State of the Kristian Address
Well hello, those who still read this.
I would apologize for my tardiness in putting up a new entry but I am sure you all understand. it's been a challenging time and will continue to be such.
With the passing of 2008 we find ourselves mercifully on a whole new page of a whole new calendar, so chuck out your old Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Models* glossy and grab a new one.
* replace, at your discretion, with Dogs, Horses, Kittens, or whatever else stands as your favourite mall kiosk wall calendar series.
How have things changed for me lately, one might ask? Well, primarily, my parents regard me with the sort of demented protectionist fervour one might otherwise reserve for North Korean trade policy. I've had 2 months to consider my vector in life and they constantly remind me not to do anything dumb or dangerous. Well to hell with that. I have all but elected to ditch my LL.M. program and hit the road....I have several continental destinations in mind but my real ambition is the Cyclades. I want to drink ouzo and eat fish all day and listen to angry and dramatic greeks and turks walk past me on rocky beaches from which I can see a half dozen dilapidated fishing boats.
I have spent days scouring my late brother's hard drive and found a number of peculiar things, including some poetry. Also, he met an ex girlfriend on lavalife! Hahahahah....except so did I. Hmm. Well at the very least we could have ribbed one another about it.
One of my biggest frustrations has been an enormously selfish one. Nik had many friends. Some of them knew him in what I shall call a superficial way. To hear from such people in a heartfelt way is....well ok, it SHOULD be heartwarming. But to me it just comes out as slightly offensive. I'm more than a little protective of my version of my brother's memory, but would that not seem justified? I mean we grew up together, after all. For someone who knew him for a year or two when he was a grownup to give me a line about how 'Nik was this or that way' makes my blood boil. Selfish, yes. I admitted as much a few lines back. But the point is that I spent better than two decades in regular contact with the man (wow...calling a little brother a 'man' is something I can't do without getting twitchy). Others may need to remember him their way, but at the end of the day I know, am proud of the fact, and am terrified by the knowledge, that I knew him better than anyone else in the world will or could ever know him. In 30 years my parents will almost certainly be gone, and I will be well into middle age...without the brother I counted on always being there. it doesn't shake me up that badly, yet...but one day the realization will dawn and it will be a tough time.
My whole world has been nostalgia recently. I met some ArtScis last week and it scared the hell out of me. I don't even know how I can remember myself as a 19-year-old, but I can, and that's the me to which I want to go back, oftentimes. Chalk it up to the quarter-life crisis, I guess.
I have come to another awareness that should bug me, but doesn't: I am totally not ready (nor, arguably, have I ever been) for a fulfilling relationship with a girl who wanted to be, in the vernacular, more-than-friends. I mention this largely because a big chunk of my december was taken up by my dogged interest in a girl who told me in no uncertain terms that I was on an express train to friendsville with no connecting buses at the end of the line. The fact that I was looking for that kind of thing in the context of my brother's death (see previous post) was a bit shaming, in retrospect, and now I have decided that this B.S. is just not worth my thinking about anymore; if thinking about it never gets me anywhere but disappointment, how can the reverse be any less palatable? We shall soon see.
What else is news? Well, the world economy is 20 pounds of shit in a dirty hankie. In a sick way I want to see how bad shit gets. I mean, the system as it exists between states is untenable...maybe for things to right themselves, the perverse situation needs to go down in flames hindenburg style. I read somewhere that the US economy is something like 20% finance...which is to say that 1/5 of the world's most vastly powerful economic engine was defined in value solely by the mechanics of pushing papers around and attaching arbitrary or semi-arbitrary numbers to 'securities' traded with little to no respect paid to their actual productive value...which, by the way, would be zilch. It seems to me like a peculiar mutation of the Marxist model wherein 'labour' generates 'wealth' with no regard to the actual real value of such labour. The traditional formulation is that mudpies are worthless in real value so Marx is wrong. Ok, great. So why do western free-market champions seem more or less ignorant as to the ESSENTIAL worthlessness of traded securities? If I'm totally wrong, tell me, but it seems like in the end there needs to be some sort of real output from any 'economic' activity for it to be 'valuable'...and paper-shuffling does not fucking count.
Ok, this nonsense has gone on long enough. I bet dollars to donuts I post again before Jan. 10. Who's taking my bet?
I would apologize for my tardiness in putting up a new entry but I am sure you all understand. it's been a challenging time and will continue to be such.
With the passing of 2008 we find ourselves mercifully on a whole new page of a whole new calendar, so chuck out your old Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Models* glossy and grab a new one.
* replace, at your discretion, with Dogs, Horses, Kittens, or whatever else stands as your favourite mall kiosk wall calendar series.
How have things changed for me lately, one might ask? Well, primarily, my parents regard me with the sort of demented protectionist fervour one might otherwise reserve for North Korean trade policy. I've had 2 months to consider my vector in life and they constantly remind me not to do anything dumb or dangerous. Well to hell with that. I have all but elected to ditch my LL.M. program and hit the road....I have several continental destinations in mind but my real ambition is the Cyclades. I want to drink ouzo and eat fish all day and listen to angry and dramatic greeks and turks walk past me on rocky beaches from which I can see a half dozen dilapidated fishing boats.
I have spent days scouring my late brother's hard drive and found a number of peculiar things, including some poetry. Also, he met an ex girlfriend on lavalife! Hahahahah....except so did I. Hmm. Well at the very least we could have ribbed one another about it.
One of my biggest frustrations has been an enormously selfish one. Nik had many friends. Some of them knew him in what I shall call a superficial way. To hear from such people in a heartfelt way is....well ok, it SHOULD be heartwarming. But to me it just comes out as slightly offensive. I'm more than a little protective of my version of my brother's memory, but would that not seem justified? I mean we grew up together, after all. For someone who knew him for a year or two when he was a grownup to give me a line about how 'Nik was this or that way' makes my blood boil. Selfish, yes. I admitted as much a few lines back. But the point is that I spent better than two decades in regular contact with the man (wow...calling a little brother a 'man' is something I can't do without getting twitchy). Others may need to remember him their way, but at the end of the day I know, am proud of the fact, and am terrified by the knowledge, that I knew him better than anyone else in the world will or could ever know him. In 30 years my parents will almost certainly be gone, and I will be well into middle age...without the brother I counted on always being there. it doesn't shake me up that badly, yet...but one day the realization will dawn and it will be a tough time.
My whole world has been nostalgia recently. I met some ArtScis last week and it scared the hell out of me. I don't even know how I can remember myself as a 19-year-old, but I can, and that's the me to which I want to go back, oftentimes. Chalk it up to the quarter-life crisis, I guess.
I have come to another awareness that should bug me, but doesn't: I am totally not ready (nor, arguably, have I ever been) for a fulfilling relationship with a girl who wanted to be, in the vernacular, more-than-friends. I mention this largely because a big chunk of my december was taken up by my dogged interest in a girl who told me in no uncertain terms that I was on an express train to friendsville with no connecting buses at the end of the line. The fact that I was looking for that kind of thing in the context of my brother's death (see previous post) was a bit shaming, in retrospect, and now I have decided that this B.S. is just not worth my thinking about anymore; if thinking about it never gets me anywhere but disappointment, how can the reverse be any less palatable? We shall soon see.
What else is news? Well, the world economy is 20 pounds of shit in a dirty hankie. In a sick way I want to see how bad shit gets. I mean, the system as it exists between states is untenable...maybe for things to right themselves, the perverse situation needs to go down in flames hindenburg style. I read somewhere that the US economy is something like 20% finance...which is to say that 1/5 of the world's most vastly powerful economic engine was defined in value solely by the mechanics of pushing papers around and attaching arbitrary or semi-arbitrary numbers to 'securities' traded with little to no respect paid to their actual productive value...which, by the way, would be zilch. It seems to me like a peculiar mutation of the Marxist model wherein 'labour' generates 'wealth' with no regard to the actual real value of such labour. The traditional formulation is that mudpies are worthless in real value so Marx is wrong. Ok, great. So why do western free-market champions seem more or less ignorant as to the ESSENTIAL worthlessness of traded securities? If I'm totally wrong, tell me, but it seems like in the end there needs to be some sort of real output from any 'economic' activity for it to be 'valuable'...and paper-shuffling does not fucking count.
Ok, this nonsense has gone on long enough. I bet dollars to donuts I post again before Jan. 10. Who's taking my bet?