this is my blog

JPG

Mar 9, 2010
@ 9:33 pm
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1 note

I saw this the other day and I wondered how the original artist — the kid — would feel about the new-and-improved version of his picture.Do little kids know that they draw like shit? Would they get mad if older people drew like them?That’s essentially what happens with kids and language during the overregularization phase. Kids begin to learn grammar rules like “add -ed to make it past tense” and start screwing up words (eg., throw => throwed) that they used to get right when they were just relying on memory (throw => threw). But if mom or dad says “throwed,” the kid will get pissed off because even though he can’t prevent his own mistakes, he knows it’s wrong. At first glance the comparison is pretty limited because drawing is all about imagination and aesthetics, while grammar tends to be a little more normative.Still, there’s something kind of appealing to <not science>a unified theory of childhood spazticity, this stage where kids want to do or draw or say one thing but are forced by their overeager brains to sputter out embarrassing juvenilia that gets cruelly mimicked by unsympathetic elders.</not science>

I saw this the other day and I wondered how the original artist — the kid — would feel about the new-and-improved version of his picture.

Do little kids know that they draw like shit? Would they get mad if older people drew like them?

That’s essentially what happens with kids and language during the overregularization phase. Kids begin to learn grammar rules like “add -ed to make it past tense” and start screwing up words (eg., throw => throwed) that they used to get right when they were just relying on memory (throw => threw). But if mom or dad says “throwed,” the kid will get pissed off because even though he can’t prevent his own mistakes, he knows it’s wrong.

At first glance the comparison is pretty limited because drawing is all about imagination and aesthetics, while grammar tends to be a little more normative.

Still, there’s something kind of appealing to <not science>a unified theory of childhood spazticity, this stage where kids want to do or draw or say one thing but are forced by their overeager brains to sputter out embarrassing juvenilia that gets cruelly mimicked by unsympathetic elders.</not science>

Txt

Mar 8, 2010
@ 9:20 pm
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i took a few snapshots on my phone while visiting los angeles and remembered how much i love photography.

i spend very little time actually composing a photograph, framing it just so or finding the correct settings. that’s not the part i love.

the part i love happens when i get all those megapixels on my computer. i love sweetening my memories with supersaturation. i love all those sliding scales from 0 to 100; i love injecting secrets into photos by picking numbers meaningful to me. i love zooming way the fuck in and discovering an accidental portrait of her and me reflected in the trashcan, our faces pixellated beyond recognition.

i don’t care about the noise. i love stitching photos together and i don’t care about the ghosting. i don’t want lifelike, i just want life, and when i spend hours playing with my utterly insignificant pictures i get that same vertiginous thrill i got at the end of men in black one when we find out the universe is a marble, that life is just someone’s plaything, and that embedded within our own playthings are universes.

(the ending of men in black two tries to convey the same message but is comparatively lame.)

JPG

Mar 6, 2010
@ 4:01 pm
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✌ devins
5 notes

devins: laughingsquid: 15th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair Who wants to go? see you there

devins:

laughingsquid:

15th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair

Who wants to go?

see you there

Txt

Mar 5, 2010
@ 9:45 am
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✌ monkeytypist
3 notes

monkeytypist:

“If this is tea, please bring me some coffee. If this is coffee, please bring me some tea.”

— Abraham Lincoln

This quote just reminded me of my #1 favorite hot non-alcoholic drink, coffee-tea, which is readily available in the Chinatowns of New York and Philadelphia but apparently has not made its way to San Francisco yet.

It’s some kind of mix of coffee and tea, but after tons of experimenting with the office K-cups I can testify that it’s not as easy to prepare as its name suggests.

JPG

Mar 2, 2010
@ 10:05 pm
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1 note

&#8212; I read that first sentence as &#8220;In his steroid baseball career&#8230;&#8221; Not sure whether that says more about my reading skills or the state of baseball when the Red Sox juiced their way to World Series victories in 2004 and 2007.

—

I read that first sentence as “In his steroid baseball career…” Not sure whether that says more about my reading skills or the state of baseball when the Red Sox juiced their way to World Series victories in 2004 and 2007.

JPG

Mar 2, 2010
@ 8:00 am
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✌ hipsterpuppies
349 notes

hipsterpuppies: the summer after his senior year, mr. chow traveled europe by train for a month, and now aggravatingly insists that “it’s barthelona.” [photo via micki m]

hipsterpuppies:

the summer after his senior year, mr. chow traveled europe by train for a month, and now aggravatingly insists that “it’s barthelona.”

[photo via micki m]

URL

Mar 1, 2010
@ 8:42 pm
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✌ urbansheep
2 notes

RAoK »

nsbarr:

…

Hey, you never indicated that the piece on $31 at DMV supposed any feedback, but I just thought that I’d still chime in.

The great idea behind the RAoK is that they happen out of the universal abundance of humanity in people around us. And therefore when you encounter one, you…

Thanks for your response, and your words of encouragement. Sorry for the slow reblog, it isn’t entirely unrelated to the original subject =)

Anyway, I got my act together and sent her a note with the $$. Here’s what it looked like (with a car to mark the DMV occasion. I don’t know which end is the front):



As for what you said about life being a non-zero sum game, I believe it. I just can’t live by it. I am so deeply wired for zero-sum that I don’t even recognize my own success unless I can locate someone else’s failure. Likewise the success of others tends to make me feel like a failure. I would really like to change!


Txt

Feb 25, 2010
@ 9:05 pm
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2 notes

Someone did something very nice for me the other day and paid the $31 I owed for my California driver’s license. My credit card wasn’t working and the DMV employee was about to cancel the application, which I had waited an hour to submit. A woman standing next to me happened to overhear and insisted on covering it.

And even as she was swiping her card and signing the receipt for me, my mind lurched forward to everything I’d have to do…

go to CVS pick out a thank you card or make one but i’m not 6 years old write something “thank you so much!” gay “thanks!” flippant “thanks so much” ok I guess put in $40? demeaning? exactly $31 like grateful but need the cash? Does she more than me? “thanks with interest ;)” no idiot need a stamp give email address? Please confirm you. Start sending me chain letters… etc.

And now it’s 3 days later and I still haven’t sent her the money and the dread is kind of paralyzing. This is why I’m ambivalent about random acts of kindness. It’s not because it puts me in a position of weakness or because I’m suspicious of altruism or anything like that.

It’s because the nausea of having to pay it forward or just pay it back, the utter joylessness in scanning walls of Hallmark cards, the impersonal sense of obligation that will poison whatever I do, these things point strongly to me not being a very good person, especially compared to someone who unblinkingly swipes her credit card for a total stranger at the DMV.

Vid

Feb 24, 2010
@ 11:33 am
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✌ nostrich
33 notes

Johnny Depp reprises his role as Hunter S Thompson in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas 2: Tangled Wires. With a memorable cameo from Benicio del Toro as a spaced-out JVC maintenance worker.

nostrich:

This recording of a phone call an angry Hunter Thompson made did the rounds recently, and you’ve already heard it, but I spotted this comment in a Metafilter comment thread that made me smile just as much as the phone call:

Some years ago I needed to talk to Thompson for an article. I cadged his home number from a friend of a friend, who would not give it over until after he had spent fifteen minutes warning me about how a call to Hunter was likely to unfold. Hunter will probably be drunk. Hunter will be angry, or unintelligible. Hunter will ask you to send him something odd, or send him money. Hunter will ask you to come to his house to fix something that’s broken. Hunter will almost certainly not answer your questions, but if he does he’ll do so only after shouting at you for many minutes, so just buck up and bear it. “And for god’s sake don’t dare tell him how you got his number!”

Properly prepped, I dialed the number. Hunter answered. He sounded perfectly sober. I very gingerly explained who I was and what I wanted. We then spent a very enjoyable half hour on the phone, Hunter politely answering every question. When I was done I thanked Hunter and told him how much I appreciated the interview. “My pleasure. Happy to do it. One last thing, though, before I forget.” Yes? “How did you happen to get my number?” Oh, through a friend of a friend. “Hmmmm. Well. May I ask a favor?” Of course. “Throw that goddamn number away and tell that fucking friend of a friend of yours that if he ever gives my goddamn phone number out to another sonofabitch stranger I’m going to find him and fuck his eyeballs out.”

JPG

Feb 21, 2010
@ 4:26 pm
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3 notes

I&#8217;ve been home for a week now and I still don&#8217;t having anything insightful to say about Las Vegas, about why despite myself I like it so much or about why it makes me feel so optimistic.

I’ve been home for a week now and I still don’t having anything insightful to say about Las Vegas, about why despite myself I like it so much or about why it makes me feel so optimistic.