Better Living Through Introspection

Social Theory Action Figures

I kid you not.

Figure #2: Michel Foucalt
Keenly aware of the fluidity of social identities, this 6.5″ Michel Foucault waves his baton in poststructuralist style at all challenges. Shrouded in a special removeable French cloak and with a built-in thoughtful head movement, this superb action figure is essential for both professional philosophers and junior postmodernists.
[from Social Theory]

Don’t miss Anthony Giddens’s special academic arm movement. The trading cards are equally enlightening/amusing. Apparently there was quite a brouhaha surrounding them.

So I’m reading an interview

with one of the co-creators of Myst (forever one of my all-time faves, along with its sequel Riven, and hopefully the new Myst III which I’ve purchased but haven’t installed yet…dumbass) in which he says something so fundamentally sound it had a simple sort of click to it, as if, despite the fact that it’s escaped me all these years, I’ve known it and have been waiting for someone to remind me:

When people get really good at their craft — whether they’re cabinetmakers or musicians — they begin to imbue what they do with a sense of truth. That’s when they become artists.
[from The Spokesman-Review]

Something to think about, yes?

It’s a blue, blue DC sky

So I’m walking down the street, fresh tall cap from bucks in hand, nearing that dark monolith at 18th and L that with it’s slanted architecture constantly reminds me of that thing the jawas in star wars ponderously roamed around in collecting droids and scrap metal, and I look up because I never know how many hours it will be until I see the sky again. And it hits me: so clear, so blue. Just this vivid stripe of sky right down L street, as if someone had folded the world into an origami swan so that those promising clear waters off the virgin islands I see in the tv commercials were hovering directly above me, still as glass.

Need something to do Thursday night?

How about some good ol’ a cappella entertainment?

Odd

Caught in last night’s torrential downpour. Being soaked seems to bring the dry-cleaning chemicals in my clothes to the surface. I smelled like the cleaner’s. It was an odd acrid smell, equally pleasant and unpleasant. I think my shirt was making me high. Trying to recall it now makes me dizzy.

Was that the highlight of the evening? No. Bouncing around tangents, reeling in self-conscious acts of assertion-less effort. I would rather have sung in the rain.