Monday, March 25, 2013

peeks

As noted in the previous post, life has been busy and unsettled, so I haven't had time for the blog (also why you haven't seen a 101 in 1001 post in awhile...I'll be doing the list wrap-up this weekend!). In the meantime, here's what the month of March has looked like:

E, A, M, Richie, and I (with a few other strangers) went to Serendipity for Eric's birthday and had three cheese platters, including this birthday one.

Much-anticipated Indian Potluck for the Around the World potlucks.

Helping out Richie and his stepdad at work. I sanded the shit out of some doors and baseboards.

A wealth of St. Patrick's day cabbages. One of these cabbages is not real. Another of these cabbages is actually a Moon Pie.

Resting in my hotel room after a whirlwind day of two flights to Chicago, a business reception, 4 glasses of wine + a cheese platter + a pitcher of sangria with Erin, and a high of 28.

Annual photograph with Erin :) Except this year's will be bi-annual because I'll be back in Chicago for her October wedding! (SQUEE.)

Enjoying Louisiana warmth with Lianna at The Fly.





Motley Monday Links

I was in Chicago last week and my life is in a bit of upheaval at the moment (more to come on that soon!), so I missed last week's links and these are...diverse. So I present to you, the motliest of the Motley Monday Links yet!



A truly incredible piece on feminism, otherness, courage, fear, and basic humanity. There's hardly a line here that I don't want to quote.

Do you know who gave the longest Oscar acceptance speech? A time limit was imposed after her win!

That snoutfair will totally gorgonize you.

A well-reasoned argument for why New Orleans should be allowed to annex parts of Jefferson Parish.

Throwback article: "I was trying to make fun of myself. I don't know if that came across.": An interview with Kim Gordon in 1991 about "Kool Thing" and the rise of Sonic Youth.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Motley Monday Links


Frank Baum's original Oz stories were all about female protagonists and heroes, so why does Hollywood insist on reducing them to the same tired male/female stereotypes?
"She told herself to memorize the names and faces of the tormentors so that one day she might bring them to justice." Nusreta Sivac spent years working to finally get rape prosecuted as a war crime.
The Ogden Museum here in New Orleans is holding an exhibit of photos from the Blackgala campaign.
Why does the U.S. spend so much on healthcare and get so little? Because we manage disease, not provide healthcare.
My friend works at the real life equivalent of Initech.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

(Belated) Motley Monday Links

Yesterday was a bit insane, so please enjoy Motley Tuesday Links. Back to our regularly scheduled programming next week.


A brief history of The Highwaymen, a group of Florida roadside painters in segregationist times.
Thomas Keller on What Goes With What. I have to agree on "Potatoes + Anything."
A list of the "new" names for old places in Louisiana.
Apparently Russia has a resort town for ousted dictators and their ilk.
Throwback article: Mysterious sounds under the sea (they probably aren't mermaids).

Friday, March 1, 2013

discourse

I am not the man of mere "acting out" -- my madness is tempered, it is not seen; it is right away that I fear consequences, any consequence: it is my fear -- my deliberation -- which is "spontaneous.
Barthes, A Lover's Discourse

I really do know better than to stay up reading late into the night. It's because at some point, I will realize how late it is and immediately shut the book, turn out the lights, and try to fall asleep, only to be met with my head still whirling from another reality I've been immersed in. This is especially true for books I find engrossing, but even those that I don't. I'll stay awake, plodding through plots and characters, trying to figure out what it is I don't like and if it's just that I don't understand.

Currently, I'm (finally) reading The Marriage Plot and while I know better than to stay up late and read, tonight also happens to be the night where I have been quarantined to the bedroom; Richie nobly sleeping on the couch and allowing me the bed, as it seems I probably have the flu. 

Have you read the book? The book (so far as I've gotten into it) is all about the end of college and deconstruction and existentialism and love, the deconstruction of love, the deconstruction of the deconstruction, the question of love and reason, in short, all the things I spent two years thinking about while in grad school/breakup recovery/The Great Finding of Myself (as I have currently come to recognize it) and it perfectly dovetails with not only this evening of loneliness, but with a more general headspace I've been in as of late, thinking about what have become very real questions of potential marriage and the having or not having of children and what this means for The Self (as I have currently come to recognize it).

And so, I've been lying here, reminiscing about all my single nights during that time, comparing my life during grad school with that of Madeline's in the book, my lovers with hers (obviously, the match isn't a perfect one) and indulging in some faux-nostalgia for those single nights (the single signifying its own possibilities). And while I'm glad the nostalgia for lovers is a faux one, I'm almost sad to look back on that very short period and feel like I boxed it up without even realizing I'd done so; I wasn't quite ready to put it away. This is a place in my mind that I referred to as being stagnant when I was with Ravi. It's not stagnation now, but it's too much comfort, too much laziness. Not to say that I need to be struggling and alone to think and grow, but I haven't been challenged and I've been relying too much on my own sense of happiness as a means of coasting along into some fraught sense of meaning, only to once again (always) realize that it's never going to be there (or just there). 

All this to say, I feel myself at a crossroads right now and while the choices this time don't feel as perilous or as lonely as they did three years ago (ONLY that long ago!), I find comfort in thinking the things I might have thought at that time as a means of maybe helping me through this one.