saperlipopette

“Insulting Dinosaur’s is like insulting Jesus”

—My best friend Zach

I am posting this because… well, it’s just a plain-old funny line when seen by itself.

Although Zach, since (remember this is what you told me) there’s no way Jesus could be sacred to you (but, I must say, I heartily applaud your capitalizing the letter “J” despite your utter lack of religious conviction—GRAMMAR is, and will always be, more important than anything or anyone! REMEMBER THAT!), it’s as if, in that statement, you were insulting Dinosaur yourself. Based on the many conversations in which we’ve been engaged throughout the years, I think I can safely claim that you don’t care all that much for Jesus; so, I would’ve assumed that you’d have found the comparison itself offensive.

Anyway, Jesus, whether he was a man or a God or a man who was the son of a God, would probably have been a huge fan of Dinosaur (His favorite would be the one in Rochester, NY).

I woke up this morning and thought to myself: “I have so much to do—I have this, that, the thing out East, and the thing out West, things uptown, downtown, and all around town.” The funny thing, though, is that I never get so far as to worry about anything specific, which is both good and bad—good, because at least I’m not actually worrying about all those things I’m worried that I’m worrying about! This is also why my worrying is bad; it has no object (other than itself, that is).

So what I do then, to put it plain and simple, is worry about worrying.

I’ll try to work on it.

I also don’t like having TO DO SO MANY THINGS, day in, day out. Nowadays people will give you the stink eye if you tell ‘em you like relaxing at home with a book or movie. Well, maybe they won’t give you the stink eye if they’re of the polite sort.

I don’t mind hanging out with friends; I love it!

But I don’t know why people in NYC always want to meet at bars: they are WAY too loud (why the hell should I meet with someone inside of one of the many thousands of rooms in this city in which conditions have been perfectly constructed such that conversation inside them is all but impossible).

Nowadays I can’t relax when I try to. I choose certain times of the day during which I plan to take a break from work and just sit around for a while. It’s not long after I’ve sat down, however, before I’m back on my feet, pacing back and forth, worrying about the different ways one can relax, whether the one I’ve chosen will actually provide repose, and finally I start fretting over the fact that I’m not relaxing yet, because there are so many choices and my indecision is detracting from my R&R time. I can understand without difficulty the irony of relaxation’s stressing me out, but I’m still too agitated to appreciate it.

Dawn was nigh. He sat staring into the magnificent celestial sea retreating above him, following with his gaze the night’s mechanized seafarers’ final fantastic flights across their beloved ocean, and thought to himself: “What business have I, or any of my friends, in the sky?”

— Sometimes I find myself thinking about all those times when I find myself thinking about other times when I all I could do was think about other times I was thinking. This is what happens when I have nothing important to think about. I do the same thing when I worry—when I worry, it’s never actually about anything important. For example, if I am obliged to speak in public I will get nervous. First because I have to speak in front of people, and that just makes me nervous. But then I start getting nervous that I will get nervous when the time for speaking arrives. This doesn’t make sense; if I’m nervous about getting nervous, then I’m already nervous, right? So then I worry about getting nervous about getting nervous about being nervous.

“—We have to follow Emerson’s advice to treat people as though they were real, because, perhaps they are… “

—W.G.

I am convinced I’ve seen it before. This image, which in the nighttime assumes a strange, oneiric air. Although many a manifestation has proven me to be mistaken in yesteryear.

Many have likely already seen this photo, but, since it’s so astounding, I thought it might be a nice to post it again, lest anyone remain still in the dark about the phenomenon that is thumb man.

From Harper’s “Index” and “Findings”—

— Chance a U.S. household that owns a Prius also owns an SUV : 1 in 3

— Average number of calories by which Americans underestimate the total in a hamburger and fries : 463

— Minimum number of Americans named either John or Jane Doe : 212

— Number of spam emails sent for every one that receives a response : 12,414,000

— Estimated number of U.S. adults who believe the media did not adequately cover Michael Jackson’s death : 6,500,000

— [M]ale orchid bees stick out their legs to remain stable in high winds, and…bumblebees stay aloft through brute force.

— Invasive wasps were eating pheasants in Hawaii. “You see them flying with their balls of meat,” said an entomologist of the wasps.

— Engineers created a “95 percent accurate” thought-controlled wheelchair, a tongue-controlled wheelchair, and a dune buggy for the blind.

— Bathwater may be bad for babies.

“Taste changes, he went on in an irritating monotone. —Most forgeries last only a few generations, because they’re so carefully done in the taste of the period, a forged Rembrandt, for instance, confirms everything that that period sees in Rembrandt. Taste and style change, and the forgery is painfully obvious, dated, because the new period has discovered Rembrandt all over again, and of course discovered him to be quite different.”

—W.G.

We spoke the other day about blank moments—we all experience them, at some point or another, usually more than once if we’re lucky. He told me that he’d spent a lot of time thinking, speaking, and writing about these ecstatic moments during which he almost feels as if his self or his sense of integrity had evaporated. Though that’s really not the best way to put it, he said, since I can only feel the loss of something if I’m conscious that it’s gone. — That’s not the feeling, no, far from it; that’s just what I feel after the fact, he went on.

—Sometimes, when I’m reading a book, I get the sense that whatever it is that elicits the feeling in me is lying dormant somewhere in the text. But, usually, once I’m aware that I’m chasing after it, that feeling, it starts to recede even quicker. It’s kind of like a fog on the road that’s always a few feet in front of you and no matter how fast you try to drive up to it it stays in front of you, teasing you like the carrot in those cartoons that hang from a stick, tied to a dog’s head; the dog chases after it, and maybe he even knows it’s useless to do so, but he still does it.

—Whenever I actually feel it though, I know that IT is grabbing me, and not the other way around; I’m never the one in control, it comes and goes whenever it feels like it. I can usually tell when it’s coming; but at this point, when it’s inchoate, and… almost wraithlike, if that makes sense, I have to be very careful about not accidentally chasing it off. I know that if I start think about it it’ll dissolve on the spot; so I try not to think about it—the hardest part is not thinking about trying not to think about it. But once it finally hits, I don’t worry anymore, I can’t worry—not even about worrying that I’m going to worry. Once it’s percolated through me entirely, I just stop thinking; not necessarily because I’m unable to think… I guess it’s because I feel so completely full, literally and figuratively, that there’s no reason to think… no reason to worry, wonder, or speculate about anything.