| Quick update |
[Feb. 16th, 2008|07:06 pm] |
I apologize to all of the people that I have been neglecting. Spring brings many changes, but one of the most pronounced has been the disappearances of my free-time. Session is in full swing and if anyone wants to take a look at the sort of issues that I have been working on, you are welcome to check out http://mlis.state.md.us/2008rs/sponsors/lenett.htm. To balance out working full-time-plus has been applications and a night class at the ever-prestigious AACC. I am applying to various law schools in the D.C. area for the fall but I am also applying to Harvey Mudd for undergraduate physics and this latter option would be my preference.
But I am also very excited that I have been accepted to study Physics at U-Chicago this summer (which, honestly, was not that difficult of an achievement). I should be able to grind out the remainder of my lower-devision physics requirements at a good school by the end of the summer and hop into upper division classes in the fall.
Other than that, things are well and I hope they they are for you all as well. |
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| Poem |
[Nov. 1st, 2007|11:52 am] |
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In the quiet sit I, the thinking-floating reed between storms, It is the surreal, small and seemingly inconsequential moments In the haze of times like this that transmute themselves into labels for far greater things I think back now to shades of blue on white And, ignorant of what pearlescent even is I feel the cool air mixing with the warm west wind And the hard grays melting into dark wet azure and, somehow, this moment speaks for a hundred beautiful, absurd others |
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| poem |
[Oct. 18th, 2007|11:37 am] |
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I thought I felt the sharp wind once
But I see better now
I see the walls of glass in which I live
I see the open lines of sight
but sight without motion is pain without end
I live in walls of glass that seem to whisper
To taunt and tantalize with wisps of the next moment
The ever receding faint eco of hopes and dreams
That percolate down beneath surface and storm
and laugh at my paralysis
It seems so easy to define things
But to live is something very different |
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| poem |
[Oct. 10th, 2007|10:30 pm] |
It is looking up to the wispy azure
that my mind’s eye strays back down upon itself
And it seems so easy to lose and be lost
With my back to the deck and bare feet to wire rails
It is in dizzying moments like this
after hard tacking
and wedged
between jib and main
That I can look up between the silken lines of my life
Between the semi-opaqueness that propels and entraps
that I see mundus in all her glory mundane
And the beauteous smile of an old friend so meek
but with me so long her voice can seem but a whisper
so easily missed
amongst the boulders and brambles
and the cacophony of bold living |
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| Mourning |
[Oct. 4th, 2007|09:57 am] |
Here's to you, my swift silence of the morning
my ethereal-vapidness of the dew and fog
and in the morning rushes with the mists of the ground
and the mists of my mind I grope blindly for burning sunlight
but where have you gone sweet drops of golden tears
(and where are you now my motes precious with possibility)
it is the moments like these of eternal stifledness unending
that my fogbound mind feels most myopically content
and most stricken with onyx black terror. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 19th, 2007|09:35 pm] |
I am the wind and the rain
but also this the rippling of water
the fingers of sand through time
and this motion on the pond's bright surface
I am rage and fury against the skies
But walls face in two directions
and in striving and in so keeping out
i just as much am kept within
I, the arctic ocean of eternal twilight
(or is it dusk? i do not know)
can sense this direction spiraling all-ways up
in moments of lucidity
to imagine a loving discourse with the stars
I am the autumn days grown short as summer ends
and slowly sinking back against my icy crèche
I am the sensation of this numbing current
that inexorably pushes against my legs
I am the horizon stretching out above myself
the blustering storm across my skin
but also this these dark and frozen waters through my veins |
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| now and then |
[Apr. 16th, 2007|12:48 am] |
Despite the lingering weirdness factor of watching friends get hitched, It was really nice to see Dennis getting married and it was also really nice to be together as a group again if only briefly. Dan was nice enough to post some pictures and it it is really interesting to see the pictures from Saturday next to the four of us from five years ago in the last picture of the set which took place during the great 7-11 caper. I wonder what the next five will hold for us.
http://soy.dyndns.org/~dboothe/dennis_wedding/ |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 9th, 2007|12:14 am] |
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They played Arcade Fire on the radio today! I'm excited. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 7th, 2007|08:57 am] |
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I dreamt that i broke both my malas and ate them. I wonder what that means. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 7th, 2007|12:48 am] |
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I freaking dropped a 75lb dumb-bell smack onto my chest tonight. I managed to throw the other one to the side but still feel kind of sheepish and I am now sporting a rather attractive dumb-bell shaped red mark on my chest. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 1st, 2007|02:47 am] |
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I just watched the Hopkins Titus Andronicus. I'm speechless, there are no words to describe how amazing it is. Maybe i should give other Shakespeare movie adaptations a chance. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 29th, 2007|12:18 am] |
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Is it better to make choices based on an ascetic and rigid or a compromising practical framework? Should one be uncompromising in one’s choices even where one might make things better through a compromised lifestyle? This question has been bothering me on both a wide sweeping metaphysical and a minutely day-to-day level. To give a day-to-day example; my participation in our political system. I consider it to be deeply flawed (this being the nature of democracy), but at the same time I am more likely to achieve positive change through it than by washing my hands of it. By participating in it I have brought myself down to its moral level, but by rejecting it I would be giving up a powerful tool for positive change. The crux of the problem is that both choices would be moral compromises. From the perspective of a man who fundamentally dislikes compromise, this prospect is terrifying. There are still paths which are manifestly and unambiguously wrong but it is difficult to perceive what is right in any sort of absolute sense. So what am I to do? Cling to my original right-intentions and damn the consequences or give up on my right-intentions for the sake of effecting good outcomes? |
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| The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock |
[Mar. 19th, 2007|12:11 am] |
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question . . .
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the
floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."
. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old . . .I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
-T.S. Eliot |
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| Khaled El-Masri, torture and our great state |
[Mar. 5th, 2007|11:46 am] |
Here (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-elmasri3mar03,0,3264255.story?coll=la-opinion-underdog)
is a rather moving editorial by Khaled El-Masri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaled_El-Masri). For those who don’t know about the El-Masri case, it pretty much epitomizes the evil I see in the current administration. Normally I am reticent to make such emotionally qualitative accusations with regards to politics and public figures, but if evil seem like a mischaracterization to my readers, I challenge you to thoroughly research the events. They are well documented, have been admitted to by the federal government, and are damning.
Khaled El-Masri is a German citizen who was held by Macedonian authorities in December of 2003 after his name was confused with that of a suspected international terrorist, Khalid al-Masri. It was suspected that Mr. El-Masri’s passport was fraudulent and the Macedonians contacted the local CIA station who agreed to take custody of El-Masri. To effect this transaction, the Macedonians released El-Masri on January 24, 2004 at which point he was essentially kidnapped by a CIA “black snatch team.”
El-Masri was then taken without any judicial oversight proceedings to a CIA detention and interrogation facility in Afghanistan. This facility, known as “the salt pit” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_salt_pit), is also infamous for the 2002 death of an Afghan detainee in which the CIA case officer in charge of the prison ordered the man to be stripped naked and chained to a concrete floor overnight. Not surprisingly, the man died of hypothermia, was buried in an unmarked grave and his family was never informed of his death.
El-Masri alleges that during his detention, he was subjected to psychological and physical torture and was raped. While it appears that the CIA was perfectly happy to take a more ‘hands on’ approach to information extraction, no one actually bothered to check whether or not El-Masri’s passport was genuine for two months. Even after the CIA established that they were holding the wrong man, it took a 27 day hunger strike by El-Masri before he was allowed to meet with the CIA prison director. In this meeting, it was admitted that El-Masri was being wrongly detained but the CIA also refused to release him. This took place during March of ‘04.
In April ‘04, then CIA director George Tenet learned of Mr. El-Masri’s wrongful imprisonment but it was only in May after Secretary Rice learned of the situation that Mr. El-Masri was ordered released. On May 28, five months after his initial detention, and only after being forced to agree never to revel details of his detention, Mr. El-Masri was flown out of Afghanistan and released without any means of returning home or knowledge of the local language at night on the side of a road somewhere in rural Albania. With the assistance of the ACLU, Mr. El-Masri filed suit against George Tenet, but the government has dismissed the case and appeals on ‘national security grounds.’
Even if the highest levels of the US government are not involved or complicit with the extrajudicial kidnappings and torture taking place in such secret CIA detention centers (which seems a bit unlikely), they are complicit in the cover-up of such things and in the personal humiliation of an innocent German citizen. At the very least Rice and Tenant are responsible for hurting an innocent man for no other reason than to cover their own asses.
I have a lot of trouble understanding the supporters of the Bush administration. I hate to make broad generalizations, but it boggles my mind that the sorts of people who consider the right to bear arms as essential to their ability to counter government excess or the sorts of people who are all about the cult of Horatio Alger and keeping the government out of the way of an individual’s ability to make something of himself would be willing to support an administration that makes use of extra-judicial kidnapping and torture.
I have heard more than one person say things to the effect that ‘the government needs to take off the kid gloves to hunt terrorists, that torture is necessary but the government wouldn’t hurt an innocent man.’ People have been saying things like this as long as there has been governments, it has been a hallmark of tyrannies since the dawn of man to claim that even though the tyrant’s methods might seem suspect, they should be trusted because they are only trying to do the right thing or work for the greater good. One need go no farther than that great leftist, Madison, to see that trusting a bureaucracy to never make a mistake is a losing bet. This country was forged out of the mistrust of over powerful executive authorities and the desire for checks and balances to power. But trusting in the inerrancy of bureaucracy is exactly the sort of thing Bush supporters are asking me to do when they ask me to trust that they will know who and when to torture. This is idiocy and this is complicity with evil.
The facts on the ground are that this government has wrongly detained not just a handful, but many people (if you doubt this, look into just how many people have been released from Guantanamo) and while the U.S. government has been doing its best to cover up the extent of its use of torture, it seems hard to believe that many of these people who have been falsely detained have not been tortured. To me this does not seem like a very complicated issue. I do not understand how one could recognize that their government is torturing innocent people and feel anything other than morel outrage, yet Bush still has an approval rating of 31%. I personally find that number amazing. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 22nd, 2007|01:13 am] |
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Whoever told me that the school would not send out essey acceptance letters this year lied; I just got one! Someone actually caught me doing a victory flex/fist-pump (there has to be a word for it, but I’m sure you know what I am talking about) as I walked away from my mailbox. I can’t believe that they actually accepted an essay that covered nineteen works. This has to be some kind of St. John’s record. Suckers. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 19th, 2007|11:10 pm] |
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The Wagner seminar was actually way cooler than I was expecting. I think I have the makings of a pretty good Hegel/Nietzsche/Wagner essay, its just too bad I will never need to write it. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 18th, 2007|03:54 am] |
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I am sure that a plethora of drag ball related pictures of myself that are quite compromising will start poking up relatively soon. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 14th, 2007|09:29 pm] |
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Happy valentines day! I hope where ever you are you feel loved. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 12th, 2007|05:30 pm] |
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To make up for how great this weekend was I got to spend six hours today updating a database. Ugg. |
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