"The West hears the word 'Stalinism,' and has a collective urinary moment..."

this is why i love my professor

so much win. monster goodness.

god, this cheese is SO GOOD. whole foods ftw. drunken goat goats milk cheese from spain with red wine washed rind. MMMMMM.

for the sanity of all involved, here's a neat way to convert pdf books to readable files for your iphone:

You Will Need:
- Stanza (application)


What To Do:
1. Open the PDF file in Stanza (the "Open with" option when you right click the file, or via Ctrl/Command-O in Stanza itself)

2. Copy all the text via Ctrl/Command-A, Ctrl/Command-C

3. Open up a new Stanza window via Ctrl/Command-N or going to File > New From Clipboard

4. Go to the information windown via Ctrl/Command-I or going to Edit > Book Info

5. Save the information, share it to your iPod/iPhone/reading book of your choice.

6. TADAAA!! Dance around and celebrate.

Because nothing says "gangsta" like the lyric "My tasks include internal systems integration."

What! no capacity for business, no knowledge of law, no sympathy with art, no pretension to philosophy; only a simple knowledge of the secret that has puzzled all the philosophers, baffled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists: the secret of right and wrong. Why, man, you are a genius, a master of masters, a god! At twenty-four, too!

--George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara, (Act III)

china? bizzare, surreal, introspective on a morally and physically painful level, and thankfully over. not that i don't like the place, far from it, i feel it has Character and a severe case of contradiction that i find so appealing, but i need a break from it and all that it entails for me right now. i need i guess some space to figure out myself after a semester of being Way Out There, so far out that i didn't feel myself anymore.

in other words, the mfa sent me an e-christmascard. wtf. how spooky.

i ran into a coworker in the office wearing a huge black felt patch and a safety pin as i was getting water. i only caught her regard for a split second, but the circles under the eyes and the tired expression were enough to confirm what it was. for those who don't know, the black patch affixed to the left sleeve with a safety pin is a sign of mourning, specifically for the death of a close relative.

i realised i never see that anymore, naturally not in the states but also not in singapore. i don't feel like the traditional chinese void deck funeral where the coffin lies in state for a couple of days and everyone gathers together and plays mahjong is dying, but i suppose now that i think about it it is diminishing. maybe it's where i live now, in the middle of landed property, but there are no more burnings of gold paper, large bonfires of paper houses and cars, processions and white-clad bereaveds. i remember one point when i was in primary school, you'd see classmates with blue patches, blue on white patches, black patches etc. every so often. of course, that was then. now it's the workplace and modern times, and people don't display their old-fashioned grief now, do they.

<@codstar> rice crispies and hangovers don't go together
<@codstar> first time ive ever told a bowl of cereal to stfu

HAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAH

am feeding little name cards into a itty bitty card scanner, and it is taking WAY longer than something this mindless has any right to be. there are another couple of hundred to go. i will go SPARE

as of monday, 12:08h in shanghai, china, the wikimedia foundation has raised $2,685,553 of the $6 million it wants.

good grief. little contributions count. just ask obama.

in other news. shanghai = madness. i know i haven't posted ANYTHING about this whole debacle. i don't even know what to think.

it is sufficient, i guess? that in the middle
of my self-perusement, seeking words dropped by others
into the overgrown grave of the internet, a pleasure tinged
with guilt at this wilful probing into someone's self,
picking words and phrases like blind fish to starlight,
drawing on thoughts and mind-babbles and pensiveness, when i am ready
to craft words of my own, pin butterflies to pixels, to cast my own die
of course it is then that worlds intrude - your fault
for picking the family study to pick up the strands of your alternity.
selfish of you, to blame that game he is so absorbed in,
lurid bullets flashing through sights and
sounds of death and cartoon murder trickling in, the murmur
of plans made for tomorrow and
whotakesthecarareyoupickinghimupfromschool
who asked you to be on msn and skype anyways? this is why
you don't sleep till three am, and guilty pleasures must be enjoyed
in secret.

i have decided to live one cause at a time, because i cannot find an overriding, overarching belief that will enable me to drive every action and every word, that will burn in me and make me capable of the more-than-the-ordinary, the infinitely-able. and one day i will lift my head from the multitude of projects that i have immersed myself in some sort of escapism to find that i have accomplished much, but attained nothing.

terry pratchett has early onset alzheimers.


...bugger.

CUT
to the time when i
don't have to do this shit anymore, when i
can sit back rela-
x and hit the pause button,
drink some champagne and
snuggle down to blankets and
warmph.

BUT
i'm stuck here.

goddammit.

this kid is hilarious. i wish i had his mad dancing skillz.

google ads have invaded my tagboard. the fuck is this.

as i get closer and closer to the 1000 post mark, it becomes harder and harder to post. ironic. but yet, as i sit in the library and procrastinate on epiic, i wonder just how cheerfully i can be writing a paper on a topic that has managed to tear down my worldview entirely. the amount of endemic corruption in the world is astonishing and frankly dismaying, and (better still) we keep on screwing up in our own little ways, contributing the the ineffable plan of Mass Destruction.

anything to keep me from writing this paper.

i know i shouldn't be particularly affected, but there is a vague disquiet. a kind of mild, bitter-tainted resignation that i really shouldn't get hopes up or look forward to things because murphy really rules the goddamn ruse roost, and is particularly pan-like in his put-downs.

so i am Heading Back in a few days time, newly twenty and vaguely malevolent. if i have learned anything of my stay here, it is that it is Supremely Evident that for the Past Twenty Years of my Existence i have learned Squat.