June 2007

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I could really take a photo of anything outside today in Baltimore for this. A nasty heat wave just broke, and there are cool, dim, refreshing breezes blowing through the city. It’s fantastic. Since we didn’t seal our windows with AC units yet, we can keep them open and enjoy this.

This is an iron cup we bought for incense, with polished stones we stole from dead bamboo pots in the kitchen. It holds incense nicely, though it left a rust-ring on my bathroom sink and is not allowed in that room anymore. For Photo Friday: Grey.

Last week, I rode my bike to where my family lives in Hampden with my brother’s wedding gift (and some sushi I made him) on the back of my bike. It was so large that I had to use old straps; my cargo net would not fit around it. It’s a bonsai tree, like he wanted, cleverly packaged from where I ordered it. The box was poking me in the butt the whole ride down:)

[Larger and more photos at Flickr.]

My brother and his [my] parents at the end of his wedding rehearsal. A few tables were a little…sombre, but the one with my other brother, F, I and some other fun ones was jumping.

Wedding rehearsals are weird. I didn’t get to have a dinner because of family drama. My favorite rehearsal was my friends’ dinner at their house this winter. Very relaxing and joyous. And dang fantastic food. My friend’s mother is from Little Italy, or, as we say in Baltimore, Liddle Ittly. This rehearsal was a little tense, I think, because of how detailed the wedding itself was. Being co-best-man and trying to remember when to go up the altar, writing my toast in my head, ignoring my growling stomach. Or maybe it was just me because I got married barefoot on a lake and think all weddings are stressful.

I’ll detail toasts I almost gave and the one I did give later.

So on the way back from my late breakfast at The Evergreen today (I totally overslept), there was a huge Subway delivery truck parked on Kittery, a very very small street with speed humps that intersects the busy street that both Subway and The Evergreen are on. The driver gets in, and floors the damned thing. He starts knocking small limbs from the trees in the street. And then we hear the sound of cracking wood.

If you’ve ever chopped or sawed dead wood, you know what sound that is. At the intersection of two very tiny streets (both of which have children playing on them all the time), this maniac ran into a damned tree. He split the trunk and bark, and I think he killed it. I say maniac because he was either cornering too fast or driving down a street with a 15 mph speed limit too fast.

I thought, “Screw this, I’m getting the number from the back of the truck.” I followed him on foot around the corner, and he stopped. Several people were pointing out what he did. One pointed at the tree. One pointed at the truck. And I almost laughed my ass off.

The moron tore the corner from the trailer of the truck. There was a huge gash and a strip of metal coming off which was about three feet long and flapping constantly in the summer breeze. No phone call necessary. He was sure as hell in trouble when he got back to wherever he came from.

He didn’t seem very bothered by it, and he sped down Keswick, snapping more tree limbs and running stop signs. I picked the branches up out of the street so no cars or bikes got damaged, and I found some of the insulation foam from his fridge truck. I hope nothing bigger fell off and hurt anyone.

And, you know, I hope he gets fired. People who drive big trucks like complete assholes should get fired. I know, I am (literally) a friend of the “working man” and all, but come on. That could have been a kid he ran over. Maybe some popos got him on his way to wherever he was going to crash into things next.

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A very late posting for Photo Friday: Dream. My brother was married this Friday night. This is my other brother toward the end of the rehearsal dinner Thursday. We were both very tired from our co-best-man duties.

I’ll post more such photos this week, when I get some time. Today, it is the Harbor, possible the Walter’s Art Gallery. Very fun things today. And more work tomorrow, as I gear up to write the conclusion of my dissertation. The chapter, anyway, not necessarily the wrap-up.

So there we were last night. Sweating after dinner on the couch. Cranky from not having any coffee and all or enough tea. On came the Dunkin Donuts commercial with Rachel Ray. Big. Iced. Coffee.

We jumped up at my suggestion and strolled to our local Dunkin Donuts for two tasty treats. Turns out that there’s some summer special where medium (read: huge) iced coffees are only $0.99. Sweet.

Repeated this today. Because dang, it was good. I totally drank most of mine on the ten minute walk home, though. F pointed out yesterday that a commercial totally worked on us. I think that’s funny.

Oh, yeah, did I mention that my brother is getting married Friday?

I know a lot of people didn’t like V for Vendetta, thought it was not anarchistic enough like the original was, too “Hollywood liberal”, etc. But I liked it a lot. I thought watching it yesterday on the computer and dissecting it would reveal its flaws to me. Or at least V’s flaws, like it did the new Batman’s. But I emerged from a four-hour viewing of it with my affection for the film intact. I am listening to the soundtrack right now as I type up half of a dissertation chapter on the proper way to hate.

What I was hoping to pick up and did in fact find in the film was that V’s hate and revenge transcended his own suffering and pain. At the end, he shows us that his destruction of Parliament and the new world it will usher in are his preferred goals, and they are not for him at all. He won’t even pull the lever and instead offers it as a gift to Evey.

Which is not to say that the film is not about revenge. In the end, though, V separates his own revenge from the destruction of Parliament by giving the train-bomb to Evey and the future. He proves that there is “more” or “something else” than his own life, in a ham-fisted way.

But you know, I really enjoy any revenge movie where the baddies get their comeuppance. Who doesn’t?

So, in our quest to seriously attempt to live without air conditioning (at home) in Baltimore’s nasty summer, we bought some cool fans last week. Checked out the website and realized that they indeed make bigger ones. Gonna return the medium ones. Was gonna get those big suckers. Ordered them on Amazon yesterday, and they showed up today with free shipping (sweet!). We got back from The Evergreen, and there was this huge box on our doorstep. Just in time for the back-end of this current — but short — heatwave. It’s a code red day in the city today, for serious, dude.

And I have to watch V for Vendetta on the computer with headphones to catch the tasty dialog for an end-ish chapter of the diss. (So being not-sweaty would be nice.) How to properly hate, unlike the sissy-ish new Batman who won’t kill anyone and doesn’t get much done at all… Of course, I’m not sure how much I believe any of this now, but I just want to get this over with. It’s not like anyone will read it.

Back to fans. It’s like a breezy day in here now. We might wind up breaking down and putting our window AC units in later. But at least we can say we really really tried. It’s not just an environmental/energy matter, either. It’s a Johnny’s a brat matter. If I can stand the summer in Baltimore without AC at home, that’s a good step — for me.

It’s really about as hot as it gets without a deadly heatwave today, and I can dig it.

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I like to carry things on my bike’s rack. I wish it could hold people, but it can’t.

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Little dudes at Fort McHenry, November 2006.

Photo Friday: Active.

Things have gotten very busy. I helped my brother move into his new house Sunday, after a very very very long Hon Fest party Saturday. Bachelor party this weekend, wedding next. And I have the whole dissertation to write. As one of two best men, there’s a lot to do.

I actually enjoy being busy like this usually, and I definitely like the hard work of moving, painting, shopping for a lawn-mower, retrieving furniture from Ikea. My apartment needs cleaning, though, and I have some online shopping to complete. I finally ordered some sandals after I wore out the soles of my most recent Tevas since late August, and I need to order more fans, a wedding gift, Fathers’ Day gift (which will be late), etc. At night, I am usually too lazy and too tired of being on the computer to do any of those things. And my shoulder hurts. I suppose I need a new computer set-up, but there’s no energy for that anytime soon.

Good thing I gave up giving up coffee, at least for the time being.

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F’s and my bikes, locked up at night during Hon Fest. This is a very slow shutter speed, sitting on a metal chair. The poles are the clothes lines I cemented into the ground last summer at my parents’ house.

So lately, I keep getting labeled by other people: some of whom know me very well and others who think they do and some who are clueless and know it.

People have called me a hippie a lot for a long time, and I was often at a loss as to why. Usually they modify it: “dirty hippie”; “fucking hippie”; “dirty fucking hippie”; etc. Now, with my refusal to own a car, eat meat, enlist, I think it might make sense. Plus I use Patchouli lotion and deodorant, so I smell like one if you get close enough, lol. Seriously, I usually feel too square for that label, and despite people being insulting a lot of the times they call me that, I take it as a compliment.

I recently got called judgmental insofar as I form a snap opinion of people pretty quickly. I suppose that’s true and probably unjust. But I am 99.99% right most of the time, so I don’t apologize for it, honestly, though maybe I should. I don’t brag about a lot, but I am pretty good at reading people. And the times when I have gone against my gut and given a jerk a chance, I have gotten bitten in the ass.

I also got called a bigot for hating racists, anti-Semites and homophobes. I argued that disliking someone for what they do/believe is very different than hating people for their color, which I still think is true. But Webster defines a bigot as:

A person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

The general definition does seem to apply to me, so maybe the dude I’ve know most of my life (and who reads this) was right when he half-jokingly said that. I’m sure we’ll laugh about it over a beer soon, but I am intolerant of homophobes and other haters. And I really don’t care about arguing with them or even any kind of dialog in which I am supposed to be open to their point of view. I don’t care what these haters have to say at all.

Maybe I’ve become intolerant of certain kinds of intolerance. Maybe that makes me a bigot.

But don’t we all do that? A racist white guy is bigoted against people of color. I am bigoted against his intolerance. Someone else is intolerant of my intolerance of his intolerance. Where does it stop?

How much tolerance is possible? Or is that the goal? And what is tolerance? I have literally tolerated bigots and even had coffee with them. But I carefully avoid certain topics with them. If I associate with bigots when I have to, does that make me intolerant per se? If I sit with them and drink coffee but think in my head, “Man, I think this dude still thinks the world is flat? What planet does he live on? Why haven’t we evolved past people like this yet?” does sitting there and being polite still count as tolerance?

Or maybe the problem is that I get so upset by little things people tell me about myself because I assume they have thought about them as much as I would have if I actually shared my snap judgments with the people I allegedly make them about. I assume they really mean the things they say. Or maybe I’m just tired of being so different than 90% of the people I associate with.

I need to finish my damned dissertation and get a job.

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This might be better as a photo for impurity. There I was earlier this week, trying to cut back on caffeine and looking for a substitute for my nightly herbal tea. Tried some Nescafe’ instant decaf over ice. It was quite yummy. Made some hot last night while I watched Black Gold, and I don’t know if I can finish it. I [almost] always buy organic/fair-trade coffee for my French press[es], but I suppose I never really knew why. I was more concerned with the organic/environmental aspect than the trade part.

But not after this film. Now I find myself ashamed that I ever defended Starbucks on this blog, though, in my defense, it was as a company per se. And I was talking about wannabe anti-corporate weiners who hate Starbucks with an iPod on for no other reason than that Starbucks is a big company. Cuz, you know, iPods are handmade by well-paid artisans for a small little local company. Since leaving the Dale, I only go to Starbucks in a pinch because, honestly, my addiction is more important to me than my values some days. I hate when people say, “I don’t go to Starbucks,” but then do when they need to. That’s horsehockey.

I won’t take my Starbucks posts down, though. I admit when I’m wrong I do. And the next time I’m stuck in my berg with no other options but to pass out on the sidewalk, I will likely deal with the devil again.

[For Photo Friday: Purity.]

I can see the end of my dissertation draft now. I am working to fill in holes while I stall over writing the more important parts. Boring things like stating what assumptions Nietzsche works under and that my discussion of Nietzsche will work under (no free will, order of rank, etc.) and explaining why there is not a lot of secondary Nietzsche work (because Nietzsche is the means to what the diss is about and because, well, I can’t find much on his philosophy of hate and enmity).

I did get to work William James — what actually brought me to Carbondale, in fact — into my solutions discussion. His ideas on energy and channeling in “The Energies of Men” and “The Moral Equivalent of War” sound like Nietzsche’s sublimation, but with the whole free will thing, etc. And I get to watch Batman Begins and possibly V for Vendetta again to discuss what to do when there is someone you just plain should hate. Of course, since the entire study brackets all moral and ethical concerns and is very much Pragmatic in a Jamesian spirit, it’s difficult to justify why we should hate some people, since it so often appears that such people are morally evil.

I did realize that in my personal life I have not bracketed the moral in favor of the Pragmatic as much as I had thought and possibly tried to do, but I don’t think that’s necessarily bad. I confessed to reading about Buddhism last week, and someone who knows me pretty well said told me that they always think of me as a Transcendentalist who won’t move out of the city. Which I take as a compliment. A walk through the tree-shaded streets of Roland Park on my way to breakfast does get me going as much as the coffee does.

And don’t forget Hon Fest if you are in or near Baltimore this weekend. My parents life 1/2 a block above the The Avenue, and my Mom is having a party at noon, complete with Baltimore-eese invitations I wrote (email me if you wanna read them). We’ll be eating and drinking out of recycled plastic all day. You might see me — maybe I’ll wear my “What Would Nietzsche Do?” shirt. It’s red.