June 2011
21 posts
“Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem...”
– Ray Bradbury (via therealchadhall)
“On the tour bus, people will be passing around the iPod, and there’s a feeling...”
– Gregg Gillis
“To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity. But this also means: to be taught. The relation with the Other, or Conversation, is a non-allergic relation, an ethical...
“Melodramas of moral courage provide satisfaction through the comforting fantasy...”
– Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam
“Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you...”
– Ann Landers
Street harassment is about one thing: impressing... →
I’ve been teaching gender studies courses for nearly two decades, and I developed the first “Men and Masculinity” class ever taught at my college. Through my teaching and other work, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about sexual harassment and other forms of public and private violence against women. And the longer I do this work, the more I’m convinced that one of the roots of the problem –...
Rabo Karabekian: I'm in the middle of a sentence.
Circe Berman: Who isn't?
People Argue Just to Win, Scholars Assert (The New... →
“For centuries thinkers have assumed that the uniquely human capacity for reasoning has existed to let people reach beyond mere perception and reflex in the search for truth. Rationality allowed a solitary thinker to blaze a path to philosophical, moral and scientific enlightenment.
Now some researchers are suggesting that reason evolved for a completely different purpose: to win arguments....
“I have filled 3 Mead notebooks trying to figure out whether it was Them or Just...”
– David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
- Wilco, “She’s a Jar”
“‘Not my problem’ is not a philosophy. It’s a mental illness. Right up there with...”
– Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World (via thoughtsdetained)
“There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people. Some are a little better or a little worse, but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice. A blindness to what is going on in each other’s hearts… nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see …each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire,...
Let dogs delight to bark and bite, For God hath made them so; Let bears and lions growl and fight, For ‘tis their nature too. But, children, you should never let Such angry passions rise; Your little hands were never made To tear each other’s eyes.
- Isaac Watts, Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite
“Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are...”
– Sigmund Freud
Dave: Yeah, I mean, none of us has made a new friend in, like, eleven years.
Brad: I wouldn't even know how to do that. What do you do, just, like, walk up to random people and go, 'hey, bluh bluh bluh, sports'?
Penny: The only new person I want to meet is my husband.
Max: I was once on this plane with this old lady and she tried talking to me. I just pretended I had some kind of disability.
May 2011
8 posts
but there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them i’ve looked around enough to know that you’re the one i want to go through time with
- Jim Croce, “Time in A Bottle”
“Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing...”
– Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World (via thepurp)
blankets feel better the heavier they get
- Matt & Kim, “I’ll Take Us Home”
“It is better to be small, colorful, sexy, careless, and peaceful, like the...”
– Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
“To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at...”
– Hermann Hesse
- The Love Language, “Gray Court”
“The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are...”
– Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
April 2011
14 posts
Why You Shouldn't Take Slights Personally... →
“But also consider what may have caused that person to bump into you, such as: interpretations and misinterpretations of your actions; personal health problems, pain, worries or anger about other things, temperament, personality, childhood experiences; causes from the larger context, like our economy and culture, or world events; and causes back upstream in time, like how his or her...
“But I awoke at three, feeling terribly sad, and feeling rebelliously that I didn’t want to study sadness, madness, melancholy, and despair. I wanted to study triumphs, the rediscoveries of love, all that I know in the world to be decent, radiant, and clear. Then the word ‘love,’ the impulse to love, welled up in me somewhere above my middle. Love seemed to flow from me in...
“My sisters were the coolest people I knew, and still are. I have always aspired to be like them and know what they know. My sisters were the color and noise in my black-and-white boy world-how I pitied my friends who had brothers. Boys seemed incredibly tedious and dim compared to my sisters, who were always a rush of energy and excitement, buzzing over all the books, records, jokes, rumors...
toward the end of our first year in las vegas you looked up from your little corner and i saw that your face was getting a little brighter and you asked me is it really getting warmer or is it just me and then you started mumbling unintelligibly so what are you saying anyway? i thought i heard bells ringing but then i remembered that i no longer knew what bells sounded like i thought maybe...
“This is how life works. Deciding whom to love is not an alien form of decision-making, a romantic interlude in the midst of normal life. Instead, decisions about whom to love are more intense versions of the sorts of decisions we make throughout the course of our existence, from what kind of gelato to order to what career to pursue. Living is an inherently emotional business.”
-...
you can see that i’m dressed like a schoolboy but i feel like a clown it’s a natural reaction i learned in this basketball town sweep up - i’ve been sweeping up the tips i made been living on gatorade planning my getaway
- Paul Simon, “Papa Hobo”
“Anger … it’s a paralyzing emotion … you can’t get...”
– Toni Morrison
“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown...”
– Pema Chödrön
“All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this...”
– Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
March 2011
14 posts
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the...”
– Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater
“I must achieve internal consistency.”
– Edmund Husserl
there is a girl in new york city who calls herself the human trampoline and sometimes when i’m falling, flying, or tumbling in turmoil i say “oh, so this is what she means” - Paul Simon, “Graceland”
- The Decemberists, “Raincoat Song”
“Like most others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid...”
– Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
- Villagers, “Pieces”
“Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of...”
– Friedrich Nietzsche