Dad Catches A "Two-Million-Dollar Mistake" In A Brief

Sometimes I think, all the time and energy I spend in defense of corporate America, is it really the best use of my talents? And then I think, yes, it is.

DON'T GIVE A FIG

My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--

It gives a lovely light!

Not A Bad Morning

Drank a gallon of water (Crystal Geyser) while Mom wondered aloud: how many onions are in each plastic bag of chopped onions; how many small cans of beans are contained in the large can of beans; are you going to finish all that water? at Smart & Final.

Hell

is when the water is undrinkable. And that was most of human history.

I've been home for 24 hours and my parents are already older. All we talk about is political theology, mostly in terms of Ron Paul and creche scenes, because this is the only time all year my mom gets to say "creche." My dad watches a Christmas-decorator-to-the-stars on YouTube. "I walked in and Seal was singing Christmas carols to the kids. It was a special moment; I was afraid to interrupt. But I had to do my job." We saw a movie by rapist director Roman Polanski and I walked home with my dad, who the whole time read a book about how the Hebrew God is a dialogic God. Whoopi Goldberg just said to Piers Morgan, "Honey, have you seen Sister Act yet?" Did I mention the water here comes out of the filter ice-cold, so that when I try to chug it my brain freezes over?

Merry Christmas, Secular Nation; I wouldn't wish dehydration on anyone.

écurie normale supérieure

First I thought it was so cute that Pierre, who is working with vegetables and horses like Rosalie (below) to cure his crippling phobie sociale, would reply, when I would ask if it was going to rain tomorrow, "Oui, normalement," as if a specific time in the future could ever be normal, but then I caught on that it's a pretty normal locution.

figue-nique

I try to beat the wasps to the figs au bord de la ferme, right by the potimarron planters. Usually I win, which makes them very hangry. I have this fear I'll eat a fig with a wasp inside that will sting the inside of my mouth. Maybe that would be just the pique I need to give my French a certain je ne sais quoi...

soupe aux mauvaises herbes

I’m deeply entrenched in transformation. Compost comes from the toilets. I made a compote of some pommes abîmées and a gâteau aux courgettes out of myself. Morgan has dreams about sexual assault, offered me her melatonin, warned of possible malignant effects. I just ate an almond and I couldn’t tell if it tasted more like amaretto or cyanide—do those taste the same or the opposite? What’s that thing Montaigne says about the skeptic and the rhubarb? Jean-Pierre says, in French, that it (rhubarb) will burn a hole in your shoe, I say what?, he says it in English, I don’t know what he’s talking about; oh, rhubarb, ça pique. Also, Italian coffee, you can float a horseshoe in it. I learn argot for water (flotte), tired (noz?), someone who apports the emmerdements (chieur). Morgan asks what’s argot, Jean-Pierre says “slang,” Morgan says “for what?”, he says “slayng,” I say, “argot, c’est l’argot pour ‘argot,’” Morgan laughs a little but everyone's kind of uncomfortable. Here's a picture of me and Marwan next to a bus:

Happy Bastille Day, fidèles!

Dissertation Epigraph Candidate

"I find that when people laugh really hard, it's usually because they're connecting and identifying in a way that they hadn't considered. That's my payoff. I'm not interested in other people thinking differently. I don't care. I'm not even educated; it's something that I'm not qualified to do. I'm just like yeast-- I eat sugar and I shit alcohol. And there's a huge culture that goes with that. Alcohol creates massive shifts in world history, and it changes people's lives. People get pregnant because of alcohol. But the yeast doesn't give a fuck. The yeast isn't going, 'I really want to help people loosen up and bring passion into Irish people's lives.'" -Louis C.K.

Pumpkin Squatting

"None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin. That is shiftlessness. There is a plenty of such chairs as I like best in the village garrets to be had for taking them away. Furniture!" -Thoreau

Literally How I Felt Upon Beginning My Study of Greek

The book was an old one--thirty years old, soiled, scribbled wantonly over with a strange name in every variety of enmity to the letterpress, and marked at random with dates twenty years earlier than his own day. But this was not the cause of Jude's amazement. He learnt for the first time that there was no law of transmutation, as in his innocence he had supposed (there was, in some degree, but the grammarian did not recognize it), but that every word in both Latin and Greek was to be individually committed to memory at the cost of years of plodding.

Jude flung down the books, lay backward along the broad trunk of the elm, and was an utterly miserable boy for the space of a quarter of an hour. As he had often done before, he pulled his hat over his face and watched the sun peering insidiously at him through the interstices of the straw. This was Latin and Greek, then, was it; this grand delusion! The charm he had supposed in store for him was really a labour like that of Israel in Egypt.

What brains they must have in Christminster and the great schools, he presently thought, to learn words one by one up to tens of thousands! There were no brains in his head equal to this business; and as the little sun-rays continued to stream in through his hat at him, he wished he had never seen a book, that he might never see another, that he had never been born.

Somebody might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble, and might have cheered him by saying that his notions were further advanced than those of his grammarian. But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.

Buffett List

"The seller has the upper hand, as a girl might if she were the only female at a party attended by many boys. That lopsided situation would be great for the girl, but terrible for the boys."

"And then, in a final burst of brilliance, I went out and bought another textile company. Aaaaaaargh!"

"At Berkshire, our time horizon is forever."

Bummer

A coldish dull morning--hoed the first row of peas, weeded &c &c--sat hard to mending till evening. The rain which had threatened all day came on just when I was going to walk--

Dear Diary

Wm & John set off into Yorkshire after dinner at ½ past 2 o’clock—cold pork in their pockets. I left them at the turning of the Low-wood bay under the trees. My heart was so full that I could hardly speak to W when I gave him a farewell kiss. I sate a long time upon a stone at the margin of the lake, & after a flood of tears my heart was easier. The lake looked to me I knew not why dull and melancholy, the weltering on the shores seemed a heavy sound. I walked as long as I could amongst the stones of the shore. The wood rich in flowers. A beautiful yellow, palish yellow flower, that looked thick round & double, & smelt very sweet—I supposed it was a ranunculus—Crowfoot, the grassy-leaved Rabbit-toothed white flower, strawberries, Geranium—scentless violet, anemones of two kinds, orchises, primroses. The heckberry very beautiful as a low shrub. The crab coming out. Met a blind man driving a very large beautiful Bull & a cow—he walked with two sticks. Came home by Clappersgate. The valley very green, many sweet views up to Rydale head when I could juggle away the fine houses, but they disturbed me even more than when I have been happier—one beautiful view of the Bridge, without Sir Michaels. Sate down very often, tho’ it was cold. I resolved to write a journal of the time will W & J return, & I set about keeping my resolve because I will not quarrel with myself, & because I shall give Wm Pleasure by it when he comes home again. At Rydale a woman of the villgae, stout & well-dressed, begged a halfpenny—she had never she said done it before—but these hard times!—Arrived at home with a bad head-ach, set some slips of privett. The evening cold had a fire—my face now flame-coloured. It is nine o’clock, I shall soon go to bed. A young woman begged at the door—she had come from Manchester on Sunday morn with two shillings & a slip of paper which she supposed a Bank note—it was a cheat. She had buried her husband & three children within a year & a half—All in one grave—burying very dear—paupers all put in one place—20 shillings paid for as much ground as will bury a man—a grave stone to be put over it or the right will be lost—11/6 each time the ground is opened. Oh! that I had a letter from William!

If I Die Before I Wake

Please have Saint-Saens' "Le Cygne" played at my funeral.

I hope at least I never have to say "Saint-Saens" aloud -- I have no idea if the two components of the name are pronounced the same, or not.

Paradise Lost Ill-Gained

Second in a series of tidbits I picked and (mis)took up listening to a free recording of Paradise Lost.

All but the wakeful nightingale,
To know no more is woman's happiest knowledge:
Blown up with high conceits
Up he starts,
Answering scorn with scorn.
Felt how aweful goodness is,
Your glory will be won or else be lost.
Unlicensed from his bonds in hell,
All hell breaks loose.
O sacred name the faithful is profaned,
Lest on the threshing floor his hoped for sheaves prove chaff,
Where thou art weighed and showed how light,
Airy light from pure digestion bred,
Heaven's last best gift.
Why sleepst thou Eve? Now is the pleasant time.
His dewy locks distilled ambrosia,
He plucked, he tasted,
Could not help but taste--
Best image of myself and dearer half,
So all was cleared,
Duly paid in various style,
Rising or falling still advances praise
Among sweet dews
To check fruitless embraces,
To adorn his barren leaves,
To respite his day labor with repast or with repose.
Nor delayed the winged saint,
Self-opened wide on golden hinges turning,
Not disrelish,
By disburdening grows more fruitful
And superfluous moist consumes.
Not to mix tastes,
Pressed she tempers dulcet creams,
Grooms besmeared with gold;
But Eve undecked--
Thus began our author.

Paradise Lost Found Object

Unexampled love,
Translated saints,
Embryos and idiots,
Unpeopled and untrod,
Seemed other worlds
(Or other worlds they seemed):
Potable gold,
Objects distant far,
Chiefly man his chief delight and favor;
While wisdom waits suspicion sleeps at heaven's gate.
Order from disorder flung,
What could be less than to afford him praise
And understood not that a grateful mind by owing owes not
But still pays both owing and discharged?
Evil be thou my good,
Artificer of fraud,
Disfigured more than could befall spirit of happy sort,
As he supposed, all-observed, unseen,
Hairy sides with thicket overgrown grotesque and wild--
Access denied.
Insuperable height of lofty shade,
Goodliest trees,
Odorous sweets,
Fruit of vegetable gold,
Knowledge of good but dear by knowing ill
Gently creeps luxuriant,
A whole day's journey high.
Unadorned golden tresses
Wreathed his lithe proboscis
From his lofty stand on that high tree,
Sole partner and sole part of all these joys.
Let us not think hard this easy prohibition,
When from sleep I first awaked
With unexperienced thought
Less amiably mild than that smooth watery image,
Manly grace and wisdom which alone is truly fair.