This is probably way too obscure for most of my readers

BJ Novak on “The Wire”:

“An open letter:

I know you think The Wire is great. It probably is!

I know you think I would love The Wire. I probably will!

I know that you believe that The Wire is totally amazing and addictive. (I deduced it from your previous statements about The Wire.) And I don’t doubt it.

You were right about The Sopranos. You were right about Lost. I bet you’re right about The Wire! I bet I’ll really like The Wire when I get around to watching it. It sounds great.

In the meantime, please SHUT UP ABOUT HOW MUCH I AM GOING TO LOVE THE WIRE. I have a lot to do, and I have a long Netflix queue.

I will watch The Wire when I watch The Wire!”

BJ’s MySpace

From the Facebook group “North Florida–it’s like another state”:

We’ve all heard them–rumors of North Florida suceeding from the rest of the state to form a new one.

Well. As you must agree, it’s like another state.

You know you’re from North Florida….

when you refer to your county as “LA”– lower alabama.

when you can’t speak a word of spanish, even though you’re told you need to start learning… or else.

when you wear flip-flops at the beach and then keep them on to go mudding.

when you know how to navigate the “bayou”

when you’ve seen more oppossums dead than you have alive.

when you get tired of being asked if you go to the beach every day.

when you like water moccasins more than you like tourists.

when you don’t think that snowbirds have wings.

uʍop ǝpısdn sı ǝɟıl ʎɯ

School’s got me beat.  See you on the other side (some time in September).

A COLLECTION OF SEEMINGLY UNRELATED THOUGHTS

• “Hola, Profesor” is what the deep, husky female voice proclaimed on the cassette accompanying my Spanish textbook from the Odub days. Sam, Arch, J-Will and I took this class together back in ’99 or ’00 or something. Great times.”Hola, Profesor” could be my mantra for the Summer, because a) I am neck-deep in graduate-level course-work and b) Mexicans continue to dominate the local blue-collar labor market, despite the amnesty bill being stalled (try counting the various Mexican groceries, restaurants, and other places of business along Eglin Parkway between Shalimar and 98 sometime – ¡es loco!).

• I found a portable dishwasher on Craigslist yesterday in Navarre that I bargained down to $40. It took a little cleaning up, but it works flawlessly. I am pretty happy about that.
• Blitzen Trapper is a pretty sweet band.
• I signed up for a Small Business Development Center course in starting a business in Okaloosa County. It starts the week after next and should cover tax and financing – information that I never have really understood. My MBA industry focus is on the coffee industry. I am serious about starting up a coffeehouse pub one of these days.

BRIDGE TO NOWHERE

 

I like this picture.  It’s one of the few I’ve taken that mean something to me on a level that’s not just purely asthetic.  Bridges that never actually go anywhere have been an occasional motif of my dreams for many years.  Some are wood, some are concrete, some are sand, some have rails, but most don’t;  All of them end in the middle of the water.  I guess the feelings these dreams (and this picture) evoke stem from a general fear of the possibility that my life’s path isn’t really going anywhere (I know that’s not true, but the insecurity’s there all the same).  I think I’ll spare the analysis and just leave it at that.

Wherever my life has been going it’s been going at a tremendous rate.  It’s been a while since I’ve been so busy.  A full-time grad schedule plus a full-time job leaves me with next to no time for reading or socializing.  The work that I do (both on base and for classes) continues to bring me a great sense of accomplishment and joy, which compensates somewhat for the lost time I have available for personal use, but it’s still work.  This better be worth it.

NOVEMBER IS A LONG WAY AWAY

It’s been a while since there’s been anything interesting on the radar as far as Sufjan Stevens is concerned.  The last album(s) he released was the Christmas box set last year, and he’s only done a handful of shows here and there since then, none of which I’ve been able to attend.  I find it hard to believe that I last saw him in concert in 2005.  Doesn’t seem like it’s been that long.  Anyways, I happened to pull up Pitchfork this morning and lo-and-beheld an article about Sufjan at the very top.  It’s looking likely that New York is the state that will provide the material for his next album.  I’d like to see that film project, too – looks pretty sweet.

LOST FINALE

Amazing.  Better than Spiderman 3 and Pirates 3 combined.  And it was free.

Thanks Amy and Mrs. Schneider for the fish biscuits and Dharma beer!

AT LEAST YOU CAN STILL KISS THE MOOSE

“State forces McGuire’s to remove ‘joke’ restroom signs.”

If you have a digg.com account, go there and digg it. I wanna see this on diggnation.

WE’RE ALL WINNERS IN THE OVARIAN LOTTERY

Tonight contained the first MBA class of the Summer semester for me. It’s an economics class, but I’m not sure exactly what the title is. I arrived with a vague idea of the room number (my adviser had sent me an e-mail this morning with location information that I quickly glanced over and forgot to print out), an empty blank where the professor’s name should have been, and no clue whatsoever what even the subject of the class would be about. I was pleased to discover that the subject was economics, which I have been thinking about a lot lately, and which had been the subject of an R.C. Sproul tape I watched at the Benos’ a few weeks back.

My professor is the director of HAAS in Pensacola. I love reading the reports they release. They focus on local (Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, and Walton) economic growth and never fail to provide fascinating studies. The text we are studying in class is a book by Ben Bernanke, the current Federal Reserve Chairman. Never before has a 3-and-a-half-hour class gone by so quickly for me. Every word made sense. I know more about economics now than I believe I ever have before.

The professor teaches regularly in Germany, and has an extremely international perspective on economics, but he seems a tad overly optimistic when it comes to the state of the Estados Unidos’ economy. How long will we be able to convince China and Japan and the E.U. that our country is worth lending to? Can we keep up our insane consumerism and our negative saving average? My professor thinks we can. I’m not so positive. According to him, we’re all “winners in the ovarian lottery”, having been born here. That’s true in a way, I guess. We are unquestionably blessed in this place.

FEELING BLEH?

If this site doesn’t fix it, hope for you is lost.  (I’m a surreal leaf, in case you were wondering.)