Category: People

Dear gentle reader: this blog has been operating continuously since I was a teenager. The writing below is at least a decade old. In that time every molecule of my body has been replaced, along with many foolish ideas and flighty beliefs. I want to keep some of those things public out of an honesty and humility I owe the world. I trust you to carry that context with you.

November 23, 2003 /

Last night I learned to play Hand and Foot, a kind of massively multiplayer Canasta, with Graham and Maria’s family. I also found out that I am a sore winner. HA HA HA.

November 17, 2003 /

“I didn’t get close enough to this bicycle tire spider to see what it was wearing (I’m not scared of all spiders, just ones who live life on the edge), but I’m assuming it had a flame-patterned skull cap tied around its head over those eight mean eyes, three of which work. It hadn’t woven a middle finger into its web; I checked.”

I twinned Audrey and Stephen. It only seemed right.

Speaking of friendblogs, I only just noticed that my first-year roommate and my friend Lauren were persuaded by the Centre PR department to keep travel journals when they went abroad. I’m pretty sure they’re both in DC (District, not David) now–Lauren living a sitcom, Ben… Ben doing Ben things. They’re both going to be President, possibly at the same time.

November 17, 2003 /

Today, Maria is taking all her exams for every class. On the same day. Most of these exams consist of looking at red-and-pink blobs with some white on them, and then answering questions like

Is this slide: (circle one or maybe two, we’re not telling)

  • The maxillonervous mandiflore splay
  • The mandillomaxous floresplay nerve (inverted)
  • The florimandillous splayinerve max
  • Dog puke (HA HA JUST KIDDING) (OR ARE WE)
  • The pukiflorimous nervedog mandisplay

Now, pay attention. The standard reward for students who survive this kind of hell-day is that, to “make up” for not having classes at the same time as exams, they get extra classes and labs every day this week. So the students have a choice of beginning / upping amphetamine regimens, or collapsing and missing twice as much information as usual.

The University of Louisville Medical School

“We have to let them teach. We can’t let them practice on humans.”

November 6, 2003 /

Context. Ken, DC, Ian and I went to see Revolutions last night. One of the previews was for Punisher, which features Thomas Jane kicking many, many butts in various styles and fashions.

Payoff. Ian, on watching the preview: “Brendan, look! They already made a movie about Sigurdur Petursson!”

Condense, condense, condense

November 5, 2003 /

Via Sumana:

“It’s like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that’s written or anything that’s created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity. It’s all tending toward mediocrity in the same way that all atoms are sort of dissipating out toward the expanse of the universe. Everything wants to be mediocre, so what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such a f***ing act of will.”

—Ira Glass