striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound
it occurred to me that you do indeed need more lord byron in your life. so here is something new and different. one-liners. it’s not about rhyme but about words. just english as no one else can write it.
the unquench’d soul–parch’d–wearied–wrung–and riven.
though from our birth the faculty divine/is chain’d and tortured–cabin’d, cribb’d, confined
the heart whose sweat was gore.
the would-be wits and can’t-be gentlemen
oh love! how perfect is thy mystic art,/strengthening the weak, and trampling on the strong
though pleasure stirs the maddening soul,/the heart–the heart is lonely still
and then this one rhymes beautifully:
the wither’d frame, the ruin’d mind,/the wrack by passion left behind–/a shrivell’d scroll, a scatter’d leaf,/sear’d by the autumn blast of grief!
go fish!
i had been saving this line, like keeping a trump card up my sleeve. but it was better to play it before i forgot about it.
why wert thou so dear?
They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me—
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well;–
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.
– lord byron. “when we two parted.”
“be who you are and be that well.”
– st. francis de sales.
when you have an opportunity to say something about God without seeming to be right-wing-creepy, you should take it.
because faith is a personal experience.
and when people start talking about God in a way that doesn’t make sense to you.
and then also say some other things about self, using our own gifts, the individual learning process, etc. and then also throw in those two little jabs at idiot people that exist on all college campuses.
dual designation of today.
it is international women’s day. SUPPOSEDLY.
it should also be let’s try to close our eyes and think very hard about what the people who founded our nation intended for us day.
question for the multiverse:
what is the “low” setting on a hair dryer for?
i cannot conceive of a single situation when i might use it.
on the topic of permanently drawing on yourself.
my favorite thing about florida? the sun? the surf? nope. it’s the fact that my incongruous arm tattoo for once makes me fit in.
a related theory i have: if you do not have a tattoo, all tattoos are ill-advised, lame, and stupid. if you do have a tattoo, all tattoos EXCEPT FOR YOURS are ill-advised, lame, and stupid. here’s why: if you pay to be stabbed repeatedly and have ink injected into one of your organs, a chemical is released in your brain that causes you to love that scar-art for life. it’s kind of like the hormones that make mothers enjoy the company of their children when the rest of us are like seriously brat shut the hell up about your apple juice. why do people get multiple tattoos? why do mothers have more children than they need to replenish the population?
as promised.
writing this second article on politics, economy, and the english language made me the happiest i’ve been in months.
even if no one reads it (likely) and everyone misunderstands it (highly likely) it was still worth it.
unreadable maura.
i was informed tonight by a reliable source that i am unreadable.
i’m changing my domain name.
then hiding forever.
then emerging after the apocalypse as a chimney sweep.
please send a paper copy of all e-mails to the fedex office which will then shoot them up in a rocket so that i won’t be tempted to respond with more unreadable writing.
humpty dumpty.
“it’s like talking to a brick wall.”
guess what, guys.
WE ARE ALL BRICK WALLS.
99.9% of us will never be convinced of anything new so long as we live.
typical.
just when you think you might have had something original to say, people pounce and inform you that someone more famous already invented the idea. nevermind that you said it differently.
effing bible. you started it all.
political economy and language: two peas in a pod.
come on, people running the show, you all supposedly know how to read.
wait till you see part two. oh ho.
morning bells are ringing.
in kindergarten, my grandpa taught me the song ‘are you sleeping’ (frere jacques for the francophiles) in german with what he picked up during the war. so when we’d sing it in class i’d be all smug and aloof and sing my teutonic version. you can’t say i haven’t been consistent.
be there for it!
an image of my opposition to the premise of online dating:
Grafting hearts is a surgical procedure. You have to get blood on your hands. You can’t be up in the room with the med students behind a glass partition. You have to be under the lamps, suturing veins.
Do you trust a cardboard cut-out of a physician to do open heart surgery? Do you trust your fabricated profile to do it?
YOU HAVE TO GET BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS.
You have to be there. You can’t take over from the scrub nurse partway through.
You’re the surgeon. You have to be there.
online dating: they tell me it happens.
i’ve been viscerally and vehemently opposed to the idea of online matchmaking/self-esteem services since they first appeared and have thus given any number of bitter rants on them.
but the seeming resentment of a frigid spinster is truly just a bewildered come on are you serious?
and here’s why:
i don’t understand how two people can get married when they were not even physically present for the first interaction. two jpegs meeting in the pixels of a screen? this is a thing that is happening?
i know people do it. i know they’re very happy. i know that it’s actually love. but i just don’t understand how virtual doppelgangers can become soulmates. no matter what their real selves do in the meantime.
yes yes. i’ve read too much lord byron. i’m irrevocably damaged. but still. profiles to passion? come on are you serious?
p.s. maybe people aren’t looking for love but someone to accompany them to that new restaurant they’ve been meaning to try? in this instance, it’s all right to employ your decoys and arrange via emoticons.
further psychoanalysis via pets…
in preschool my brother and i won goldfish at a school fair. we picked the right ducks. i think every duck was the right duck.
he named his egon because ghostbusters were very significant to him. ghostbuster action figures. ghostbuster comforter. child-friendly replicas of all equipment used by ghostbusters.
i named mine peter.
early recognition of bill murray being sweet?
nope. i wanted my brother to think i was cool.
poor george. poor me.
a discussion about pets at tonight’s woman club reminded me:
i once had a hermit crab-friend named george. he came from the outer banks and lived in a plastic home with blue gravel. one day i put him out in the driveway to experience the bliss of freedom and thrill of fresh air. something special must have caught my attention because i turned my back. and with his little barely mobile crustacean legs, he ran away.
my mom later found his shell in the garden.
have you ever had a hermit crab abandon you? HAVE YOU?
next. next. next.
i’m trying to have faith in the ability of my ipod’s shuffle function to produce a song i want to listen to, but it fails me every time.
in other words: HOW DO I HAVE A THOUSAND SONGS ON HERE THAT I DON’T WANT TO LISTEN TO.
terminology.
i wonder if people would notice if i started swapping schizophasia for word salad.
so menacing and not at all best friend material.
bilingual birds.
here’s how i remember the plot of The Trumpeter Swan.
a mute animal with no ostensible anthropomorphic qualities is given a trumpet to communicate with his fellow swans and a tiny chalkboard to communicate with a human.
he is both musical and literate.
we should all aspire to be him.
tiny chalkboards for all!
no love lost.
three days.
three hundred pages of notes.
three-part forbes article that will probably never happen.
thanks, nook. you’re the best.
mystery solved.
everything about everything makes sense.
most impressively: i figured out why jar jar binks had to exist. his ultimate purpose was to make qui-gon jinn look by contrast like the chillest most badass motherf*cker in the galaxy. this exaggeration is necessary as our introduction to the power of the jedi before the empire, of which we had little concept. come on. look at how legit qui-gon is when he interacts with jar jar. superfluous juvenile comic relief he may be, but he is actually a foil. THINK ABOUT IT. not that you need to because you know i’m right.
i have to clarify: this is not a defense of his character. it’s an I GET IT DO YOU GET IT kind of thing.
perhaps this is already on the internet somewhere. but now it is on MY INTERNET. so it truly exists.
CHOICE.
kierkegaard: christian existentialist and DEFINITELY A LIBERTARIAN.
from either/or, whose very title reflects the concept of choice.
it’s not a matter of choosing between willing good and willing evil as of choosing to will.
from the sickness unto death.
the more consciousness the more will. the more will the more self.
both my books, The Most Important Thing and Great Men Are Free Men, feature themes (are you allowed to say your own writing has themes) of self and will. it’s incredibly important to me. even going back to religion class at st. agnes grade school. every test had the question: what are God’s two gifts to man? the answer is FREE WILL and INTELLECT. always, without fail, free will and intellect.
so here is a forbes post investigating this as it involves the state. WHAT DO YOU THINK?
for further forbes reading on our independent will, try the one on life liberty and property. help give it hits. it was sandwiched between the progressive trends are backwards piece and the one on krugman and the great gatsby. overlooked, but an important explanation of how i can believe in marriage equality AND limitations on the federal government.