To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. — Joseph Chilton Pearce
August 2012
You’ll Never Take Me Alive
Ex-con who reportedly vowed not to be taken alive shot to death — LA Daily News To live outside the law you must be honest, as Bob Dylan has rightly pointed out. He may have been a violent, drug-addled thief, but he was a man of his word, and that’s important. Read more →
Cat and Dog
They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. — Andy Warhol
The World’s Greatest University
It’s move-in weekend at UC Berkeley, the world’s greatest university . . . Saul Perlmutter, who just won the Nobel Prize in Physics, is teaching an undergraduate seminar on physics and music this year. How many schools even have Nobel Laureates on the faculty? Of those that do, how many of them teach small classes for freshmen and sophomores? Ivy League schools, with the exception of Harvard, are coasting on their reputations. When’s the last time you heard of an enterpreneur from Dartmouth or Brown or Yale? Stanford is great in engineering and business but limited in other areas. Also, top professors at private schools would rather piss on a spark plug than traffic with undergrads. That said, the University of Southern California football season starts Sept. 1 against Hawaii. The Men of Troy! FIGHT ON FOR OLD ‘SC! OUR MEN FIGHT ON TO VICTORY! Read more →
Welcome to Bakersfield
There’s a bunch of Cub Scouts here at the Taco Bell in Bakersfield. I don’t know . . . aren’t you supposed to take Cub Scouts to the woods so they can cook things over a campfire? I think I could score some hot chicks in Bakersfield. I’m sizing up my competition here — nothing but fat guys with enormous heads. Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any hot chicks in Bakersfield — just fat guys, fat women and fat, dopey Cub Scouts. Read more →
As a Man Sows
Our body in Kali Yuga is a field of action: As a man sows, so is his reward. Nothing by empty talk is determined: Anyone swallowing poison must die. Brother! Behold the Creator’s justice: As are a man’s actions, so is his recompense. — Adi Granth Read more →
More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of
I’m going to savagely murder the next person I hear use the word “spend” as a noun, as in “leveraging our spend.” Spend is a verb. Spending is a noun, e.g., “leveraging our spending.” I would still have to maim you for saying “leveraging” though, so try “getting the most for our money.” You can also avoid death by saying “How much does it cost?” instead of “What is our spend?” You have been warned. Read more →
Things to Do in Cincinnati When You’re Bored
Cops: Teens beat man because ‘they were just bored’ — NBCNews.com Strange piece of “journalism” from NBC News . . . basically just a rewrite of a story in the Cincinnati Enquirer in which a 45-year-old man named Pat Mahaney received a senseless, brutal beating from six boys, ages 13 and 14: Mahaney was taken to Mercy Mount Airy Hospital, where he was treated for four days before being released Tuesday. Police said doctors had to insert a tube down his throat to remove all of the blood from his stomach. A tube remained in his right nostril as blood continued to seep out of his head, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported, and his left eye is heavily blackened. Police said the teens admitted that Mahaney had done nothing to provoke being kicked and punched repeatedly in the face while he lay helpless on the ground. One of the boys allegedly… Read more →
Aside
Aside
Emma Coats: The 22 rules of storytelling, according to Pixar
Gore Vidal, Lifelong Bachelor
The Economic Times here in Bangalore has a great obituary of Gore Vidal. It includes an anecdote in which Vidal skewers Saul Bellow and his multiple wives, followed by the sentence Never married himself, Gore . . . Probably, like Liberace, just never found the right girl. Read more →
Sandeep Hornblower
Even in an entire city full of motorists honking at one another, our driver this afternoon distinguished himself as the greatest horn blower since Horatio. We were stopped in traffic at red lights, and he’d still sound the horn a couple of times just to stay limbered up . . . Read more →
Aside
When the world says “Give up,” hope whispers “Try it one more time.”