civilization, hot damn.

"The original Greek symposium was a meal at home where the host would provide food, conversation, and the occasional pole dancer. "
-G. Murphy Donovan, via Andrew Sullivan.

beautiful!  judging by the sidebar he's probably some neocon asshole, but quotes don't come any better than that. 

also it's now legal to smoke weed where i live.  so i did, because it was legal.  it had been a while.  and then i was useless for 6 hours, stayed up too late, and was useless for most of the next day because i was tired.  

and i was like "oh, yeah, that's why i stopped doing this."  
basically.

well, must get along and get my life in order.  ta-ta.

e-yess

been a while, huh?  you don't have to lie and say that you missed me.

so i just decided to bite the bullet and try to use this dang c++ contraption that i've heard so much about (after running across a big beautiful 3rd edition of "N– R–", on which one of the authors is the esteemed Dr. W. P., whom I'm pretty sure is the one I found on wikipedia who looks exactly like my forebears.  but that's neither here nor there).

thing is, it's apparently unstraightforward to work in c++ on spit and string, the way one can do with python or whatever.  fucking compilation...

so you need either the ms visual studio or xcode.  i'm on my pretty little air, so i'm using xcode.  to someone unused to it, xcode blows.  not a good way to learn this....

##update on cpp:
got xcode to work- a case of clicking on the wrong thing when there was no obvious way of knowing that there's a right thing.  in my opinion, a classic case of overdesigning a tool which then becomes the standard because people are afraid of doing things simply, over the command line. on that note, i soon learned that compiling from the command line is a snap with the g++ compiler:

(my stupid little program is fail.cpp, which takes input from the user and then insults them)


/Users/~/cpp_failures
==> g++ -o failure fail.cpp

/Users/~/cpp_failures
==> ./failure
write it, bitch: wicked
fuck you, wicked
this is C++ talking.


i do not anticipate using xcode again for cpp, unless i get into software development by some strange and unforeseeable twist of fate.  my needs simply aren't that complicated.

##

otherwise have been writing many papers.  also doing a journal club talk.  also preparing for committee meetings and general exams etc... oh and also c tells me that i need to repeat an experiment doublefast which i don't have seeds for... so it can make the paper go to nature, which will maybe piss off su?

so i'm feeling a little tense, is what you could say.

goldang leftist intellectual types

i make the mistake of subscribing to the blogs of a couple of liberal rags- n+1, NY rev. books, etc.  and then sometimes i commit the ultimate crime of actually reading the damn things.  gets one's hackles up, i tell you.

just finished a scathing little number in n+1 calling for the abolition of the prison system.  that's right- total abolition.  says that what we've effectively done is outsourced our crime into a system of contained 'hyperhells'- places where the concentration of ne'er-do-wells has overcome whatever threshold allows an equilibrium level of misery, and consequently functions as a positive feedback loop of all the worst things that can happen to people.

which is obviously true, as a simple observation.  apparently stalin still beats us in incarceration rate, but only just.  all the same, the modest proposal leads one to realize just how interested one is in one's own skin.  as a naturally bashful and timorous person, i have to say that the idea of sitting down at a bar next to some enormous peckerwood just let out of walla walla raises the hackles substantially.

but this is exactly the sentiment that gave us human rights violation central in america.  the desire for a sort of societal sterility- analogous to the pine-solification of the suburban home.  the urge of the bourgeois to purge the unbourgeois.

the difficulty i face here is that i am fantastically bourgeois- a sort of perfection of the form.  i'm really only comfortable on capitol hill in seattle, where i can live and work and read in peace, able to walk within my neighborhood to find fine coffees and foods available at premium prices.  the only problem here is that some of the hipster people (who are, let's face it, my tribe, so far as i have one) are just too damn flamboyant.  those jeans are impractically tight, that 80s ski jacket with the aqua/hot pink paneling is really quite garish and tacky.  throws off my equilibrium, you see- i suffer from neurasthenia, like so many of my generation...

(what a fantastic idea- get kate beaton to do "neurasthenia comix" on the poufy young men of the 19th/20th turn of the century!! a la thomas pynchon's obsession with them in against the day)

so who am i to support this?  someone with an overdeveloped sense of guilt and moral shame?  because, you see, this is exactly what i feel in these moments.  SHAME.  SCHADE.  GROSSENSCHADE.  i think that it would be fair to ascribe my entire moral sense to no actual code of ethics or behavior, but rather to the simple fact that the institutions which make my life easy make most people's lives hell.  that they are, in fact, designed to do so, because in this country, the people who make rules tend to look like me.  and, of course, i participate in these institutions.  rules are to be followed, i learned; make that one decision, and things become easy.  SHAME.

...