Panarama-mania

Look at this:


Midnight on the top of mt. Sinai, in Egypt

And this:


Glodok Jakarta Indonesia in Indonesia

This too:


Spice Shop in the Souq, Aswan in Aswan - Nile River

And there are much more, here (under the amazing 40 Gigapixel picture of the Strahov Philosophical Library).

You Have To Watch This...

I just watched the short documentary Stress: Portrait of a Killer, and I loved it. Was supremely engaged. Best of all, it had to do with life as you live it and how it seriously affects your health. Seriously.

So, if you have Netflix, wonderful. Watch it here. If you don't, watch it on YouTube.

Everyone Should Read Banned Books!

In Springfield, MO, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse Five was recently pulled from high school curricula because of the opinion of one man. This man is a professor at Missouri State University, my alma mater. He is part of education, ladies and gentlemen. Scary. He believes it is "filthy," the book that is. As well as others. Here is the link to the story in Springfield's "newspaper." And here is a good analysis of the action. The following is from the Vonnegut book in question. Beautiful, smart, peaceful. And apparently part of a larger more evil and pornographic work, if you want to believe a guy named Scroggins.

"The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored nearly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the rack and shipped back to the United States, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous content into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anyone ever again.

The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed."

I Watched This And Thought Of You

This is possibly the funniest (seemingly unintentionally) video I have seen in awhile. Don't worry about understanding them.



Enjoy.

Infinite Jest, Finished

Yes, big as a baby, though denser and more verbose, and I finished it. For my first time. I know that there is a second and even possibly a third time in store for me, somewhere in the future, a year past or more. I read every one of the one-thousand-seventy-nine pages (this including copious endnotes, of course) and was delighted and appalled and confused and suffering and entrenched and invested and in love throughout, in turns.

I looked everyday (nearly) at a web page which defined and explained words and acronyms and references which I hadn't the personal latent knowledge to know myself. It helped immensely and I learned a great deal of words, many of which I have still retained I hope. Post Jest I am looking at sites which dissect and analyze bits and pieces of the narrative which I may not have gleaned from the first go around. There is a lot of conjecture, but it is satisfying. It keeps me within the book I was reluctant to finish, to put down to sit there as another inert and mysterious object, a thick monolithic thing of weight. I suggest it to anyone with patience and a certain brand of literary commitment. Don't look at other books during this time. It needs your attention. Also, look to online resources and avoid spoilers. Maybe join the mailing list, like I did, and then observe or interact with the thoughtful and measured obsession that is DFW (also known as David Foster Wallace).

A website that is currently sitting on one of my Firefox tabs, running in the background, is The Howling Fantods. This specific link goes to the IJ Notes and Speculations page which I am now reading from time to time to extend my experience. It has spoilers, so if you haven't read it and want to, click to the main page. I was lucky enough to be linked on that page for my previous Infinite Jest post, in which I also linked The Howling Fantods. Another site I suggest, and have already, which is useful throughout the book is the David Foster Wallace Wiki. Super site for a supplemental. Anyway, I just wanted to publicly congratulate myself on this accomplishment. Tell me if you have read it or if I have convinced you to start it yourself. I will conclude this post with a small segment from the book which I loved the language of, so much so that I remembered the page number, which number I will not divulge.

"Then the number of times I would have to repeat the same processes, day after day, in all kinds of light, until I graduated and moved away and then began the same exhausting process of exit and return in some dormitory at some tennis-power university somewhere. Maybe the worst part of the cognitions involved the incredible volume of food I was going to have to consume over the rest of my life. Meal after meal, plus snacks. Day after day after day. Experiencing this food in toto. Just the thought of the meat alone. One megagram? Two megagrams? I experienced, vividly, the image of a broad cool well-lit room piled floor to ceiling with nothing but the lightly breaded chicken fillets I was going to consume over the next sixty years. The number of fowl vivisected for a lifetime's meat. The amount of hydrochloric acid and bilirubin and glucose and glycogen and gluconol produced and absorbed and produced in my body. And another, dimmer room, filled with the rising mass of the excrement I'd produce, the room's double-locked steel door gradually bowing outward with the mounting pressure....I had to put my hand out against the wall and stand there hunched until the worst of it passed. I watched the floor dry."

Thanks for listening.

American Economics 101

Unfortunately for half of the country in which we live, life kind of sucks. And, unfortunately, that is by design. Or, at least it would seem so. As we all love a good pie chart, eat it up:

This from an article called "15 Mind-Blowing Facts About Wealth and Inequality in America," shows a sickening trend toward some sort of feudal system we thought we had escaped long ago. We didn't. Look at China. They do feudalism better than any modern-day super power. And all the while the uber-capitalists are damning the spread of socialism (these being those perhaps in that top percentile or even in the following nine). To learn more, go here: Wealth Distribution and Inequality In America.

Maybe the Most Romantic Film I Have Ever Seen

Bar none.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1zmfTr2d4c

At least it isn't ants.

Let's Watch Kangaroos Box

Just as the title says, let us watch these kangaroos fight. I never realized how weird these animals are. Watch and enjoy.



Happy Holidays or whatever.

Dig it.

I thought that this was a really interesting video.