Wit & Whim

Facebook, besides being a fantastic tool for stalking old friends and acquaintances, also seems to serve quite well for destroying old friendships and acquaintances. In particular, the political rhetoric of Facebook seems to be the most caustic and least reasoned that I can find. This is part of the reason that I tend to assiduously avoid such discussions on said site, because, even if you are engaging an individual of upright character and great intelligence, everyone has a few friends who have more opinions than they have brains or courtesy. Perhaps it is because I am surreptitious, but I have never been unfriended for an opinion I have expressed, nor have I ever unfriended someone for stubbornly insisting that conservatives are neo-Nazis, although I may have had to filter posts from some people as things got closer to the election. The thing is, I know those people do not think that I am a neo-Nazi. They know that I try to be kind and generous as a rule, and they would never t...

I wonder if I am not actually just another hipster? I apparently dress the part. I flirted with keeping a beard. And I do try so very hard to find merit in folk music, essentially devoid of virtuosity, for the sake of its organic, homey, and therefore unassailable, pure form. Alas, to no avail. I make it through about 5 songs before I begin to suspect that I have actually only been listening to different lyrics set to the same tune, which consists of four repeated guitar chords. Perhaps I am a failed hipster, or an odd hybrid creature which exists on the outer edges of hipsterdom. Irony is fine, but is often cloak used to distract us from the fact that there is nothing much deeper behind it. I remember Lee once talking in class about how badly modern Germans abuse irony, to the point that its subtle use is almost lost amidst the crass sarcasm and lower forms. I appreciate irony, but to take it to heart as a defining characteristic--to mold oneself to a more contrary nature--seems a b...

Nights like these are simply not made for sleeping. Granted, the bed is never so welcoming as when the room is well chilled by the crisp night air. But the air is invigorating. Energizing. Vivifying. The sweet scent beckons me outside, so that is where I go. The cool is bracing, bringing out gooseflesh on the backs of my arms, something that feels like adrenaline follows. The peace, the isolation, and the darkness leave the senses sharpened. A heightened state of awareness and a feeling of restless vitality stir up discontent, perhaps because I seldom have this sharpness, and now I have nowhere to apply it. I settle down to read. There might be adventure out there somewhere, but probably not the kind I am hungry for. Books will have to do. I act like I do not get cold; that is all show. On nights like tonight, I linger constantly on the edge of discomfort, not putting on my jacket for the sole reason of feeling the discomfort. It is not pleasant, but it is an interesting sensation ...

Today we--yes, the royal we--are playing hot lava. Anywhere that the sun is not shining is the hot lava, and must be avoided at all costs. The only exceptions are class periods, and getting my coffee cup refilled. I find the sunshine most conducive to thought, including thoughts which should have occurred to me some time ago. Today, in particularly, it was just something regarding my research, which I really grasped for the first time. I had previously realized that Austrian national identity was poorly defined prior to the end of WWII and the Austrian Victim narrative. I had failed to reconcile, however, the real import of this. Austria is almost completely a post-WWII concept. The Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburg dynasty was a broad collection of regions, united under a central bureaucratic mechanism. Within that Empire, regions  ethno-cultural likeness were organized into provinces; there was no Austria, as such, but Tirol, South Tirol, Salzburg, and Vienna, amongst num...

To controvert a meme: Summer is Coming. That is quite fortunate, because I am simply a tad bit tired. There is only so much heavy academic literature one can read before it is time to cut it with a healthy dose of talking animals. Although, I have come to believe that it is not the literature itself which is so stuffy, but rather, that it is the knowledge of coming graded work which renders the otherwise pleasurable suffocating. A prime example of this would be the work I am doing for my senior seminar. I find the topic fascinating, and I still get the familiar chills down my spine each time I discover something particularly weighty, but as the semester drags on, I come to view it more as plain drudgery, not because the topic has lost merit over the course of my studies, nor because my expanded knowledge on the topic makes each new discovery any less triumphant, but merely because I realize that the time will be coming when this is no longer just for me, and when I will have to yield...

I will keep this brief. I have my feelings on tipping. If one does not have money, one should not got out. If one feels that there is indeed money to justify going out, then I see no reason why one should budget on the tip. If one can not include a generous tip and remain within means, why go out in the first place. I admit, a quasi-theological idea has worked it's way into my tipping, and I cannot bring myself to regret it. When I tip, I hope that my generosity borders on the level where it would appear to be prodigality. Even as we receive grace beyond what is expected, much less deserved, so also, one should tip one's waiters and waitresses, giving gladly, just for the sheer joy of giving, and in the hope of bringing some pleasure to others. There are places I can cut, but tips will never be one of them.

Since having heard about the upcoming radio Drama of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, and since having learned that the Shewoof does not esteem it so highly as she ought, I have been considering what it is about that book which spoke to me so. At a basic level, it is escapist. It is an adventure story set outside the realms of everyday life. The world is fantastic, and magic satisfies in a way that no crime drama or spy/military thriller ever will. But it is not a world so vague and separate as Middle Earth; it coexists with the world of the known, and therefore, taps into the realm of daydreams in a way high-fantasy never can. In Neverwhere, the remarkable lurks just beneath the surface, out of sight of the ordinary, but waiting to bubble up through the cracks. The story has the magic of a rainy day in a foreign city; total anonymity and the simultaneous thrill and fear of leaving everything behind and striking out into the unknown. For the protagonist, everything is new and frighten...