“It seems to me that the intellectualization and aestheticizing of principles and values in this country is one of the things that’s gutted our generation. All the things that my parents said to me, like “It’s really important not to lie.” OK, check, got it. I nod at that but I really don’t feel it. Until I get to be about 30 and I realize that if I lie to you, I also can’t trust you. I feel that I’m in pain, I’m nervous, I’m lonely and I can’t figure out why. Then I realize, “Oh, perhaps the way to deal with this is really not to lie.” The idea that something so simple and, really, so aesthetically uninteresting — which for me meant you pass over it for the interesting, complex stuff — can actually be nourishing in a way that arch, meta, ironic, pomo stuff can’t, that seems to me to be important. That seems to me like something our generation needs to feel.”
— David Foster Wallace (via walkwhilereading)

“The stage is my church and long form improvisational comedy is my religion and I want to practice it at every moment in my life. When I have felt most myself and most alive is when I have been living this way. Now, rock out with your cocks out.”
— Amy Poehler. (via khealywu)

Toothbrushing and not quite deja vu

Lately I’ve experienced a sensation while brushing my teeth at night that is a lot like deja vu, but not quite deja vu. 

Deja vu in French literally means “already seen.” It’s that strange feeling that you are experiencing or seeing something again that you have at some point experienced or seen before, but you can’t quite place when or where. And there is usually a certain degree of “But I couldn’t have possibly seen this before!” that makes the feeling tinged with the uncanny. 

But that’s not what I’ve been feeling. What I’ve been feeling is a sensation of “just seen”, or maybe je viens de le voir. And this feeling has been happening when I start to brush my teeth. 

It’s not the same as trying to remember if you’ve taken your daily vitamin today or trying to remember if you’ve paid the electricity bill that month (although I experience that absent mindedness too). This is more like a proximity of memory of an event that you know happened the previous day. In the moment I start brushing my teeth, instead of most closely feeling the string of memories that led me to be brushing my teeth in the bathroom (arriving home, taking my clothes off, walking to the bathroom) I instead most closely feel the string of memories of brushing my teeth previously (brushing my teeth Tuesday, brushing my teeth Wednesday, brushing my teeth Thursday).

Visually, we could represent it this way:

Normally, I remember the string of events of my daily routine:

  • A
  • B
  • C
  • D
  • E

On any given day, what I am assuming is that, for example, if I were at point E, I would most closely feel point D.

Next, we could stack, say, five days together like this: 

  • A A A
  • B B B
  • C C C
  • D D D
  • E E E

What I’ve been feeling like is that when at point E (brushing my teeth Monday), instead of feeling closest to point D (walking into the bathroom Monday) what I feel closest to is point E in a different column (brushing my teeth Tuesday). So in my crude table, you might say where I expect to feel vertical or column affinity, I’m feeling horizontal or row affinity. 

It happens at various points throughout the day, but most vividly when brushing my teeth. 

A shorter way to put this is that I’m experiencing something like what I imagine the Tralfamadorian concept of time to be. 

Anybody else every feel that?

Reddit announces black out in protest of SOPA/PIPA

The freedom, innovation, and economic opportunity that the Internet enables is in jeopardy. Congress is considering legislation that will dramatically change your Internet experience and put an end to reddit and many other sites you use everyday. Internet experts, organizations, companies, entrepreneurs, legal experts, journalists, and individuals have repeatedly expressed how dangerous this bill is. If we do nothing, Congress will likely pass the Protect IP Act (in the Senate) or the Stop Online Piracy Act (in the House), and then the President will probably sign it into law. There are powerful forces trying to censor the Internet, and a few months ago many people thought this legislation would surely pass. However, there’s a new hope that we can defeat this dangerous legislation.

source: reddit blog

Source: http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/stopped-the...

I am worse than Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney has received some negative scorn recently after his remark, "I like being able to fire people," referring to his time working at Bain consulting. 

The criticism has made me think back to my senior year of college, when one day I found myself panicking that all of my classmates knew what they were doing after college and I didn’t. Not only that, it seemed, but they all had prestigious and high paying jobs lined up. Not exaggerating, everyone was going to go work as either a consultant (you know, at a place like Bain) or as an investment banker (you know, at a place like the places responsible for the near tanking of the world economy in 2009). I was sure of this fact. Everyone but me.

I had failed. Everyone but me had made good choices. I had made bad choices and was now facing the consequences. I had majored in anthropology (bad choice) and now that I’d been rejected from all five of the anthropology PhD programs I’d applied to, I was going to graduate college and then be eaten alive by a cold and cruel Real World. 

Even though I’d studied anthropology (reiterate: bad choice) and not economics or applied math, suddenly, for some reason, in my insane desparatation I thought that perhaps it wasn’t too late for me to make a good choice like my classmates and get one of those fancy money jobs that they all seemed to have. I ran down to career services and signed up for an interview to work for Bain consulting. Yes, the Bain that Romney worked at. I think it was the only fancy money job interview that I could still sign up for.

At Harvard, companies like Bain do cattle-call mass interviews every year as part of their effort to recruit seniors from, well, colleges like Harvard. I put on a suit, bought a black leather portfolio folder that’s sole purpose in life is fancy money job interviews like this, and went to my scheduled interview time.

At these interviews, the Office of Career Services told me, they like to see how you think. To see how I think, the interviewer asked me to estimate how much money is spent on energy bars in the US in a given week. You’re supposed to take the interviewer through your thought process. “Let’s say there are 300 million people in the US” you might say. “In a given week, let’s say that 20% of them are athletic” you might add uncertainly. “And, um, let’s say that 10% of people just like the taste of energy bars, which cost, uh, $3 on average,” you might flounder. The good people at the OCS had told me that it doesn’t matter if you are correct so much as that you have coherent reasons for all of your decisions and can present a logical thought process. You’re even allowed to use a calculator and pen and paper! Easy. I used all of those things, and came up with the answer twenty trillion dollars, significantly more than is spent on food in the US in an entire year, let alone one week on energy bars. So, my answer was a little high. “That’s a little high, huh?” I said to the interviewer. She nodded. 

I wasn’t called back for a second interview. So the reason that I didn’t take a job at Bain was not that I was a principled do-gooder who wanted to follow my heart and work for an organization with a conscious. But because Bain didn’t want me. So that’s why I’m worse than Mitt Romney. I have the moral ineptitude / greed of a Mitt Romney Type (someone who would work at a company whose only concern is making more money for the sake of making more money and who arguably adds nothing to society but helps huge corporations have a better bottom line) but lack the reasoning skills to get hired at a place like that.

I’m a dumber version of Mitt Romney. As morally reprehensible, but not as smart. 

I’m not as smart as someone who thought it would be a good idea to say, “I like being able to fire people.” He thought saying that would win people over, and help to soften the impression that he was a callous, elitist, destroyer of jobs. I am dumber than that. 

So that’s where I’m at right now. 

The hysteria of worrying about not having a clear career path (what a silly concern, I have since realized!) soon passed. In all likelihood, even if I was offered the job, I wouldn’t have taken it. And even if I did take it, I wouldn’t have lasted too long. Still though. I did apply. I applied to be Mitt Romney. And I was rejected. 

Shit Girls Say

Have you seen those Shit Girls Say videos that are floating around? Watch it here if you haven’t. 

What would a normal human response be to seeing those videos? To laugh and share the link with a friend? To smile politely and move on with one’s life? To find them vaguely offensive but mostly harmless? 

Those all seem like reasonable responses. But if you’re me, you spend a few hours thinking about how it would be funny if there were a parody called shit grills say (yes, grills, like charcoal grills for cooking meat and vegetables) and then you’d spend a few more hours on a Friday night actually making one while your girlfriend worked at her desk and wondered out loud how she had come to be in a relationship with such a weirdo. 

At any rate, without any further ado, I present: Shit Grills Say - Episode 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-VoTsvd0BU

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-VoTsvd0BU