Walking through a cemetary

In Syracuse there is a huge cemetery that by American standards is really quite old. The cemetery is comprised of hills and a disorderly array of mausoleums and monuments. A few nights ago I walked through a portion of it with my girlfriend and some new acquaintances. It was exceptionally beautiful. I liked the brash pyramids, obelisks, and statues that the older generation’s wealthy left to mark their existence. It felt like walking through a chessboard whose players had both been thoroughly defeated. A hill gave a vantage point of a stone staircase leading to an entire clan’s burial mound—and here, for me, the inartistic, the choices of design seemed significant.

I liked the cemetery more than any museum. I prefer history to style. I like the idea of trans-generational communication, a reaffirmation of Koholeth’s dictum that there is nothing new under the sun:

A young black child who died only a few years ago has a meager wire sign as a marker. The sign is already rusting away. Nearby, a Civil War general is marked by a small castle.

I like this—The appearance of a significant fact that begs for moral evaluation. A disparity of memorial. It begs for a poetic interpretation suggesting depth, feeling, and indignation. Surrounded by so many dead however, the demands of a “principled” justice sound like the annoying cries of children complaining about who gets more candy.

Tales of Pants

Hey gang!
Sorry about the lack of updates. I have temporarily moved my central command from the Big Easy to the Cool North East. Consequently my continuous Internet access has been severely curtailed by the logjams and SNAFUS brought about by relocating my passion.

But enough of my heartfelt apologies. I write this blog to tell the masses of the delicate interplay between my active processes (i.e. the causal forces stemming from my essence) and the passions imposed upon me by the entirety of the natural world. Yes my friends, I am writing today about my recent purchase of pants.

Buying clothes, getting a haircut, and engaging in good grooming habits is quite complicated for me. In many ways I am a vain man. I want to look good. I want the ladies to want to get with me, and the guys to want to be me. I am a vain man.

I also am very critical of the concept of fashion, and I hate the appearance of vanity. I see some dude in a pink shirt and popped collar and I think, “What an asshole!” I see some guy in anything non-functional that was selected because it looks good and I want to say, “hey, grow some testicles buddy!” You see the problem. My vanity is centered upon my seeming superiority to fashion. I want to mock those who mock trends. I want to be above it all. Yet, despite my desire to ascend to the heights of asexual detachment, I still have to put on a pair of pants in the morning.

Back in the day I had a girlfriend (now an ex) who mocked my pants. She thought I would look better if I had more current pants without pleats. I protested that she wanted to make me look like a backstreet boy. She bought me some cool pants as a gift and after some deep soul searching I found I could maintain my “straight as an arrow” sexuality while wearing these cool pants. They soon became the workhorse of my pant collection.

Most of my pants enter my consciousness in this way. My mom, my sister, my girlfriend, will eventually decide that I look stupid and try to upgrade my fashion. I usually refuse to shop with them. On the rare occasions when I do enter a clothing store with them I tend to become hostile to them and to the salesclerks. We usually leave quickly with my sisters and mom slightly embarrassed and with me holding a pair of poorly fitted jeans.


I hate shopping for clothes. I don’t know anything about clothes. I don’t know what a pair of pants is supposed to cost, I don’t know how it is supposed to fit, and I don’t know what I am supposed to “like” when someone asks me if I like a pair. I just want to be able to leave the store with a pair of pants that will make me look attractive without looking like a pretty boy.

This is where the girlfriend’s come in. It is they who force me into the current decade of fashion. For example, I now sport a pair of modest side-burns. Back in the army I had the same hair-do I have now: a shaved head. The ladies kept saying I would look better with sideburns. I thought side-burns were a sign of non-homosexual gayness, on account of how all the guys in 90210 had sideburns. I hadn’t noticed that 10 years had past since Newsweek noted the trend. I looked around and found that manly men had indeed taken up the style and that I could sport the ‘burns without being compared to a T.V. show actor. I grew in the side-burns, and every girl who had seen the before and after image commented on how I looked better with burns. The women know.

Last week I went shopping with my lady and some dear friends of mine. I needed some jeans. The jeans these days are flared! I tried on bell bottoms! I felt like a twat! But, the ladies preferred the funky fresh look of bell bottoms to my straight fitting Ranglers. I was aghast! Then I notice that the male in my shopping gang was wearing bell bottoms. So was this other dude in the store. Pants with flare! Many of my friends wore flared pants. Many indeed. I bought the pants the women recommended. I have bell bottoms in my wardrobe now.

Part of me feels like a sell out. As a child I thought the Brady bunch wore stupid pants. Now I wear those very pants. I am getting used to them. A great circle of life. Newton dressed like a fop, and Spinoza wore Dutch collars. The professor of Passion can wear bells.

No loose ends

Howdy fellow travelers of the golden path!
I have finished all of my papers for this semester. I even ordered all the textbooks for the class I am teaching next year. I gave a fond farewell to my professors and I begin the summer a naked horse biting at the bridle. Soon I shall shoot forth from the gate, frothing with bookish excitement. No more playing catch up. I have some editing to do, but aside from that I am a free agent, following my nose and a philosophical hunch! I am going to explore: analyticity, entailment, predication, stipulation, meaning, Wittgenstein, Quine, and Spinoza. This at least is my stated mission. I will probably end up drinking a lot of beer and watching Maury Povich.

Last Basketball post...for awhile.

I found this on ESPN's NBA page:

"How eerie do you find it that the Lakers' season continues to play out like the movie 'Teen Wolf?' Kobe plays like the Wolf all season only to show up for the playoffs in human form. You can just imagine him telling everyone before the series, 'I think we can take these guys. We don't NEED the Wolf.' Now everyone is making shots and playing so much good team ball that Mark Safan is probably calling Jerry Buss every day trying to talk him into scheduling a performance of 'Win in the End' at the Staples Center. You even have the coach who looks disinterested most of the time and is very philosophical (I remember reading that the original title of Phil's book was, 'Never Play Cards With a Guy Who Has the Same First Name as a City'). Has there ever been a movie more synchronized to [a] real sports story line?"

This is very true. Before this series I laughed at this comic:


See, Kobe, named himself the Black Mamba before the season. He is the best player in the league but prior to the last few weeks of the season, played incredibly selfishly--all his teammates would just stand around and watch him shoot over triple teams. After he won the scoring title he started passing to his teammates...and the Lakers looked pretty good. Everyone thought once the playoffs came he would go back to his selfish ways and score 62 or even 81 points in a playoff game. Instead...he re-enacted Teenwolf.

Oh yeah, not only is he probably a rapist, his teammate just got busted for sexual assault. Go Lakers!

WOOO! Detroit Wins!

Here is a video of the famous crotch grab:




And here is Larry getting beat down by the Prince of Darkness.

Basketball is great.

Another Reason I like the NBA. (trust me, read this)

"(Reggie) Evans grabbed the Los Angeles Clippers center from behind and below the belt in the second quarter of Game 4 in Denver, prompting Kaman to shove him to the ground. Officials did not see Evans' move, whistling only Kaman for a type-one flagrant foul and Nugget Ruben Patterson for a technical foul for the chest-pounding that followed." Denver Post

"But with the benefit of instant replay, the NBA could set Denver back a second power forward; Kenyon Martin remains under a team suspension. NBA spokesman Tim Frank said Sunday that the league is investigating. It could hit Evans with a suspension today." Denver Post

"I've talked to a lot of people, and they've never seen that," said Kaman, who spoke with NBA officials Sunday. "I've never seen that in all my years in basketball, that someone (would) do that before. I don't think it has anything to do with basketball at all. It's totally ridiculous for someone to do that in a game. I don't care one way or another what happens to him." Denver Post

"Kaman said he told referees that Evans grabbed his testicles and "pulled hard," and repeated his account in an interview Sunday with an NBA security official. TV replays appeared to indicate Evans put his hand under Kaman's shorts as they battled for position near the basket." Los Angeles Times

"Kaman, who played despite being slowed by a viral illness, said he considered punching Evans. "With what we're trying to do, I didn't want to get thrown out," he said. "I thought about it, but I knew what would happen. "One of the refs said he would have knocked [him] out. It was crazy." Los Angeles Times

"It was unbelievable," Kaman said. "Sometimes, you're boxing out and you hit somebody. But the dude reaches from behind me, grabs my (private parts) and tries to rip them off, basically. I couldn't believe it. The first thought I had was, 'What the heck just happened? I get violated and I'm playing a basketball game.' " Rocky Mountain News

"I don't want to ever talk to that guy again," Kaman said. "For somebody to do something like that to me, it's ridiculous." Rocky Mountain News