News

[paulhope]

• Tomorrow I'm getting a flight to New Orleans, which is a magical city by all accounts. I'll spend the New Years weekend there with Zach, Alpha Male, Evacuee Nick, and a few others who were on the Tunisia trip a while back.
• Had a fine time with the nuclear family over the holidays. Because of my sister, I've been watching Buffy. It's ok, but not as good as Firefly. Among other things, I find it completely unconvincing whenver Buffy has a personal crisis over feeling unattractive. I mean, really? I get that this makes her relatable to many people. It also makes her delusional.
• I caught up on my correspondence today, primarily with Joshua the Poet but also several others. Over some meal in the past week Mom brought up some radio guest who was complaining that emailed letters don't have the same depth to them as the handwritten letters of old. I found this a bewildering claim, given that I find myself regularly oversharing my psychic toiling by email, often in lengthy dialogue with others doing the same. I guess some people just don't breathe this stuff the same way.
• In preparation for New Orleans and because it was independently recommended by several people within a short period of time, I am reading A Confederacy of Dunces and recommend it to anybody reading this.
• Q: Seriously, how great are the Bernstein Tapes? A: Really great. The one I picked out at random, with Creon and Antigone illustrating the Forgiveness and Confession section, has already changed the way I look at accountability and confession. And I thought it was all just cultishness and hype!
• All things considered, 2009 was an awesome year for growth and was also intrinsically pretty sweet. I am looking forward to 2010.