Hold on. I'm perendinating.

Wow. Great speech.

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 02:38:30 -0500

Wow. Great speech.

WANT.

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 13:58:00 -0500

WANT.

The Million Dollar Question

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:58:11 -0500

Reader: So, what exactly IS an English major supposed to do after college?
Garrison Keillor: This is the beautiful problem that confounds us all, Andrea, and we must face it every morning with as much wit and bravery as we can summon up. What you do, exactly, is get out of bed, pee, put water on to boil for tea or coffee, put bread in the toaster, choose between the apricot and blueberry yoghurt, eat slowly and thoughtfully, take a shower, and put on clean clothes, and by this time you likely will know what comes next. Merce Cunningham faced this problem and so does Michelle Obama and Brett Favre and the Queen of Tonga. If I believed in the efficacy of long-range planning, I'd recommend it, but I believe in luck and improvisation and the gyroscope in your heart and the built-in b.s. detector that English majors are supposed to acquire, having created so much of it in our term papers. You don't have ENGLISH MAJOR tattooed on your forehead so don't consider it a limitation. Just remember that your youth and energy and confidence and ambition are great assets in this world: you are needed somewhere. Remind yourself every day to do things that make you cheerful, which might include strenuous physical exercise or meditation or simply being with friends who make you laugh. Have a good life, in other words. They say that one good tactic in finding happiness is to help people who are worse off than yourself. I wouldn't know about that, but I know people who recommend it. And now I am going to go work on my novel, which is confounding me, and I wish you were here to tell me what to do with it. HEY. There's an idea. Be an editor. Why not? Start out by going over this letter and cutting out all the clichés and reducing it to the one sentence that actually makes sense. And then tell me what that is so I can go do it myself. [http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2009/07/28/english_majors.php]

Winter break!

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:48:40 -0500

wake up

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:25:36 -0400

just wake up

Where in the world is Ubuntu? [expand map] Ubuntu is a civic...

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:27:00 -0400

Where in the world is Ubuntu? [expand map]

Ubuntu is a civic engagement and service-oriented selective living group that a few friends and I founded during our freshman year at Duke. It is comprised of 20 really cool people who are doing ridiculously awesome things all over the world this summer.

"life, i really believe, is about falling in love. with ideas, with stories, with experiences,..."

Tue, 12 May 2009 19:00:38 -0400

“life, i really believe, is about falling in love. with ideas, with stories, with experiences, mistakes, adventures, poetry, imaginations, old books, new books, movies, music, and, of course, people. everything that is worthwhile in this world is worth falling in love with, and i can’t imagine a better way to live one’s life than to be always head over heels.”

- (via reveriie) (via suzywire)

"We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It’s easy. The..."

Sun, 03 May 2009 11:17:00 -0400

“We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It’s easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven’t even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you’ll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there’s still one more tier to all this; there is always one person who you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those lovable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. You will remember having conversations with this person that never actually happened. You will recall sexual trysts with this person that never technically occurred. This is because the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real, and the feelings are real—but you create the context. And context is everything. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they’re often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.”

- Chuck Klosterman

suzywire: (via lungful)

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:28:27 -0400

suzywire:

(via lungful)

coup de foudre

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:41:08 -0400

suzywire:

wordjournal:

noun • /ku.də.ˈfu.drə/ • 1) a thunderbolt. 2) a sudden overwhelming feeling of love for somebody; love at first sight.

A new favorite phrase.

"Be Drunk," Charles Baudelaire

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:36:45 -0400

mollyfitz:

You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking…ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

perfect. hippocamplabs: bedofroses: (via femmmefatale)

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:57:04 -0400

perfect.

hippocamplabs:

bedofroses:

(via femmmefatale)

Thanks to Twitter, America's First Viral Eatery - Newsweek

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:54:19 -0500

Thanks to Twitter, America's First Viral Eatery - Newsweek:

This is a really cool story!

On a side note, what’s up with the ridiculous increase in Twitter media coverage during the last two weeks or so? All I see on the news now is Twitter, Twitter, Twitter.

Jim Kim going to Dartmouth!

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:21:03 -0500

Jim Kim going to Dartmouth!:

This completely floored me.

Dr. Kim has been a big-name in global health for many, many years now, and I think the global health community is both ecstatic and sad to see him go. Perhaps we’re finally seeing the rising importance of global health in today’s society?

"At some point, you have to decide whether you’re going to keep throwing your body at a problem,..."

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:17:48 -0500

““At some point, you have to decide whether you’re going to keep throwing your body at a problem, which is what I’ve always done. You realize that one person can’t do that much. So what I want to do is train an army of leaders to engage with the problems of the world, who will believe the possibilities are limitless, that there’s nothing they can’t do. Being the president of an Ivy League university is an amazing opportunity.””

- Dr. Jim Yong Kim, on being appointed the next president of Dartmouth College.

What is it that makes train stations and bookstores so romantic?

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 10:57:51 -0500

The fantasy of escape?

This was totally bound to happen at some point.

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:08:06 -0500

This was totally bound to happen at some point.:

Woman’s boyfriend hid engagement ring in milkshake. Woman swallowed ring. Happily, the crisis passed.

How to procrastinate like Leonardo da Vinci

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 17:34:48 -0500

How to procrastinate like Leonardo da Vinci:

spaceships:

Academe is full of potential geniuses who have never done a single thing they wanted to do because there were too many things that needed to be done first: the research projects, conference papers, books and articles — not one of them freely chosen: merely means to some practical end, a career rather than a calling…

If there is one conclusion to be drawn from the life of Leonardo, it is that procrastination reveals the things at which we are most gifted — the things we truly want to do. Procrastination is a calling away from something that we do against our desires toward something that we do for pleasure, in that joyful state of self-forgetful inspiration that we call genius.

Does he love you?

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:00:22 -0500

Does he love you?

Does she love you?

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:49:32 -0500

Does she love you?