usual that Monday morning means working again. So it goes.
Today was Thanksgiving day and we took it fairly easy. Sarah cleaned the house. A lot. I helped out a little bit, but mostly tried to stay out of the way. She gets into this mode of operation where she becomes singly focused on organizing, wiping down, and cleaning virtually everything in sight. We have a small apartment, luckily, so these fits of cleanliness generally only last a few hours. My inability to understand her need to "just get it done" in order to "feel relaxed" can be like a match into the powder keg of those hours, though, so I've learned to smile and try my best not to say "let's just do that later." But the apartment looks wicked nice tonight after she worked all day, so I suppose I can't complain too much. You've gotta go for the ride if you want to get to the endpoint, right?
We had our Thanksgiving dinner with some Hall Director friends who also stayed on campus this weekend. Afterward, Sarah put up the Christmas tree while I watched football. The extent of my help with the tree was untangling ornaments and pointing from the couch where I thought some should go. I like having the tree up and shining, I just generally don't enjoy actually being a part of the setting-up process.
There are currently four presents beneath the tree. We haven't yet figured out where to hang our stockings. Mine is blue and is adorned with snowflakes.
I am going to sleep on the couch tonight because I do that sometimes but I haven't done it in awhile. It'll give Sarah a chance to have the whole bed to herself and me the opportunity to wake up tomorrow morning thinking "man, I really should have slept in the bed last night."
Back on the topic of hall directing for a moment -- I really like the three RAs I supervise this year. They're awesome people who compliment each other very well. They're engaged in each others lives and the lives of their residents, and they actually care about spending time with the people who live in this community. I'm sure it doesn't really matter to most of you, but I thought I'd put it out there anyway. A lot of RAs say that they're "people" people when they're saying why they want the job, but get really wrapped up in their own junk once they actually get into the job. My RAs this year haven't been that way at all. I just think it's a really nice and refreshing thing to see them being true to themselves in that way.
Oh man! How have I written this much tonight and not yet mentioned Norah?!
Did you know that velcro is, like, the most humorous thing in the world? It's true. I was changing Norah's cloth diaper the other night whence I captured this velcro-driven chuckle-fest:
I really want to go eat leftover Pumpkin Pie Cake out of the 'fridge, but I won't because I probably shouldn't.
Alright. Bedtime. AKA Couchtime.
Hope you all had a good holiday! Boycott Black Friday today. That whole affair is a ridiculous, greedy, empty mess.
Stay Gold!
MMK
Monday, November 23, 2009
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