ohmygodohmygodohmygod

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is coming to OSU!!!!
http://www.osu.edu/features/2006/vonnegut/

For those of you not familiar with his work...you are utterly insane. He's one of the greatest authors I've ever read. His most famous work, Slaughterhouse Five, starts with the utterly provocative line: "All this happened, more or less." It's a quasi-autobiographical portrait of a man who has lost chronological perspective. One of the key events in the story is Vonnegut's recollection of the fire bombing of a German city called Dresden during WWII. For those of you who think the Allied forces were models of righteous valor, think again. The allies were involved in numerous acts of terrorism against the German peoples, most (if not all) of which are, of course, never taught in high school history.
Do a google search for bombing of dresden or the like and you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, I'm abso-freaking-lutely thrilled that he's coming to OSU. The last time I saw him was on the Daily Show about a month ago. he was looking quite aged, but he seemed as quick witted as ever.

Another note:
Vonnegut called WWII: "The world's second unsucessful attempt to commit suicide."
you gotta love that.


Leave a note and tell me your favorite Vonnegut novel!

a very mexican birthday

I'm heading out to celebrate my friend Victor's birthday. We're going to El Vaquero (spanish for The Vaquero) for dinner.
Victor is a really great guy. A real stand-up character. We're going to a Mexican restaurant because Victor IS Mexican....well, he was born in Wisconsin but both of his parents are from Mexico City, so he's ethnically Mexican. Anyway....

Um...

here's a picture of a dancing eggplant.

frickin' frickers

I just made up a post with pictures and insightful comments on the state of the world...but then I hit the back button instead of "hide preview" and it was lost. utterly lost. Damn you Gibbs free energy!!!

I'll try to reconstruct the aforementioned post. Until then, this is all you get. Take it or leave it.

Love always,

The Plug

Hi.

Not much to report.
I took my mathematical statistics midterm today. It went pretty well. I'm 95% confident that I passed.

Yeah. That's it.

what?

What do you people want from me????

I guess I do have another piece of news:
I'm going to Cambodia for spring break. That'll be cool.

w00t!

-SP

Alligators in fishbowls of liquor

Hi.

We (and by we I mean I) just got back from the bars (and by bars I mean bar). We drank multicolored liquors out of fishbowls. we got to keep the alligators floating in the fishbowls. the bar is called the Ugly Tuna Saloona. fun name.
I called Falconer. Falconer, lemme know what you thought of my voicemail.

Um....i think that's it. they didn't play the electric slide even though I asked the DJ and he nodded appreciatively.

Jessica's friend Elizabeth was here from Washington, DC. which reminds me...why did they name a state Washington. Now we always have to say "Washington state...." that's a real drag. why couldn't they have picked some other name. I mean, it's not like it's too hard to name a state. Anyone can name one. Just call it...like...new something. New York...or New Jersey. As long as there's an old one you can have a new one. who's with me?????

also, let me go on the record that I, too, am against human-animal hybrids.

Unless you can make a sexy woman look like a jungle cat. Like...oh...i don't know...CHEETARA!!!!. Lemme find a picture for you guys...




sooooo hot










she was my first love, you know.

39 hours and counting....

I need sleep. The fact is undeniable. The evidence is irrefragable. The want is inconceivable.

But still I have unfinished work...and miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep.

-SP

The disillusionment of 6 O'Clock

FATHER LAWRENCE
Young son, it argues a distemper'd head so soon to
bid good marrow to thy bed: or if not so, then
here I hit it right, our Romeo hath not seen his bed
tonight.

ROMEO
The last is true; the sweeter rest was mine.


Ahhh, what sweeter rest than spending the night finding complete sufficient statistics and grading 135 homeworks?
What tenuous threads of sanity remain as rosy fingered dawn pulls itself over the horizon? We shall see...

Good morrow to all.

-SP

Intelligent Design Revisited

Ole was gone for a month and I think his comment was consumed by the vicious Jabberwocky that is time. here was his reply to my post on Intelligent Design. It's so good I wanted you all to get a chance to see it.

Ole said...

Sorry. Coming to this a little late...no one may ever even find it!

Oh well.

I agree that faith (and here I speak not generically but of what I
would refer to as my religious faith) necessarily involves
irrationality and intangibility, but my experience of it is not as a
state of persistent or willful ignorance, of grasping on to a set of
tenets in the face of all logic to the contrary. (Though I do not deny
that it is this way for many)

Instead, I find faith a far more complex mixture of the rational and
the irrational, of the tangible and the intangible. It is a means of
making sense of the world that tries to feel beyond what it is we see,
hear, taste, touch and smell but a means that should NEVER ignore what
we sense.

For me, faith is s tension between feeling and being felt, grasping
and being grasped, holding and being held. Never is it merely a willed
act--something one undertakes as a personal project. As in "I will
have faith!" It is undertaken in community, as people (not person).
And because its matrix is the relationships between people, it does
not fall victim to 'god-of-the-gaps' reduction, because the capacity
for human interrelationship within and between communities (given our
extraordinary individual uniqueness) seems quite endless.

Unless of course we all came into existence a few minutes ago--or
that we are all merely figments of pete's imagination...
-----------------------------------------------------

I think I subscribe to the "we are all part of Pete's imagination" school of thought.

Thanks for the comment, Ole. As always, your insights are valued like rain on Arrakis.