February 2012
1 post
January 2012
1 post
November 2011
1 post
So what should you do to get rich?
Save your money. Save as much money as you possibly can. Every penny you can. Instead of coffee, drink water. Instead of going to McDonalds, eat Mac and Cheese. Cut up your credit cards. If you use a credit card, you dont want to be rich. The first step to getting rich, requires discipline. If you really want to be rich, you need to find the discipline, can you ?
If you can, you will quickly...
October 2011
1 post
Goodbye to All That (no more revisions)
The first time I read Joan Didion’s essay “Goodbye to all that” – about her transitory life in New York, and her misery there —- I had just left New York to live in California.
I was very lonely in the West, and her words about being happy in Los Angeles, happier than in New York, where it seemed there were always so many promises that never came through, warmed me during one chilly...
July 2011
11 posts
Things vs. Experiences
keepsdiary:
“I guess I am not in principle opposed to “cocktails that change from one...”
– http://www.theawl.com/2011/07/magical-cocktail-becomes-other-cocktail
“Great lovers were always men of leisure. I fucked better as a bum than as a...”
– Charles Bukowski (via heymikewaskom)
May 2011
3 posts
Watchroad trip to Portland, OR from Los Angeles
March 2011
30 posts
Man depends upon cooperation, and has been provided by nature, somewhat inadequately, it is true, with the instinctive apparatus out of which the friendliness required for cooperation can spring. Love is the first and commonest form of emotion leading to cooperation, and those who have experienced love with any intensity will not be content with a philosophy that supposes their highest good to...
The Conquest of Happiness, excerpt 1
God be thanked, the meanest of His creatures
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her!
-Robert Browning
This assumes that combativeness is the only possible attitude towards the world at large. Why? Because the world is cruel, Browning would say. Because it will not accept you at your own valuation, we should say. A couple may form, as the...
Watch
You learn a lot about people when they get upset.
Yes I'm likening kids to puppies
I’m training a puppy which is how I know this, but even with dogs they tell you nothing can be learned from fear. The dog will just become too afraid to learn anything after a while, because they don’t want to make you mad.
Instead of creating fear create a positive learning environment. Research shows that positively trained animals not only learn faster but remember what they...
Yourstar.com
I don’t get it. Well, I get it in the sense that I understand what it is. And I get why, given the intelligence and gullibility of Americans, it not only exists but also truly thrives as a business.
The home page of yourstar.com features the promise “As your star shines…your love will last. Eternal beauty, and infinite possibility mingle among the stars, and now, one of them...
LA vs NYC
theessentialman:
I'm Moving to Brooklyn
It would seem to me that when a child is born, if I’m the child’s parent, it is my obligation and my high duty to civilize that child. Man is a social animal. He cannot exist without a society. A society, in turn, depends on certain things which everyone within that society takes for granted. Now the crucial paradox which confronts us here is that the whole process of education...
My Birthday
While I realize that this is not yet recognized as a federal holiday, by the time this is published, if my agent is worth his commission, it will be. What will I have done to earn this? Uh…does the gift of laughter mean anything to you people? How about developing little-watched TV shows? What about my work with the folks at the Office Depot over on Broadway and Eighth? How about teaching...
To live, we do what is hard.
1 tag
On dating a Married Man
Didn’t he know how tough it is to find people you actually like enough to date?
She started out sounding kind of like me, and then she veered off into this crazy late-twenties blend of brash and foolish I’ve never been and can’t anticipate ever being. But I respect her thought process around the subject of men.
While it pains me to bow out, I think it would be best if we...
It's 75 degrees in California.
1 tag
Fill My Bucket - a theory
Each of us has an invisible bucket. It is constantly emptied or filled, depending on what others say or do to us. When our bucket is full, we feel great. When it’s empty, we feel awful.
Each of us also has an invisible dipper. When we use that dipper to fill other people’s buckets — by saying or doing things to increase their positive emotions — we also fill our own...
bijan:
Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945
turn...
February 2011
53 posts
Building Utopia, a conversation
Me: (to one group of my 7th grade girls) So who are the people in your utopia?
Them: Hot Mexicans.
Me: ‘Scuse me?
Them: Only Hot Mexicans are allowed.
Me: Okaaayyyyy.
Them: (to the boys on the other side of the room) You guys are out.
Me: (reverting them back) What about government?
Them: Whaddyou mean?
Me: Like, do you have a president? Who makes the rules?
Them: Oh. There is no...
“There are different kinds of people who go vegan for different reasons, and here’s a rough working field guide. Firstly, there are the Animal Rights Vegans. There’s also the Anti-Preservative/Hormone/Antibiotic/Chemical Vegan. Colin, forty-one to my nineteen, fit into the second category, because his eating choices very much reflected his political views, which had a lot to do...