Skip to main content

Suspicious? What month is it?

So I had a great post written on questions of agency and identity as explored through Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men and High Fidelity (I focussed more on the film by Stephen Frears than on the original Nick Hornby book), and it mysteriously disappeared. I, of course, blame the government.

The crux of my post was that letting outside events and relationships with other people shape your life is fundamentally selfish, and that each of us bears responsibility for claiming our own agency. One of my favorite lines from Richard Linklater's Waking Life is an offhanded remark by a passerby, late in the movie, who tells the nameless protagonist (played by Wiley Wiggins) "As the pattern becomes more complex, it is no longer sufficient to be swept along," or something like the same. The patterns are becoming more complex, and we face peril if we are satisfied with passivity. But, like I said, that post got erased, so here's a BMW z3 Coupe, my current dream car.



Of course, like Paul and my housemate Leon, I covet the new Honda Civic SI. Who wouldn't? But the z3 Coupe is like the hybrid love child of a Mini Cooper, my beloved '93 Civic SI Hatchback, and four gorillas. If I were a person like me, that person could be very happy driving a z3 Coupe around. Very happy.

Comments

Anonymous said…
You are becoming such a yuppie. Gosh....
DaveW said…
Wow! These links indicate major surfing. Is there a paper due, or just sublimated energy?

i considered celebrating my midlife with a Z3 Coupe, But my charming paramour found it claustrophobic, and couldn't shut the door in the showroom, thereby puncturing all roadtrip fantasies.
Anonymous said…
So now I have looked at all the links - I like the humor and art - and I know how you put together this art piece...I think the ratio of images inexplicable to me (like the one of "crux")/fey images is too high. Go with fey. Love, Mom

Now I can't remember if I pushed the publish button or not. Why don't they bring back rotary phones? I could use them.
Paul said…
So many links. Less is more.
Anonymous said…
As I mentioned to Andy a few minutes ago, this post is like the blogging equivalent of hamsterdance. Not that there's anything wrong with hamsterdance. Except for that one horrible, awful secret about hamsterdance. You know the one.

While his dream car practically oozes awesome, I can't help but wonder if it isn't on some level just a slick, soulless attempt to ape the Jaguar Hearse

Popular posts from this blog

Family and Gender in Ancient Rome

I mentioned below that Prof. Diane Lipsett delivered a wonderful lecture on the conversation currently taking place between New Testament scholars, family historians, social archaeologists and the like. The title of this post is actually the title of en entire semester-long course taught by Prof. Lipsett, so for our, geez, ninety minute session she condensed her focus to Men, Women, and Children in Ancient Rome. With her permission, I am posting my notes from this lecture below, tweaked a little for readability. Prof. Lipsett is interested in studies of gender formation among non-elites as well as elites, those people about whom we know much less because they did not have the resources or clout to commemorate and study themselves, generally speaking. Roman households were much broader than we conceive of in modern terms, with a wide spectrum of people connected by family and employment living under one roof (the terms domus/eikos/ikea capture this idea of an indiscriminate household

New Post!

Of course I'll wait to update this damn thing until the end of the semester, when all the shit I've been putting off for the last few weeks and months is cascading down on me like a fountain of lukewarm Coors Light. After Tuesday, things will be a little less hectic, but frankly I'm just looking ahead to the end of the week. If anyone has any ideas about applying a psychoanalytic method of art criticism to the devotional aspects of Georges Rouault's Miserere (in particular Plate 23, Rue des Solitaires) and the pros and cons of doing so, I'd love to hear about it.

Friday Night

I feel drained after this week. So I'm lifting weights by myself in the exercise room of the ArbCo Common House, doing KenKen puzzles in between sets, and feeling really glad I shelled out $30 on a cheapo Bluetooth speaker. It's astonishing that something that fits inside my water glass is capable of being too loud. Aesop Rock, Haim, Mike Doughty, Paper Tiger, and Lorde: this next set's for you. To come: some recent pictures I've made that I like.