In which the internet acts as my roommate.
What you need to know about me: I talk to myself all the time. I talk myself to sleep at night, I provide color commentary while I'm chatting with you on AIM; when I go for walks I favor the back streets so no one sees my lips moving. I also MUST SING whenever there is a sustained noise/pitch of any kind - riding the El without humming is a huge struggle for me, what with the whirrings and clickings and whatever, and in the comfort of my apartment I perform frequent duets with my refrigerator - but you do not need to know that. You only need to know that I like the sound of my own voice, I like a well-turned phrase, and I am willing to practice in order to achieve suitable combinations of the two.
Of course, those revelations do not surprise you. I'm sure I've said something in your vicinity that seemed just a shade too rehearsed: it was clever, but not in an off-the-cuff way. More like I pulled it from my pocket, carefully unwrapped it, and presented it to you. Which isn't to say I couldn't delight you with extemporaneous wit. I can do both!
The point is that this week I was on the team presenting Marx's "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," which is about some of the French revolutions (1848-1851, in this case) with which the nineteenth century was so overburdened. In my opinion, it's pretty clear that Marx is straining to fit reality to his model of revolutionary progress and dialectical opposition and whatever. I know that's what I think because when I finished reading it, I did what I always do: cap my pen and start talking to myself, arguing my way through my notes and wrassling with my brain until I arrive at some kind of conclusion. If I don't do it, I learn nothing.
It's a fine system, in that it works. The downside is that sometimes, like today, I become enraptured with some piece of my self-explanation, and then spend two hours in class absolutely not being able to work it into the discussion in any way. Since I want to be able to sleep tonight without explaining it to my ceiling, here it is: Marx breaks the 1848-51 confusion down into a bunch of little revolutions, which he then crams awkwardly into the grand narrative of history in order to show that what appear to be set-backs or outright contradictions are actually nothing but incitements to further progress. And what do you call a bunch of little circles (revolutions are circles, get it?) that you fit into a larger circle to make reality fit your model? Epicycles! There, was that SO HARD? All I wanted from today was the chance to send a shout-out to my pre-Gallilean homies, and I could not do it.
The difference between Marx and Early Modern Europe is that even when I don't get to make My Pointtm, I still say something. Mostly I take notes on my classmates, though. Two for Shawn today. First, he launched into an extremely theoretical... something (was it a digression? Don't know; couldn't understand it), with all kinds of name-dropping and ho-checking, and when he stopped, no one took him up on it. Just a moment of collective silence ("Okay, whooooooooo's gonna bring us back to the text?"). Scrawled into margin: "What if you had a discourse, and nobody came?" Then he and Gergo got tangled in a two- or three-minute one-on-one elaboration of something Gergo (i.e. NOT MARX) had said, which led to the all-caps suggestion "DUDE. GET ON AIM." Regardless, the class is growing on me; simply by not hating it, I have an advantage over a quarter of the other students.
Two updates on the OKCupid front. A twenty-nine-year-old sent me an e-mail (through the site) reading, in full, "Yar!" I see that one of his descriptors is "a goon", and putting two and two together I conclude that 1) he reads Something Awful, which is fine, but 2) he is nearly 30 and unable to come up with a better introduction than "I have a juvenile love of pirates, which would be cute if you already knew me, but just looks kind of retarded without context, and when I search my soul for three identifying characteristics, one of them is someone else's website."
On the subject of introductions, a third OKC'er AIMed me the other day (I posted my SN, since it's my preferred form of human contact) with the following (names erased because I can, dammit):
Hmm... I wonder if Jedi mind tricks can really work...
"This is the geek you're looking for."
*waves hand*
OKCupid says that we're an excellent match, so I must now woo you.
A promising start, no doubt, but the conversation took a turn for the personal (no, not like that, exactly), and I found the whole thing kind of weird, and he also would like to meet me in person, but since he's not a student and the whole daylight-&-public-place thing would be harder to pull off, I don't think I will. Even if he does have Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter on DVD.
As it turns out, I'm not particularly comfortable with the idea of people liking me, or people meeting me, or people who might like me meeting me, etc., and I probably need to take my SN out of my profile and go to ground for a while. Meanwhile I've been making good use of the "invisible" feature on AIM, so if it seems like I've been off-line a lot, I assure you that is not the case. I'm just hiding until I decide what exactly to say to whom. Of course a true friend like Nina wouldn't let a little thing like my being a wuss go unnoticed. When I turned visible tonight (after posting an away message), she leapt to welcome me:
njbreakstone: HELLO I AM A BOY.
njbreakstone: I WANT TO MEET YOU IN PERSON.
njbreakstone: PERHAPS WE COULD HAVE SOCIAL INTERCOURSE?
The internet: providing me with unconditional love and understanding since 1995.
Expect big (= small) changes here soon (= maybe never): I e-mailed a web cartoonist to ask if I can use one of his panels as an avatar. It has nothing to do with squirrels, but it has made me happy. On that Haggard-ish note, Skrmetti recently directed me to http://www.the-last-unicorn.net/... It's expanded since someone (Bob?) brought it to my attention back in ought-two, but it hasn't started making sense. If you go to the storyboards, for instance, it's hard not to notice how totally similar they are to the Rankin-Bass original. If you look at the cast list, those few characters that appear are, well... Mia Farrow is listed as the voice of Molly Grue, instead of Lady Amalthea, but King Haggard and the skeleton have the original voice actors (Christopher Lee and Rene Auberjonois, respectively. Also, it seems Angela Lansbury - Mrs. Potts, for crying out loud - was the voice of Mommy Fortuna, which I never realized). So what's going on? Is this some bizarre shot-by-shot remake? Is it a labor of love? Is it needlessly mucking with one of my fondest (= most traumatizing) childhood memories just to show off some CGI and make a buck?
I guess we'll know in 2006. Personally I'd be happy if they'd just rerelease the original with a remastered soundtrack, one that doesn't sound like it was recorded at the bottom of the deep end of a none-too-chlorinated community swimming pool tucked into a low-rent corner of the earth's mantle. There is pee in that pool and you can hear it.
Of course, those revelations do not surprise you. I'm sure I've said something in your vicinity that seemed just a shade too rehearsed: it was clever, but not in an off-the-cuff way. More like I pulled it from my pocket, carefully unwrapped it, and presented it to you. Which isn't to say I couldn't delight you with extemporaneous wit. I can do both!
The point is that this week I was on the team presenting Marx's "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," which is about some of the French revolutions (1848-1851, in this case) with which the nineteenth century was so overburdened. In my opinion, it's pretty clear that Marx is straining to fit reality to his model of revolutionary progress and dialectical opposition and whatever. I know that's what I think because when I finished reading it, I did what I always do: cap my pen and start talking to myself, arguing my way through my notes and wrassling with my brain until I arrive at some kind of conclusion. If I don't do it, I learn nothing.
It's a fine system, in that it works. The downside is that sometimes, like today, I become enraptured with some piece of my self-explanation, and then spend two hours in class absolutely not being able to work it into the discussion in any way. Since I want to be able to sleep tonight without explaining it to my ceiling, here it is: Marx breaks the 1848-51 confusion down into a bunch of little revolutions, which he then crams awkwardly into the grand narrative of history in order to show that what appear to be set-backs or outright contradictions are actually nothing but incitements to further progress. And what do you call a bunch of little circles (revolutions are circles, get it?) that you fit into a larger circle to make reality fit your model? Epicycles! There, was that SO HARD? All I wanted from today was the chance to send a shout-out to my pre-Gallilean homies, and I could not do it.
The difference between Marx and Early Modern Europe is that even when I don't get to make My Pointtm, I still say something. Mostly I take notes on my classmates, though. Two for Shawn today. First, he launched into an extremely theoretical... something (was it a digression? Don't know; couldn't understand it), with all kinds of name-dropping and ho-checking, and when he stopped, no one took him up on it. Just a moment of collective silence ("Okay, whooooooooo's gonna bring us back to the text?"). Scrawled into margin: "What if you had a discourse, and nobody came?" Then he and Gergo got tangled in a two- or three-minute one-on-one elaboration of something Gergo (i.e. NOT MARX) had said, which led to the all-caps suggestion "DUDE. GET ON AIM." Regardless, the class is growing on me; simply by not hating it, I have an advantage over a quarter of the other students.
Two updates on the OKCupid front. A twenty-nine-year-old sent me an e-mail (through the site) reading, in full, "Yar!" I see that one of his descriptors is "a goon", and putting two and two together I conclude that 1) he reads Something Awful, which is fine, but 2) he is nearly 30 and unable to come up with a better introduction than "I have a juvenile love of pirates, which would be cute if you already knew me, but just looks kind of retarded without context, and when I search my soul for three identifying characteristics, one of them is someone else's website."
On the subject of introductions, a third OKC'er AIMed me the other day (I posted my SN, since it's my preferred form of human contact) with the following (names erased because I can, dammit):
Hmm... I wonder if Jedi mind tricks can really work...
"This is the geek you're looking for."
*waves hand*
OKCupid says that we're an excellent match, so I must now woo you.
A promising start, no doubt, but the conversation took a turn for the personal (no, not like that, exactly), and I found the whole thing kind of weird, and he also would like to meet me in person, but since he's not a student and the whole daylight-&-public-place thing would be harder to pull off, I don't think I will. Even if he does have Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter on DVD.
As it turns out, I'm not particularly comfortable with the idea of people liking me, or people meeting me, or people who might like me meeting me, etc., and I probably need to take my SN out of my profile and go to ground for a while. Meanwhile I've been making good use of the "invisible" feature on AIM, so if it seems like I've been off-line a lot, I assure you that is not the case. I'm just hiding until I decide what exactly to say to whom. Of course a true friend like Nina wouldn't let a little thing like my being a wuss go unnoticed. When I turned visible tonight (after posting an away message), she leapt to welcome me:
njbreakstone: HELLO I AM A BOY.
njbreakstone: I WANT TO MEET YOU IN PERSON.
njbreakstone: PERHAPS WE COULD HAVE SOCIAL INTERCOURSE?
The internet: providing me with unconditional love and understanding since 1995.
Expect big (= small) changes here soon (= maybe never): I e-mailed a web cartoonist to ask if I can use one of his panels as an avatar. It has nothing to do with squirrels, but it has made me happy. On that Haggard-ish note, Skrmetti recently directed me to http://www.the-last-unicorn.net/... It's expanded since someone (Bob?) brought it to my attention back in ought-two, but it hasn't started making sense. If you go to the storyboards, for instance, it's hard not to notice how totally similar they are to the Rankin-Bass original. If you look at the cast list, those few characters that appear are, well... Mia Farrow is listed as the voice of Molly Grue, instead of Lady Amalthea, but King Haggard and the skeleton have the original voice actors (Christopher Lee and Rene Auberjonois, respectively. Also, it seems Angela Lansbury - Mrs. Potts, for crying out loud - was the voice of Mommy Fortuna, which I never realized). So what's going on? Is this some bizarre shot-by-shot remake? Is it a labor of love? Is it needlessly mucking with one of my fondest (= most traumatizing) childhood memories just to show off some CGI and make a buck?
I guess we'll know in 2006. Personally I'd be happy if they'd just rerelease the original with a remastered soundtrack, one that doesn't sound like it was recorded at the bottom of the deep end of a none-too-chlorinated community swimming pool tucked into a low-rent corner of the earth's mantle. There is pee in that pool and you can hear it.