Somebody Doesn't Like David Brooks

His name is PZ Myers and he's my hero of the day.

This:

it's like watching a creepy middle-aged man fuss over his Barbie and Ken dolls, posing them in their expensive accessories and cars and houses and occasionally wiggling them in simulated carnal relations

is priceless.

For the record, I loathe David Brooks. He is the reason I don't watch the PBS News Hour more often and avoid Friday afternoons on NPR because God knows when he'll pop up with some inane, inaccurate and pompous commentary.
And don't get me started on Tom Freidman, although NPR doesn't tag him. But Charlie Rose does. I love the way he spent a week commenting about the Egyptian thing from the safety of Jordan (or was it Israel, I forget) then popped into Egypt to give us his take on what the man in the street was saying once things had calmed down, all while wearing the most ridiculously age — and fashion — inappropriate black leather jacket I have ever seen. Ever.
Oh, God, just be glad I keep track of this stuff so you don't have to. I don't think I can keep it up much longer.
No, I know I can't.

I Wish I Had A Cat

to scan.

Probably The Most Impressive Part Of A Sentence

I can remember reading, written expressly for me. Thank you DFW.

believed in the interpenetrating dance of spine, nervous system, spirit, and cosmos as totality—in the universe as an infinite system of neural connections that had evolved, at its highest point, an organism that could sustain consciousness of both itself and the universe at the same time, such that the human nervous system became the universe’s way of being aware of and thus “accessible [to]” itself

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2011/03/07/110307fi_fiction_wallace#ixzz1FZ9k0VII

It's part of a short story of his that is inexplicably published in this month's New Yorker, and I am tempted to conclude his widow is releasing unpublished manuscripts at intervals. It's actually the first thing of his that I've managed to read, although I began the big novel with no hope of finishing it before it was due back at the library.
I resolved to buy it at the used book store. Today, I re-resolve.
I now realize that throughout my life, I have expected things to be solved at some point, to have myself achieved enough knowledge to conclude certain things beyond the platitude "uncertainty is the only certainty."
Seems fruitless, I know.

And that's what the story is about, it turns out. I should mark this date on my calendar.

He did not yet know how, but he believed, as he approached pubescence, that his head would be his. He would find a way to access all of himself. He possessed nothing that anyone could ever call doubt, inside

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2011/03/07/110307fi_fiction_wallace#ixzz1FZDt6DR2

Thank You, Dr. Krugman

(I wouldn't call him Dr. just because of his Ph.D. But he has a Nobel.)

after a long hard day of reading student applications. (My suggestion that we reject all applicants claiming to be “passionate” about their plans was rejected, but with obvious reluctance.)

Anyway, thanks for reminding me the word "passionate"/passion needs to go on the list.

So, to rehash:
awesome
amazing
lifechanging
passionate

Awesome Is So 2009, Amazing So Yesterday

so everything became amazing, which still seems to be in fashion judging by last night's red carpet interviews and commentary. (Did Tim Gunn say amazing? Not once, but, like, every five seconds.)
But I predict that the next word to go to the top of my list-of-words-I-never-want-to-hear-again is...wait for it...lifechanging.
You heard it here first. I don't remember where I first heard it. I only know I don't ever want to hear it again.

The Old Is Dying

and the new cannot be born. In this interrugnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms."

 Jon Taplin, long may he live and prosper even though he's deserted one of my favorite bogs for a better job that precludes sudden-opinion syndrome, (Oh, look, I coined a new word!) shows up at TPM today with something to say.
It's the word morbid that bothers me.

Two Moon Poems

arrived today from poets.org.
The one from David Rivard, roughly a contemporary, made me want to argue with some of his word/metaphor choices. I wouldn't put a frisbee in a poem. And I don't think of a banjo when I see a moon. But I persisted to the end and was rewarded.

No need to see my life as a story the world
has to read, no need for sentimental
mooning & nostalgia—blessed with a bit
of amnesia anyway, I don't recall much
of what went down. I know that it's engraved
there on some cellular level,  that I can't
command the consequences. Like a spider
who has climbed atop a survey stake in a bull-
dozed field, I feel slightly truer in any case.

The other poem was the one a friend got, and when she put it up in her status on Facebook, I did a double take. That isn't the poem I got, I thought, and went to check.
The picture in John Haines's profile on the Web site, he is so handsome. I wanted to throw myself at his feet. And he's still alive, and was born the same year as my father. You don't see portrait photos like that anymore.
Each of the moon poems is listed on the other's page. I don't know if they're related as containing moons or as containing wisdom.

Over and out.