Dude! CSS selectors are the shit. Seriously, I just discovered that the adjacent sibling combinator existed, and I am stoked.
September 2011
21 posts
Things That, Through Repetition, Have Lost Their Entertainment Value, Listed With the Parties Responsible
Nerds:
- Pirates
- Zombies
- Robots
- Dinosaurs
- Ninjas
Everyone Else:
- Vampires
- Celebrities
I feel like I’m being called to write a romance guide for lonely male nerds.
Listen
Glenn Miller & His Orchestra, “Serenade in Blue.”
Trying to buy a nose ring for your girlfriend on the internet is just not a fun process. Jewelry, okay, fine. I know the places to go for this. I understand Tiffany’s and I understand its website. Nose rings? Where is the nose ring source? Who are the people you go to for this? Damn.
I realized that this is a first world problem, but subtract the internet and you have a possible third world problem. “I don’t know. What are they made of nowadays? Rhinoceros? Gazelle horn? Is gazelle horn okay? Is it tacky? What do you mean it invokes the rain spirits? Is that written down somewhere?”
Posting called on account of rain.
Give Your Opinion
Doing a little informal research. Think about the following statement, if you would:
I can be harmed by being exposed to a sensitive or traumatic topic or idea.
Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Optionally, why?
It is the responsibility of other persons not to expose me without my permission to sensitive or traumatic topics or ideas.
Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Optionally, why?
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘there are only two courses of thought at all seemly to a person of any intelligence. The one is: what am I to do this next moment?—or tonight, or tomorrow? And the other: what did God mean by creating the world, the sea, and the desert, the horse, the winds, woman, amber, fishes, wine?’”
—Isak Dinesen, “The Dreamers,” from Seven Gothic Tales.
“There comes a point where Susan, who was the older girl, is lost to Narnia because she becomes interested in lipstick. She’s become irreligious basically because she found sex… I have a big problem with that.”
—
J.K. Rowling (via excellentnocomment)
Narnia continues to be misunderstood through overly-literal Christian interpretations, fueled in part by the recent Hollywood movies. Susan did not forget Narnia because she discovered sex. She forgot Narnia because she discovered adulthood. Sex is just one part of adulthood, and almost certainly the part Lewis would have been least concerned with. What caused her to lose Narnia was aspirations towards adult practicality and common sense. Harry Potter and his friends never experienced that. Nobody ever suggested they should stop being wizards and knuckle down at a decent community college somewhere. They may have faced challenges, but they were never the challenges of otherness and alienation and the pressure to conform to normal society. Their fantastical adventures were cossetted by a deeply supportive and cliquish community of both adults and peers.
A good point. It also bears reminding Ms. Rowling that at the conclusion of the Narnia books, unlike everyone else who is moving on to a better world, Susan is, quite simply, not dead. It is entirely possible that an adult Susan, having put aside what is presented as a young adulthood far more immature than the wisdom of her childhood, would yet rediscover Narnia in later life.
Two Recurring Thoughts About the Anniversary
“‘History,’ Stephen said, ‘is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.’”
— James Joyce, Ulysses.
“The army is at war.
America is at the mall.”
— Common saying among members of the armed forces.
Fireflies are out, warm outside, might rain later in the evening. I’m making beer-battered peppered mushrooms on a whim. More of the beer has ended up in me than the batter, but I’m thinking that’s okay. In fact, right now, I am okay with pretty much everything.
How I knew that Twitter was not worth my time.
“
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you ‘grave for me:
‘Here he lies where he long’d to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.’
So I'm just going to go ahead and blame you for the idiocy on my dashboard. Never mind whether it's your "actual" "fault" or not. I needed a scapegoat, and your face was presented to me.
Jamie: you’re welcome.
“Pain is either an evil to the body—and in that case, let the body say what it thinks of it—or to the soul, but it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquillity, and refuse to view it as an evil. For every judgment and movement and desire and aversion is within, and no evil can penetrate there.”
—Marcus Aurelius, from book VIII of his Meditations.
“Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” —W.B. Yeats, “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” from The Wind Among the Reeds.
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” —W.B. Yeats, “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” from The Wind Among the Reeds.
“Whatever is in any way beautiful is beautiful in itself, and has its end in itself, and praise is no part of it. Neither worse then nor better is a thing made by being praised. I say this too of things called beautiful by the vulgar, for example, material things and works of art. That which is really beautiful has no need of anything; no more than law, no more than truth, no more than generosity or modesty. Which of these things is made beautiful by being praised, or spoiled by being blamed? Is a jewel like an emerald damaged if it is not praised? Or gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a dagger, a flower, a shrub?”
—Marcus Aurelius, from book IV of his Meditations.
