(no subject)
a lot has happened since my last entry. but that is always true, isn't it? well, since i had quit my overwhelmingly dull job at UTexas at the end of August, i have had limited access to the internet. my time has been mostly filled with reading, researching grad programs, playing Madden and eating baked apples. well, not entirely. one change is that i have a girlfriend. she lives and studies in southern California, which is where i am at at the moment. had i known that David Foster Wallace lived and taught not too far from where i type this now, i might have tried to meet him but now he is dead. i wonder why. but why is not really all that important, is it? i mean, what will such answers provide? he's dead. so much death and dying in the last year in my world, i don't have the energy nor care to feel the least bit bad but i shake my head nonetheless because loss is loss and his passing is a great loss to the world of letters. i have never read his novels; it was his short stories that i read and found illuminating. i found a kindred spirit of sharp, accusatory wit that reveled in its cooperation with its antagonists, a fellow compiler of countless connections real and imagined. wherever, if anywhere, you are DFW, be well.
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spent three days at the Storybook Inn, a cozy little bed & breakfast in the San Bernardino Mountains area. the website says it has a great view and it does but i never did see the ocean from there. why? smog! you get high up enough and you can avoid smog but sometimes it rolls into the open window nonetheless. combined with the elevation, i felt a bit dried up w/ itchy eyes and a scratchy throat but that did not stop us from having a good time. it is beautiful up there and it was fun to drive the winding roads, to catch glimpses of bird of prey floating the breezes, to see the variety of trees and watching the vegetation change according to elevation and side of mount, the patches of wildflowers. one thing about the eateries up there - everything seems to have cheese, in case you're wondering.
*
Hurricane Ike was about 600 miles wide at its peak, nearly the size of Texas. that its impact was not nearly as bad as predicted or expected, well, it is fucking amazing.
to all those folks in Galveston and nearby areas who weathered the storm: you are all idiots and very lucky to be alive. count your blessings or whatever it is you do.
i predict Miami will be destroyed outright in my lifetime by a hurricane. New Orleans is second on my list. i also predict that a major city on the upper Atlantic coast of the US will suffer badly in the next ten years. mark my words.
*
Tons of drugs dumped into wastewater
Discarded medications end up in drinking water, ongoing report finds
it may never be proved but i suspect that the pandemic i am convinced will eat up most of humankind will be the result of such dumping. sound depressing? well, that's the world you live in. this shit was not an issue all that long ago. now look at us... wallowing in the waste and crumbling of our false security. oh, where has our good sense gone?
*
for you folks interested in poetry, poetics and theory, this lil review in the Brooklyn Rail of a new anthology of essays edited by Craig Dworkin amused me.
*
can someone remind me why the presidential race matters? best answer gets a cookie.
*
spent three days at the Storybook Inn, a cozy little bed & breakfast in the San Bernardino Mountains area. the website says it has a great view and it does but i never did see the ocean from there. why? smog! you get high up enough and you can avoid smog but sometimes it rolls into the open window nonetheless. combined with the elevation, i felt a bit dried up w/ itchy eyes and a scratchy throat but that did not stop us from having a good time. it is beautiful up there and it was fun to drive the winding roads, to catch glimpses of bird of prey floating the breezes, to see the variety of trees and watching the vegetation change according to elevation and side of mount, the patches of wildflowers. one thing about the eateries up there - everything seems to have cheese, in case you're wondering.
*
Hurricane Ike was about 600 miles wide at its peak, nearly the size of Texas. that its impact was not nearly as bad as predicted or expected, well, it is fucking amazing.
to all those folks in Galveston and nearby areas who weathered the storm: you are all idiots and very lucky to be alive. count your blessings or whatever it is you do.
i predict Miami will be destroyed outright in my lifetime by a hurricane. New Orleans is second on my list. i also predict that a major city on the upper Atlantic coast of the US will suffer badly in the next ten years. mark my words.
*
Tons of drugs dumped into wastewater
Discarded medications end up in drinking water, ongoing report finds
it may never be proved but i suspect that the pandemic i am convinced will eat up most of humankind will be the result of such dumping. sound depressing? well, that's the world you live in. this shit was not an issue all that long ago. now look at us... wallowing in the waste and crumbling of our false security. oh, where has our good sense gone?
*
for you folks interested in poetry, poetics and theory, this lil review in the Brooklyn Rail of a new anthology of essays edited by Craig Dworkin amused me.
*
can someone remind me why the presidential race matters? best answer gets a cookie.