A day after I got my eye cut out, Gus showed up at the hospital. I was blind and heartbroken and didn't want to do anything and Gus burst into my room and shouted, 'I have wonderful news!' And I was like, 'I don't really want to hear wonderful news right now,' and Gus said, 'This is wonderful news you want to hear,' and I asked him, 'Fine, what is it?' and he said, 'You are going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments you cannot even imagine yet!'

--John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

I was asked to blog about my thoughts or life, I think Ian covers both pretty well.

BEHOLD, THE NEW JERUSALEM!

But make no mistake: Change is a motherfucker when you run from it. And right now, the conservative movement in America is fleeing from dramatic change that is certain and immutable. A man of color is president for the second time, and this happened despite a struggling economic climate and a national spirit of general discontent. He has been returned to office over the specific objections of the mass of white men. He has instead been re-elected by women, by people of color, by homosexuals, by people of varying religions or no religion whatsoever. Behold the New Jerusalem. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a white man, of course. There’s nothing wrong with being anything. That’s the point.

--David Simon, Inevitabilities and Barack Obama

Vacations with my parents, though wonderful, give me too much time to think (see: Alaska 2008, Florida 2012).

Nine more weeks of school then--?

(Courtesy of The Glow)

Been interacting with babies more than ever this summer. Having and raising a kid seems like the wildest thing you could ever do.

A FINE LIFE, JUST A FINE LIFE

Somebody should have told me, Hey, Mac, your life, Mac, thirty years of it, Mac, is gonna be school, school, school, kids, kids, kids, papers, papers, papers, read and correct, read and correct, read and correct, mountains of papers piling up at school, at home, days, nights reading stories, poems, diaries, suicide notes, diatribes, excuses, plays, essays, even novels, the work of thousands--thousands--of New York teenagers over the years, a few hundred working men and women, and you get no time for reading Graham Greene or Dashiell Hammett, F. Scott Fitzgerald or good old P. G. Wodehouse, or your main man, Mr. Jonathan Swift. You'll go blind reading Joey and Sandra, Tony and Michelle, little agonies and passions and ecstasies. Mountains of kid stuff, Mac. If they opened your head they'd find a thousand teenagers clambering all over your brain. Every June they graduate, grow up, work and move on. They'll have kids, Mac, who will come to you someday for English, and you're left facing another term of Joeys and Sandras, Tonys and Michelles, and you'll want to know: Is this what it's all about? Is this to be your world for twenty/thirty years? Remember, if this is your world, you're one of them, a teenager. You live in two worlds. You're with them, day in, day out, and you'll never know, Mac, what that does to your mind. Teenager forever. June will come and it's bye-bye teacher, nice knowin' you, my sister's gonna be in your class in September. But there's something else, Mac. In any classroom, something is always happening. They keep you on your toes. They keep you fresh. You'll never grow old, but the danger is you might have the mind of an adolescent forever. That's a real problem, Mac. You get used to talking to those kids on their level. Then when you go to a bar for a beer you forget how to talk to your friends and they look at you. They look at you like you just arrived from another planet and they're right. Day after day in the classroom means you're in another world, Mac.

--Frank McCourt, Teacher Man

“It’s an economic issue when the unemployment rate for folks who’ve never gone to college is almost double what it is for those who have,” Mr. Obama said, according to prepared remarks. “It’s an economic issue when eight in 10 new jobs will require workforce training or a higher education by the end of this decade. It’s an economic issue when we know countries that outeducate us today will outcompete us tomorrow.”

--Jackie Calmes, Obama Takes on Critics of Education Plan

Check it out: 3,400 students dropped out of high school last year in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district, and the graduation rate at West Charlotte High School is 51%.

I think I've made my decision.

I think.

My daddy is a smart man, he says that whatever I choose will be good because I will make it good for me. He also says that whatever I choose, I should make that decision and never look back. But ahhh, my brain isn't so great at never looking back.

It will be nice to decide and then refocus on the important thing--the important thing being fixing the world.

Who, me? Oh, I'm doing just fine.

Tomorrow is the big day but I am not worried because the dishes are done, the bills are paid, and last night I had ice cream for dinner.

I LOVE YOU BUT YOU'RE FREAKING ME OUT

In New York you can drink beer in ancient sawdusty bars, you can find cupcakes of all kinds, you can appreciate the humor in people getting electrocuted onstage, you can go through another interview and--upon finishing--immediately forget about it, you can see an off-duty clown get his morning coffee, you can feel crummy when the bus driver is rude to foreigners with sad eyes, you can ride the subway and wonder "is this what it might be like next year?", and you can still see Orion's belt.

On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence within the city's walls of a considerable section of the population; for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.

--E. B. White, Here is New York


In a few days, Matt and Ian leave us for New York. There is a possibility that I will be joining them come June. A very small possibility (this is me not getting my hopes up). Either way--I will be visiting them in January and we will have a lovely time and they will have all the success in the world. 2010, ya know? Big things are happening.

BOOOOORRRRRING

If you guys are looking for anything meaningful here, please try somewhere else because all I do these days is write papers and have online conversations. Perhaps it is time for a Tumblr.

BRAKE SUM FUKEN SKULLZ

Oop.

System error ^__^

The to-do list gets longer, but today I baked cookies (browned butter is the king of all mouthfeels).

When this is all over I will kick my legs and celebrate. In the meantime I will receive upsetting phone calls, I will hate not feeling in control, I will allow myself to be overwhelmed, and then I will pull. Myself. Together.

I felt a little good after reading this book because I am pretty sure that when I am almost fifty I will also not understand anything in my life, it's good to know that I am not alone in this.

--Tao Lin, The Easter Parade by Richard Yates

A brainier Web is coming, and the next generation of companies will anticipate your needs. Early this year, much like Gates 14 years ago, Google Senior Vice President of Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg wrote a lengthy memo foretelling a day when a perfect search engine would comprehend all of the world's information and the meaning behind every user query, and deliver to users not a dump truck full of search results, but The Answer.

--Kevin Maney, What Scares Google

THAT'S ALL, FOLKS

...or maybe he is also too busy and soon the whole world will be one huge beehive where everyone swarms above the ground, too distracted to go anywhere except forward. forward! onward! everyone will cry and with a great bang the sun will become a red giant and we will die.

--KD, circa two days ago