This American Life Live! is tomorrow. The best radio show in the world comes to the silver screen. I’m excited! Ira’s giant nerd glasses will never look bigger!
ps- life is such a fucking rollercoaster sometimes
Monthly Archive for April, 2008
Seemed appropriate.
(click play)
Neo: What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?
Morpheus: No, Neo. I’m trying to tell you that when you’re ready, you won’t have to.
I took me three years to finish this sentence, but here it is. The rest of it only a few people’ve read.
We both nod silently and the three of us have this somber moment and this time I really want some substance to take me away from here but there’s no helping it and Bev looks at us both and I look at Ben and all I can see is how scared he is.
Once upon a time I wrote a ten page paper on a four page essay! I wish I could find it.
I used to be smart! Then they made me work amongst the pills.
Maybe the word of the day should be exegesis.
ex•e•ge•sis |ËŒeksiˈjÄ“sis|
noun ( pl. -ses |-sēz|)
critical explanation or interpretation of a text, esp. of scripture : the task of biblical exegesis | an exegesis of Marx.
DERIVATIVES
exegetic |-ˈjetik| |ˈˈɛksəˈˈdʒɛdɪk| |-ˈdʒɛtɪk| adjective
exegetical |-ˈjetikəl| |ˈˈɛksəˈˈdʒɛdəkəl| |-ˈdʒɛtɪk(ə)l| adjective
ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from Greek exēgēsis, from exēgeisthai ‘interpret,’ from ex- ‘out of’ + hēgeisthai ‘to guide, lead.’
the word of the day is interstice.
in•ter•stice |inˈtÉ™rstis|
noun (usu. interstices)
an intervening space, esp. a very small one : sunshine filtered through the interstices of the arching trees.
ORIGIN late Middle English : from Latin interstitium, from intersistere ‘stand between,’ from inter- ‘between’ + sistere ‘to stand.’
“What matters is how well you walk through the fire.”
A bit of optimism, for when life seems unfair.
There’s fairness in small things. You’ve got to find it. You’ve got to go and look for it, in your own way. But it is there, in the tiniest things at the shortest of times, and if you look hard enough you can find the most wonderful, fairest things happening all around you every day, when the world is good to you and you’re good back. But even then it’s still unfair—unfair for you to have such luck in such a small thing when there’s larger catastrophes elsewhere. But it does exist, in the smallness.
We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the L-rd, our G-d, took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm. If the Holy One, blessed be He, had not taken our fathers out of Egypt, then we, our children and our children’s children would have remained enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt. Even if all of us were wise, all of us understanding, all of us knowing the Torah, we would still be obligated to discuss the exodus from Egypt; and everyone who discusses the exodus from Egypt at length is praiseworthy.
From the NIV:
5. Then you shall declare before the L-rd your G-d: “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. 6. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, putting us to hard labor. 7. Then we cried out to the L-rd, the G-d of our fathers, and the L-rd heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. 8. So the L-rd brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders.
Here’s a sad, sad story. Today I had a patient come in with a prescription for cancer, an anti-tumor medication that costs $510 a pill. She’s supposed to have Michigan Medicaid, and has gone through the trouble of getting it authorized for coverage, etc. So I bill the prescription through and Medicaid tells me she’s ineligible. I call the MIaccess line to find out she had a deductible that hasn’t been met for the month.
The next thing I have to do is figure out how much her deductible is, if she’s spent that much already, and get her to submit the records for those expenses to her caseworker. I call and leave a message, and a little while later she calls me back, crying. She explains to me that Michigan Medicaid has determined her deductible to be $700 a month. (That means she has to spend $700 on health care – doctor visits, prescriptions, etc – before her Medicaid coverage kicks in.) The problem is that her only income is from disability (since she has CANCER) and that’s just $1,100 a month. So she’s explaining this to me how there’s no way she can afford that $700. And she’s bawling, which is terrible. And she needs her medicine, because SHE HAS FUCKING CANCER.
At least I was able to find out that the drug company has an assistance program for people without insurance. Especially considering their medicine is $510 per pill. Hopefully she gets on it and gets better.
Oh, on a lighter note, someone brought in a head louse in a plastic bag, wanting to know if it was lice or not. I took one look at it and said “Yup.” Of all the crazy and stupid things people have done I’ve never had anyone bring in an actual living head louse not knowing for sure what it is. For your reference, they look like this. Only smaller. And don’t bring me them, for fuck sake.
“I don’t understand why I’m not dead. When your heart breaks, you should die.”
-Harper Pitt, Angels in America (Tony Kushner)
<ungratefulyouth> whats up with you paul
<edge79> nothing
<edge79> watching patrick’s dvr fuck up
<ungratefulyouth> you’re at patrick’s??
<edge79> oui
<drgnswrd> I don’t know what the problem is. it’s pissing me off, though.
<ungratefulyouth> its gay-proof.
<ungratefulyouth> sorry.
<edge79> patrick’s only 1/2 gay
<DJsnooch69> Just from the waist down?
<drgnswrd> what’s the mater, eric? can’t believe people come to my house some times?
<ungratefulyouth> wasn’t aware you had much more than the cage, patrick
<ungratefulyouth> you beast you
Come see Glenn next Sunday! He will be playing with his favorite organ!
Woke up from a bad dream about half an hour ago… it’s strange to have disturbing dreams at this age, I used to think they were something one outgrows, but I still have them.
I remember when was a kid I always had almost exactly the same fever dream every time I was sick. It used to scare the shit out of me. Part of it that I remember was being in something that was moving and seeing a pattern tracing against the wall. A few years ago when I rode the PATH train from Newark to NYC I saw that same pattern out a window—traced on the wall, where the rock had been cut.
Strange, but true.
josh: who are you camming with?
me: joseph
me: and his amazing monochrome nightmarecoat
josh: haha
So… I have to redo this atrocious SWMPA site.
I’ve been made the Information Officer (a title I came up with myself, for it sounded so delightfully… Orwelian) for the Southwest Michigan Pharmacists Association. In fact, it’s so atrocious that I don’t even want to link to it here.
Anyhow, Barb Deibert at work approached me one day with an offer to take over their website, update it, use it, etc. as it’s been sitting dormant for years but they are paying (probably too much) for it regardless. They had a list of things they wanted put on it (of which I’m in charge of maintaining) and they gave me an outdated copy of Macromedia Contribute with which to do it.
Uh uh. First off, I figured that it was a good idea for one of them with no technical knowledge to use a WYSIWYG editor, but I’ve always hated them. So basically I knew I was going to end up running Wordpress on the thing, just because I’ve been on WP for 2 years.
Anyhow, as I’ve yet to get access to the server that the website is hosted on, I figured I would start the development on this computer using apache that’s built into Mac OS X.
At first I thought it would be as simple as downloading and Wordpress and copying it to the right folder, but then tonight I remembered that you also need a MySQL database. Which was easier said than done.
I’d never done anything with MySQL before other than manage my users on this site with phpMyAdmin, and that’s very very easy to do… Installing and configuring MySQL is not.
Thanks to iChat screen sharing Josh was able to help me get MySQL and PHP up and running. I had to take a crash course in MySQL and read some of the documentation after that, but I’m proud to say with Josh’s help it’s all up and running.
Now I can focus on some design stuff, and write CSS. I enjoy coding CSS because it offers me a level of precise control that is unavailable in real life…
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about impermanence. Impermanence means two things: nothing lasts forever, and everything is constantly changing. Which is true, all the time. Just sitting there breathing you’re changing, and the room around you is changing. Breathe in, and some of the air that was in the room is now inside of you. Breathe out and you’ve changed that air! Simply by being alive is to change. Read this and you now have new thoughts in your head you didn’t just a moment ago. Just over two weeks ago the temperature here was below freezing and there was 14 inches of snow on the ground. Today it was 66 degrees and sunny! If it weren’t for impermanence that snow would still be here.
Thankfully it’s gone, and if we look into it a little further, we can see that the snow is really still there—it just melted into water. Some of it was absorbed into the ground (where the grass is starting to grow again!) and some of it into the air (for April showers!) and so on. Take this example and you can see how quickly things change because conditions change. Apply this idea to everything and you become grateful for impermanence: without it, things couldn’t get better. Which is not to say that impermanence does not ever cause us to suffer. But if you want things to be permanent you must first ask yourself, “permanent how?” Think of the milk in your refrigerator. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that milk would never spoil? But if milk never spoiled and always stayed the same, it also wouldn’t freeze—and then there would be no ice cream. Things change because they must, and because they always are. The milk is slowly spoiling, but the grass is slowly growing and soon will be bright green again. And without that green grass the cows would have nothing to eat, and then we’d have no milk (or ice cream). As you can see, impermanence is what makes everything possible. Impermanence teaches us to cherish what we have, when we have it, every single moment we have whatever it is. The better your understanding of it the less it will cause you to suffer. Here’s more, in other words:
The Buddha taught many concentration practices. To practice the Concentration on Impermanence, every time you look at your Beloved, see him as impermanent, and do your best to make him happy today. If you think he is permanent, you may believe he will never improve. The insight into impermanence keeps you from getting caught in the suffering of craving, attachment, and despair. See and listen to everything with this insight. (pp.110)
The Buddha taught that everything is impermanent — flowers, tables, mountains, political regimes, bodies, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. We cannot find anything that is permanent. Flowers decompose, but knowing this does not prevent us from loving flowers. In fact, we are able to love them more because we know how to treasure them while they are still alive. If we learn to look at a flower in a way that impermanence is revealed to us, when it dies, we will not suffer. Impermanence is more than an idea. It is a practice to help us touch reality.
When we study impermanence we have to ask, “Is there anything in this teaching that has to do with my daily life, my daily difficulties, my suffering?” If we see impermanence as merely a philosophy, it is not the Buddha’s teaching. Every time we look or listen, the object of our perception can reveal to us the nature of impermanence. We have to nourish our insight into impermanence all day long.
When we look deeply into impermanence, we see that things change because causes and conditions change. When we look into nonself, we see that the existence of every single thing is possible only because of the existence of everything else. We see that everything else is the cause and condition for its existence. We see that everything else is in it.
Understanding impermanence can give us confidence, peace, and joy. Impermanence does not necessarily lead to suffering. Without impermanence, life could not be. Without impermanence, your daughter could not grow up into a beautiful young lady. Without impermanence, oppressive political regimes would never change. We think impermanence makes us suffer. The Buddha gave the example of a dog that was hit by a stone and got angry at the stone. It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.
We need to learn to appreciate the value of impermanence. If we are in good health and are aware of impermanence, we will take good care of ourselves. When we know that the person we love is impermanent, we will cherish our beloved one all the more. Impermanence teaches us to respect and value every moment and all the precious things around us and inside of us. When we practice mindfulness of impermanence, we become fresher and more loving… Impermanence is what makes transformation possible. (pp.131-133)
—Master Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching
Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change?
Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with G-d so it’s not very nice. G-d splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can’t even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled, torn. It’s up to you to do the stitching.
Harper: And then get up. And walk around.
Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending.
Harper: Yeah. That’s how people change.
—Tony Kushner, Angels in America
There are no gods here, no ghosts and spirits in America, there are no angels in America, no spiritual past, no racial past, there’s only the political, and the decoys and the ploys to maneuver around the inescapable battle of politics.
