Pizza Joy

Oh yeah, and I'm going to try to make pizza this week.

(Photo stolen shamelessly from a Facebook photo album.)

Color and Flash

I've started messing with my digital camera. It was a Christmas present and its been left largely unattended since I received it. It's difficult to get in the habit, I think, if you've not had a camera for a long time and aren't used to finding the moments to utilize it. Plus, noone wants to be the naggy-photo-taker.

"Hey! Hey! Everyone look over here!"



So, instead I've been playing with darkness and color and lighting in my apt. It makes me look like a bit of a loser with no friends, but I assure I have a few.

The above are my two favorite wardrobe additions of late: my fedora and my argyle sweater.



I've got a pretty cool paper that needs writing. It's about ethics and the theoretical accounts of our moral aspirations and difficulties. Kant is gonna take a beating from Blondel and Lonergan on his failure to provide us with real Freedom. Autonomy is just not the same thing.

Good thing I'm posting on this thing right now...

And now, a blurry picture of me in a polka dot tie.

Style Profile

I totally stole this from other people. Enjoy.
Job?
I get paid to be an IT assistant for the facilities and capital projects department at BC. I pay a whole lot of money to be a Masters student in Philosophy at that same school. That is more truly my employment.

Best Sartorial advice from your parents?
Don’t wear sandals when you ride your bike.

Style icons?
Justin Timberlake. Trent Reznor’s recent militaristic turn. Seth Bullock.

Describe your personal style...
Eclectic and precise, with spurts of bombast and flamboyance. I’ll borrow from the preppy, the soldier, the rock-star and the hipster alike. My piercings and ridiculous haircuts tend to give everything a punk-rawk edge.

I build my daily look around?
Jeans and shoes. Skinny jeans w/ sneakers? Bootcut w/ monk-strap square toes? Everything else starts with the answers to those questions.

Personal Style quirk?
I’ll always wear my studded belts backward. I picked it up in the Sacramento hardcore scene in high school and never let it go. Makes life difficult for the rapists.

Favorite designers?
G-star just came out w/ a line of more dressy clothes that I really like. Slacks and vests as designed by your local Gestapo. Hot. Buuuuuut, I’m poor.

Most cherished item?
Hrm...Keffiyeh I got in Albany Park after I graduated, I think.

Never caught wearing?
Cardigans. Crocs. Uggs.

Most underrated item in menswear/womenswear?
By me personally? Socks. In general? Scarves.

Dress to impress who?
Mari Andrew, mostly. And hot chicks, in general.

Flats or heels?
I know this is aimed at women, but I seriously wish I owned more boots w/ a heel. A masculine, cowboy-esque heel..but yeah, something that’ll make me tower even more.

Favorite stores?
H&M. Found some good (REALLY CHEAP) stuff on sale at Heritage over spring break, but I’m sure its crap. Village Discount Thrift Stores in Chicago are my favoritests.

Your next "must have" purchase?
A Pair of Oxfords and a gray, tropical weight wool suit.

I skimp when buying ...
Um…clothes?

I splurge on...
Jeans most. Outerwear too.

Favorite item of clothing?,
Changes often, but at the moment: dark wash slim-fit jeans from H&M, Brown, white and pink argyle sweater from Express for Men.

Favorite fashion magazines?
I loved Men’s Vogue (RIP) but I just got a subscription to GQ. Don’t think it will be as good… Dwell (Okay, architecture/design, but still about style).

Favorite (style) books?
Hm…I should get some of those. I want to make one for myself, actually, that I can reference when I go to make purchases. Like a fashion/design scrap book.

Favorite stylish movies?
“Arabesque”; “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”; “Quantum of Solace”

Favorite vacation spot?
California’s Sierra Mountains, the more remote the better.

Favorite neighborhood restaurant?
In Chicago: Tre Kroner (Swedish food)
In Boston: Café Fixe (Technically just coffee and pastries, but mah favah-rite)

Moleskine Sketches

"White people love to walk around writing about how creative they are in their Moleskines"

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The world is a terrorizing place. Banality borne so near to beauty. Pain come to pass with boredom.

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So tremendously constructed, these young women. And yet so little of it mined and shaped and employed from themselves. Like the Statue of Liberty, made of foreign labor, made of foreign mettle and welcoming foreign efforts. From the alien, to the alien, by way of alienation. The face as plastic image. As mask, clear and occlusive.

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Happiness is like sand that slips through our hands and its contours we only remember by looking to the bit of what's left. Really, we need magnifying glasses to stare at the grains left still stuck to the sweat of our palms.

Feel More Human

Ferm Living - Barcode Wall Sticker

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WANT

Purr for the P.U.M.A?

This entry about the device above (seductively dubbed the P.U.M.A) raises some really interesting questions about the way we relate to technological advances. Do the advances create our needs or do our needs occasion advances? Well, the two dynamics are probably correlative. Still, why would you spend so much money on something in the name of being among the "urban environmentally friendly" at the expense of, say, riding a bike for next to free?

Check out the comments too, some good points are raised. One is that few cyclists can really maintain 35mph. But what urban living cyclist ever gets far enough before a traffic light or obstructively double parked SUV forces to slow down well below his or her top speed?

On the other hand, if we sold these to those living in suburban centers that lack sufficient infrastructure to make day-to-day cycling feasible for all but the most radically committed, perhaps some good could be achieved by this technological advance. However, if you took a 10% pay cut this quarter b/c of the fear-mongering recession, buying a fancy piece of gyroscopic transportation may be out of the question.

Maybe you'd do better to pick up a use schwinn at a garage sale, yeah?

P.S. check out the Good magazine website and blog while you're there.. Its pretty bad ass.

Vociferous Variance and Vacilation

God bless OB. His class is yet another opportunity to blog. He just keeps going over the same stuff. He doesn’t trust that his students have learned the previous material sufficiently to move forward. And rightly so, since so many of them have not. And yet the more he repeats the system of terms, the more I see their eyes glaze over and become indifferent to the whole subject matter.

Why do I keep showing up to something that is so blatantly wasting my time? I guess to just not be an asshole, I suppose. And because sometimes I pipe up and help clarify things that are hopelessly muddied. And its good to be of some use to one’s peers.

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I’ve been baking a great deal lately. The whole thing appeals to me on many levels. The ordered, careful process of measuring precise amounts, laid out on my counters like the chemistry experiment they are. Prepared baking sheets and muffin pans receiving the batter or dough. The careful extrication of cookies and muffins onto a cooling rack, in a cloud of delicious smell. Like a monastic meditative exercise.

When I’m baking, when I’m a baker I am affected by the baking, the being a baker. I like what/who I am when I’m baking. I’m filled with a sense of compassion, for my friends, my family, my self…humanity even, though abstractly. The joy of my baked goods is to give them away. A few can be enjoyed in private, but that’s really not the point of the exercise.

The Baking Repetoire as it stands:
- Peanut Butter Cookies
- Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Whole Wheat Coffee/Beer Bread
- *NEW* Oatmeal Cookies
- *NEW* Bran Muffins

That’s right kids; I bought a muffin pan. Ladies.

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In the middle of the previous section, OB asked me a very specific question about a presentation I gave more than a month ago. What?!

Now he’s giving an account of the movie “The Visitor”… poorly.

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I’m going out w/ Katie again tomorrow night. Someone asked me over dinner on Saturday why I’m putting my hand back in the garbage disposal. I told them lots of things that aren’t true but allowed me to be pretty-much left alone in my decision. I’ll spare you the dissimulations.

Final answer: I’d really like that to have a chance to be… I dunno, “something”

On the other hand, that I’m giving her the opportunity does not mean all my eggs are in one basket. If someone else captivating comes along, she’s S.O.L.

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I tire sometimes of the weighty-ness of my philosophical work. I need to vacillate between the aesthetic and the philosophical. The concerns of Blondel’s Action and Lonergan’s Insight and Kant’s Duty are all just so important. Its exhausting. Right now, I’d much rather spend my time (and money…) on baking and decorating my apartment and going dancing and reading design magazines and blogs and watching TV shows and on and on.

I did spend yesterday sitting on a blanket at a park soaking up the modicum of sun our Boston spring afforded. Today I weathered the thunderstorms with coffee and clam chowder.

I want to do arts and crafts projects. To paint and sew and recycle creatively.

But, I can read w/ a latte in hand. That works pretty good.

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I have wonderful friends. I aspire to their authenticity, their patience, their forgiveness, their kindness and their intelligence. God bless them, each and everyone.