Posts Tagged ‘ musings ’

I’m Back and the nytimes Book Review

So I haven’t blogged in a while. I guess that’s why its been raining so much lately, god was crying. Sorry about the hiatus but I’m back now so the sun shall soon shine. Anyway…

   

is good, thoughtful books about interesting historical events or current political issues, but finding interesting novels in the times book review is like finding needles in haystacks. selection there nonfiction. Who the hell gets there book recommendations from the New-York times book review section? I mean, I admit about two-thirds of have a questionI

  

The times just throws out these books that no one wants to read. From pompous author so and so, or from foreign author so and so, this book, about absolutely nothing, has sixteen creative metaphors , a nonlinear plot structure, characters who are more symbol than reality and a wonderful scene where the narrator drinks while looking out to sea. We love it.  

And I have middlebrow tastes. I hate James Patterson, and authors like him, but the times seems to purposefully review fiction that only ass holes want to read.  

six things to do before you are drunk off your ass

given that the semester is coming to an end, and thus until finals start drinking is through the roof, I’ve created a list of things one should do before one is drunk, because once you’re drunk, its impossible to 1. get why these things are necessary or 2, have the motor skills to pull them off. 

1. All blunts, cigarettes, spliffs and other smoking devices should be prepared before drinking reaches frantic levels, otherwise lack of motor function will later make this impossible. 

2. If you know you don’t want to sleep with someone, but you know your drunk self wants to sleep with them, before you get drunk, right in sharpy above your genitals, “I hate so and so.” or something worse, like, “this is a drunken mistake.” 

3. Do not bring your cell phone drinking. Whatever awful situation you might find yourself in without a phone, stuck in the middle of nowhere, someone who wants to give you there number but you have no phone, the damage you can do with your phone is much greater. Crazy five grand orders to qbc, (true story,) calling ex’s, calling the strip club, I mean, basically anyone you call while drunk is going to think worse of you in the morning. Your boss doesn’t want to hear how you think he’s the mother fucking… Mother fucking best boss in the entire world, followed by you vomiting onto yourself in the background. Also, phones are broken drunk. 

4. Really, anything you don’t want damaged should be moved before drinking in a group begins. I have seen everything valuable broken because of drinking. Oh, can of beer spilled on the laptop, camera, x-box, hamster, whatever. Windows are not safe either, but I can’t think of a way to safeguard them. 

5. I think that before drinking, everyone should start calling each other faggot. See, every fight between two guys I’ve ever seen seems to stem from some guy going, “fuck you faggot.” but if everyone just called each other faggot, like, “hey, what time is it, faggot, or, dude, that’s a cool shirt, you faggot,” I think the highest cause of belligerent drunken fights would be neutralized. 

6. I think a predesignated place to puke is also a good idea. I had a girl vommit on my sheets a couple of days ago, and I thought, man, if I’d had a trashcanne ready to go that maybe had a little sign, like “upchuck here,” I wouldn’t be doing laundry today. 

emphaticly bad review of the Ipad. Smashing it with a baseball bat.

Before you read this rant, take a look at this link, which is a youtube video of a kid smashing an Ipad with a baseball bat. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGUppxoJUVg

Oh, oh, my decadent America. In the strangest you tube video I’ve ever seen, a kid and his friends take a baseball bat to an Ipad. The video is equal parts funny, disturbing, and wallet hurting. Five hundred dollars!
In the video, a group of kids watch and jeer the Ipad’s destruction. A girl laughs stupidly in the background as the Ipad is destroyed. These kids go about there work with grim purpose, and to no discernable end. There cavilere attitude is the weirdest part of all, because they don’t exactly seem to be enjoying themselves all that much. I am no fan of the Ipad, but honestly, this is some truly mystifying shit.
The video’s gone viral on youtube.
What was the point of all that?” one kid asks.
“To have fun,” the maker of the video answers. Fair enough, but I can think of many more fun things to do. What a weird fucking piece of work.
Not to get all New-yorker on you’re ass’s, but in a recession, smashing five hundred dollars to put it on youtube? Seriously?

thought’s on Phoebe Prince, the late outlier who killed herself because of bullying

An outlier is a number that doesn’t match the rest of the data points from the set. so if we have 1, 3, 5, 7, and 39122, the final number is the outlier. Regrettably, Phoebe Prince, a fifteen year old girl who killed herself in January, is that type of outlier, a number that doesn’t match the rest of the set.
The girl, who allegedly took her own life in response to bullying, (way to let them win,) has cropped up in the media a lot recently because her bullies have been charged with all sorts of things, mainly charges revolving around harassment andstocking. This, in the main, is right and proper, serious bullying should be dealt with.
The thing that interests me is Phoebe’s unorthodox reaction to being bullied. A lot of people are bullied, and most of them are, luckily, still alive. Some tiny proportion kill themselves, some tiny portion go columbine and shoot up a school, but most come through the experience.
When I read about Phoebe prince in the news, my first question was, “why couldn’t she hack it?” Sure, the bullying was more intense than usual, but still. I’m not trying to come off as an ass hole, although some will see this post as assholish in the extreme, I’m just wondering why some people have thinner skins than others.
I think a little bullying is good for a person. I don’t think teachers should ignore bullying when they see it, but when someone walks up to you and calls you an ugly freak, or something like that, it strengthens you, lets you know the world isn’t full of puppy dogs and butterflies. I find this situation regrettable, but sad on so many levels. Bullying is a phase, a run through fire. Talk to most people who finished high school and they’ll tell you it sucked. No one ever feels like they fit in, and life in high school is skewed towards the now, it feels more important than it really is.
While bully prevention is the rage in the media and among educators, teaching kids how to react to bullying should be just as important, the message should be, “it really won’t matter. In less than four years, it’ll all be over.”
The major reason I can’t summon up waves of sympathy for this girl like so many others can is that she was an outlier, she couldn’t deal with something that thousands of kids find a way to deal with every day. If every kid who was bullied shot there tormentor or committed suicide, we’d have a lot less bullies and a lot fewer kids alive to be bullied, but that doesn’t happen.

for an impartial summary of recent events, and the things which led up to the suicide, see this link. http://tinyurl.com/yzjn6me