BLOGZIL!

save charmin' and brawny for the trailer parks

Y'all should take it as a good sign whenever I don't write much -- it means my life is actually a little bit exciting. Still, for reasons I don't entirely understand, I like to troll the internet in my free time and find dumb things. Case in point.

Also, two people actually having a reasonable debate about women in the sciences.

Again, not about Brazil, but interesting nonetheless. A guy's memories of his mother's boyfriend, the serial killer.

Ever wonder about those Kashi Good Friends cereal boxes? Well here, at last, is the story.

(via American Scene)

Various people (read: my parents) have been urging me to send pictures of my new apartment, so now that I have internet I will oblige them. I really like my new apartment. It is simultaneously cozy and airy. It manages this combination by being a) owned and decorated by a lovely hippie-ish woman who is extremely into raw and sprouted foods, and by b) missing a wall. Look at the "table" picture closely and you will see the tarp that is my east-facing barrier to the world. Safety-wise this isn't much of a problem, since I live on the fourth floor of a four-floor building. If the thieves really want to do the grappling hook and zip line work needed to get in here, they might as well just have my stuff. (Knock on wood, if it would happen anywhere it would happen in Rio.) The rest of the apartment isn't exactly air-tight either. The "windows" in the first kitchen picture are in fact no more than empty panes of wood, and there are significant gaps between the roof and the extant walls as well.

My apartment makes me happy, which is what a good apartment should do. Except for the easy permeation by ants and mosquitos, and for a while birds (when my landlord still had her wheat-grass-growing trays in here I'd wake up in the mornings to like fifteen birds munching on them, then bolting out my windows, leaving bird shit on my floor), the place is great. It's a block from the beach (which I stupidly never go to) and costs about as much as a Cambridge walk-in closet. Satisfied customer.

The only problem is occasional loneliness. I live alone now, and it's kind of quiet. Life with Márcia was never quiet. I loved it, but there was no privacy, and I used to long for solitude like this. Now that I have it it's a mixed blessing. I miss Márcia.

table

kitchen

communications nerve center

more kitchen

veranda

Whenever I feel bored, which is much of the time, I monitor the progress of the Arcade Fire from afar. I do this for three reasons. First, I really like their music. Second, the lead singer, Win, was a good friend of mine in high school. We wrote a play together, edited a poetry journal together, started Winter Thaw Weekend together, created an improv comedy troupe together, etc. It is very fun to see a friend of mine famous, and to read various accounts of hipsters... gasp... being three inches away from him!!!! The third reason is that, although I have an outwardly globe-trotting life, in fact things have been pretty sedate for me lately and so I read of the Arcade Fire's exploits, their European tours, and I live vicariously the rock star life. Of course, Win is married and quite religious so his rock star life is probably slightly different from the rock star life of my imagination, yet it works for me all the same.

Another reason, unmentioned above, is that though I've listened to their CD countless times, and heard Win and Regine fooling around in their own living room, I've never actually seen the band perform. My one attempt, summer 2004, was foiled. They were opening for the Unicorns somewhere in Boston, and I'd been told that they were going on at 8:30pm. Dutifully, I arrived at 8:30 sharp, only to find them packing up their instruments. They'd gone on at 8, and now were done. This is before people gave a shit about them. I then had to suffer a set of the Unicorns themselves, but was rewarded by a nice sleepover in Boston with the high-school crew that had come to see them. Now I read the rapturous accounts of their shows, written by the hippest hipsters in the blogosphere, and my mouth can only salivate. This is their golden era, and I have a fear that by the time I come back stateside all the love will be gone. They'll be playing stadiums with the can-do attitude of a post-rehab Axl Rose. Win himself will be rancorous and morbidly obese, throwing beer bottles at reporters and fans alike. They'll be on their seventh drummer, and Win his third wife/collaborator. Regine will have divorced him, written a tell-all biography, and started her own psychic hotline.

Or not. I think they'll be fine, actually.

Photos via Us Kids Know, le blog exuberance, and me.

crowd surfing at coachella

it's the canadian edition, but still...

win in ego-stroking stereo, also at coachella

quieter days: new year's eve 2003

Is this funny? Why is this the first thing I think to post? In any event, Volokh Conspiracy has a thread about "funny" passages in Supreme Court decisions, such decisions, of course, being typically stroke-inducingly boring. These are moments in which the justices, punch-drunk surely after a wacky all-nighter of deliberation, realized that nobody really read these things that carefully, and anyway they had tenure. Some selections:

Justice Stevens' concurrence in Widmar v. Vincent (1980):

Because every university's resources are limited, an educational institution must routinely make decisions concerning the use of the time and space that is available for extracurricular activities. In my judgment, it is both necessary and appropriate for those decisions to evaluate the content of a proposed student activity. I should think it obvious, for example, that if two groups of 25 students requested the use of a room at a particular time -- one to view Mickey Mouse cartoons and the other to rehearse an amateur performance of Hamlet -- the First Amendment would not require that the room be reserved for the group that submitted its application first. Nor do I see why a university should have to establish a "compelling state interest" to defend its decision to permit one group to use the facility and not the other. In my opinion, a university should be allowed to decide for itself whether a program that illuminates the genius of Walt Disney should be given precedence over one that may duplicate material adequately covered in the classroom.

Scalia's dissent in Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 466-67 (1995):

Facial features are the primary means by which human beings recognize one another. That is why police departments distribute "mug" shots of wanted felons, rather than Ivy-League-type posture pictures; it is why bank robbers wear stockings over their faces instead of floor-length capes over their shoulders; it is why the Lone Ranger wears a mask instead of a poncho; and it is why a criminal defense lawyer who seeks to destroy an identifying witness by asking "You admit that you saw only the killer's face?" will be laughed out of the courtroom.

Ginsburg in her dissent in Muscarello v. United States:

"Popular films and television productions provide corroborative illustrations. In 'The Magnificent Seven,' for example, O'Reilly (played by Charles Bronson) says: 'You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility, for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers.' See http://us.imdb.com/M/search_quotes?for=carry. And in the television series 'M*A*S*H,' Hawkeye Pierce (played by Alan Alda) presciently proclaims: 'I will not carry a gun. . . . I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I'll even "hari-kari" if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!'"

Scalia again, in Blakely v. Washington, 124 S. Ct. 2531, 2542 n.12 (2004):

To be sure, Justice Breyer and the other dissenters would forbid those increases of sentence that violate the constitutional principle that tail shall not wag dog. The source of this principle is entirely unclear. Its precise effect, if precise effect it has, is presumably to require that the ratio of sentencing-factor add-on to basic criminal sentence be no greater than the ratio of caudal vertebrae to body in the breed of canine with the longest tail. Or perhaps no greater than the average such ratio for all breeds. Or perhaps the median.

Scalia yet again, in Chicago v Morales:

My contribution would go something like this: Tony, a member of the Jets criminal street gang, is standing alongside and chatting with fellow gang members while staking out their turf at Promontory Point on the South Side of Chicago; the group is flashing gang signs and displaying their distinctive tattoos to passersby. Officer Krupke, applying the Ordinance at issue here, orders the group to disperse. After some speculative discussion (probably irrelevant here) over whether the Jets are depraved because they are deprived, Tony and the other gang members break off further conversation with the statement–not entirely coherent, but evidently intended to be rude–"Gee, Officer Krupke, krup you." A tense standoff ensues until Officer Krupke arrests the group for failing to obey his dispersal order.

Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek. The coffin lid swings slowly open, and one emaciated hand, its flesh greened and decaying, reaches out into the darkness... grasping toward... the keyboard!

I'm currently listening to Michael Jackson's Thriller, and recently read Dan Savage's advice to a zombie fetishist, if that's any explanation. Also, I'm returning to blogging.

Why the no blogging? (You might ask, if anyone is still coming here, which is doubtful.) Well, I've got a simple explanation: no internet. I moved to a new city, and took a trip to the States, and it wasn't until this week that I got internet connected at my new apartment. Sure I frequented the odd internet café, and sponged access off a friend or two, but it just wasn't the same. I need to be in my pajamas to blog. And they look at you weird if you wear them at the public library terminals.

The short summary of my life is that I am now pleasantly ensconced in Rio de Janeiro, in the swank neighborhood of Ipanema, and am working at Viva Cred, an NGO that is Rio's largest microlender. I have been here about a month now, subtracting out my US trip, and I am enjoying myself. Still working on building up a friend base, as everyone I knew I left behind in Salvador. But all together, things are good. Good. Now begins the process of unpacking leftovers from the last couple months...