Cave Monks

In Georgia, I visited some monks. They live in the Caucasus Mountains, which look like this:
Fifteen hundred years ago, they lived in caves that look like this:
With paintings on the walls like this:
And this:
Now their monastery looks like this:
They're still living in the same place and still using many of the caves that their predecessor cave monks dug into the side of the mountain centuries ago. They have a windmill now for electricity, but still. It takes gumption. Georgia cave monks must eat a lot of buttermilk biscuits.

2 Vast 2 Spurious

When I am a senior, I will write an honors thesis. I will call it
"2 Vast 2 Spurious: A Postmodern Feminist Critique of Objectivism in an Absurdist Paradigm." I will make you read it. Then I will make you tell me what you thought.
HA!

Bangs 2

This is a picture of my bangs for those of you who expressed curiosity about them. They weren't in my eyes when I first cut them, but now they are.

How the Walrus Got His Tusks

How the Walrus Got His Tusks

Well done

I was recently at The Attic a nice old bar with a familiar smell and shape to it. It was Monday night and they always have five dollar burgers on Monday night (for future reference.) I often order burgers well done because it is fun to say, but my order came back to be RARE! Now this was not infuriating can't complain about a 3 dollar price break. What occurred to me was that this always happens. Every Restaurant at which I order my burger well done, comes back rare. This to me calls for a name change, why do they even call it rare, let's call it common or not-done. It is definitely not rare. On a brighter note Stephen Colberts new book is out I Am America: And So Can You in which he adequately demonstrates abundant stupidites throughout our great nation.
including but not limited to:
The family, old people, animals, religion, sports, sex & dating, homosexuals, higher education, hollywood, the media, class wars, race, immigrants and science.
proving things are really only as funny as you can make them...
He makes them hilarious.

Dispatches From the Buckland Basement: 1.8

There will soon come a time in your innocent little life, dear reader, when you will have to make a very important decision.

You will be spending your Thanksgiving break at MIT, eating turkey cooked by geeks and cranberries out of a can. You will be planning on taking the bus back to your own school on Sunday night, being conscientiously terrified of the possibility of missing a single one of your Monday morning classes. You will compact all of your clothes and books back into your big grey duffel bag. You will check under the bed. You will make sure that you aren't forgetting your toothbrush.

And then, dear reader, something will be brought to your attention. This will happen purely by accident, but it will put an unapologetic kink in the hectically unexamined life you have been leading over the course of the fall semester.

You will happen to spy, dear readers, a flier for a talk that Noam Chomsky is giving on Tuesday. Your sweet little heart will leap with anticipation as you imagine seeing your favorite lefty linguist in person and listening to him talk with your effervescent admiration unimpeded by the intermediary of National Public Radio.

Immediately thereafter, your poor fickle heart will drop, as you imagine Professor Wartenberg's face scrunching unnaturally with frustration and disappointment while he asks you why you missed two days of class.

This will possibly be, dear reader, the most difficult decision you will have ever been faced with. You will learn for the first time that your professors and the things that your professors profess are not the same. Your professors are not simply embodiments of knowledge. They are not just the sum total of the ideas that they impart to you. Your professors are people with feelings that get hurt when you ditch class or turn in a stupid paper or make fun of their plaid jacket behind their back. And this will be the time when you must choose between the professors and the ideas.

Professor Wartenberg tells you that you are always free, whether you want to be or not, and that doing things simply because it's what other people want or expect is a pathetic way to go about living your life. He also tells you that, by confronting the fact that you're going to die, possibly soon, you can lead an authentic life. But what Professor Wartenberg wants, dear reader, is for you to get to his Existentialism class every Monday and Wednesday morning at or before 8:35, turn in a five-to-seven page-double-spaced-twelve-point-font-paper every now and then, and not make too much noise, because it's early.

He does not care whether you become fully conscious of the freedom you inherently possess as a human being. He does not care whether you live an authentic life. He does, however, decide what your grade will be at the end of the semester. And you will have to decide for yourself how much that matters to you, because sometimes the unfortunate truth is that getting an A in Existentialism and being a good Existentialist are mutually exclusive eventualities.

I'm sorry that life is so full of hard choices, dear reader. If I could make it easier for you, I would. If I could help you choose, I would do that too, but this choice will be essentially and necessarily yours. I just thought you ought to be warned.

Turkeys

As some of you may be aware an American holiday widely known as "Thanksgiving" occurred recently. It consists of an annual systematic genocide of the countries turkey population and the use of other agricultural abundances during this season. Well, thanks to our brave democracy in the wonderful United States our leader, the President proudly looked past tradition and allowed two turkeys to live. Yes, President Bush in his kindness and loving nature Pardoned two turkeys before thanksgiving so they would not be condemned to the fate of the rest of their families. Hopefully no one saw that while they were sitting in prison.
Well, too bad - C.B.S. ran the story for two hours straight and just happens to be one of the only channels allowed in most prisons. I felt this was worth mentioning because a friend of mine missed his Thanksgiving dinner to watch this in Jail after getting arrested for violating a court order which outlawed the action of feeding people who live in trees to protest their logging.
Yes, searched and arrested for allegedly feeding people.
Almost a violation of the fourth amendment. Oh right, the fourth amendment was practically nullified in 2001 when the USA Patriot Act went through congress in a matter of hours.

Imagine how many people are being put in prison or killed right now for being "suspected terrorists" due to their ethnic background or anti-authoritarian behavior.
Democracy truly prevails and "the decider" wins again as these wonderful Turkeys survive another Thanksgiving and the death toll rises in the middle east.

Call your congressmen.

So Juvenile and Definitely Not about Economics

A hooker was walking with Superman
Through a rain-spattered Paris one day.
Superman said "You got time for a lay?"
She said "This time, you've got to pay.

You didn't last week
Or the month before that,
And the phone company canceled my service today.
I have children to feed, bills to pay,
And on top of everything
My boyfriend decided he's gay."

Superman let out a sigh
As she tried not to cry.
Then she screamed in alarm
For he'd zapped off her arm
With a laser from out of his eye.

Things Teenagers Do

1) Run around in the snow wearing flipflops and little shorts that say stuff on the butt.

2) Fight with their parents.

3) Experiment with their sexuality.

4) Dye their hair funky colors.

5) Read The Catcher in the Rye.

6) Contemplate the sheer awesomeness of being them.

7) Get all angsty about how maybe life is meaningless and nothing matters and they aren't the awesomest thing in the universe after all, then realize they are thinking very deep thoughts which no one else thinks, because everyone besides them is shallow and stupid.

8) Contemplate the awesomeness of being them.

9) Watch Mean Girls.

Now let's see how many of these I can get done before midnight, when my ontological state shifts from that of being-nominally-a-teenager to that of being-nominally-an-adult.

The Bachelor

A few nights ago, I had a dream that I was on ABC's reality dating show, The Bachelor. Coincidentally, the season finale of The Bachelor was on tonight, so I decided to watch it. It was just about the saddest darn thing I ever saw. For those of you who haven't been keeping up with the show, here's what happened:

After six weeks, Brad Womack has narrowed down his group of twenty-five bachelorettes to the final two, Jenni and DeAnna. They are both conventionally attractive brunettes who've had nothing better to do with the past six weeks than humiliate themselves on cable, so it's no surprise that Brad, our handsome Texas millionaire, is having so much trouble choosing one of them. We're just impressed that he can tell them apart!
Brad goes on a final date with each woman. DeAnna makes him dinner and then tells him she's falling in love with him. Then Jenni makes him dinner and tells him she's falling in love with him. Brad goes shopping for an engagement ring. Who will he pick?
We think our curiosity is about to be sated, as Brad stands on top of a decorative lump of concrete on a grassy hill with the final rose laying on a tiny corinthian column next to him. Jenni gets out of a limo and walks up to him. We hold our breath. He says some nice things about her, and then...he dumps her! She walks off in tears.
DeAnna gets out of the limo and walks up to him. He says some nice things about her and tells her he dumped Jenni. DeAnna's eyes glow with vicious triumph, and then... Brad walks off! He paces and walks around in circles. He comes back to DeAnna and... tells her he doesn't love her!

Poor Brad. Poor Bachelorettes. So many tears. After six weeks, he has not been able to decide who he wants to spend the rest of his life with. If reality TV can't find his soul mate for him, I'm afraid Brad is doomed to die alone. But the question on all our minds is surely... will Brad be back for the next season of The Bachelor?

Metacookie

I ate an oreo cookie today, but it wasn't like a normal oreo cookie. Someone mashed up a bunch of oreos, made cookie dough out of them, and baked it into cookies. Then I ate one. It was awesome.

Philosophy Day

I know Philosophy day was supposed to be Thursday, but I've had all these papers and registration times and roommate mediations. I know you're disappointed, but I'll try to make it up to you. Today, instead of telling you about one philosophy major, I'll do two!

It might not seem at first like David Duchovny and Pope John Paul II have much in common. David Duchovny is the sexy star of The X-Files, and Pope John Paul II is dead. However upon closer examination, they may be more alike than we all suspected.

David Duchovny was born in New York City in 1960. As an undergrad, he majored in Philosophy at Princeton and wrote his senior thesis on The Schizophrenic Critique of Pure Reason in Beckett's Early Novels. He went on to Yale for a Master's in English Literature, and he started work on a PhD that he never finished. Tragically, in 1997, he married Tea Leoni and proceeded to have two children with her. He named his second child Kyd, and his filmography includes such classic as Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead and Space: Above and Beyond.

Pope John Paul II was born in 1920 in Poland. According to CNN, he may have been the only pope to have his life portrayed in a comic book. He went to Krakow to study Philosophy and Literature at Jagiellonian University in 1938. He also joined an experimental theater troupe. In spite of the Nazi occupation, he managed to get two MAs and even finish his doctorate. During his reign as Pope, he was known for speaking against Communism, kissing babies, and canonizing people like he was running out of saints.

So you see? Philosophy majors are really all the same. Happy Philosophy Day!

My Week So Far

Me: Shoo bee doo wapiddy bee doo bee shoo bee doo wap.
Roommate: Die die die!
Me: Yikes!
Professor W___: You must confront the inevitability of your death in order to live an authentic life. I should have been a physicist.
Heidegger: Hyphen hyphen hyphen.
Me: What should I do with my life?
Karl Marx: Exchange value and the fetishism of commodities and variable capital and ROBOTS!
Professor W___: Would you ask a marker what it wants to be when it grows up? No. That's because it's essence precedes its existence.
Me: No, professor W___ , I wouldn't ask a marker what it wants to be when it grows up, because I don't talk to markers.
Heidegger: Hyphen hyphen hyphen.

Defensive

I don't care what anyone says. 'Beauty and the Geek' is a classy, intelligent, and entertaining show with psychological depth up the wazoo. However, if the next season doesn't have female geeks, I'm going to stop watching.

Also, the day after tomorrow is the penultimate Thursday of the month, and I'm sure you all remember what that means...Philosophy Day! Tune in to find out which Philosophy major we will be honoring for November.

WWMMD?

A very wise person once told me that eating salad with your fingers does not conform to the standards of common etiquette, and it is with this stinging critique in mind that I have formulated today's "B"RFO question. If you are the first person to answer correctly, you will be entitled to a gold star (ten gold stars are redeemable for an all-expenses-paid cruise to the Caribbean) and a free one year membership to "B"RFO. So with no further ado, the question is...

If a train traveling east at sixty miles per hour collides with a train traveling west at twenty-two miles per hour, which fork does Miss Manners use to eat her first course at dinner?

Paranoia

I think I'm succumbing to paranoia
Last night I was chased by a giant sequoia
This morning a fellow named Montoya
Followed me, hiding behind an uprooted soya

So distressed was I that I moved to Nagoya
Where we all rolled over and one fell off
There were seven thousand, two hundred, and eleven on the bed
And we all yelled
"Salt, salt, salt," at Jimmy Buffet, because he's old
The scene was immortalized in a painting by Goya

Excerpt

NaNoWriMo takes a quantity over quality approach to writing. You simply won't have time to finish your 50,000 words in 30 days if you think about what you're writing as you go along. Trying to cram as many words as possible into as little time as possible leads some people to write sentences like this:

One day, Oliver, the strongest and sweetest cup of Earl Grey tea to have recently returned from the dead, was meditating in his favorite spot on his favorite tuft of grass under his favorite cork tree next to his favorite chrysanthemum, and the world, if he had been thinking about it instead of meditating, would have seemed very nice indeed, when all of a sudden his meditation, because he must not have been meditating very hard after all, was interrupted by a biscuit, the English kind that’s actually a cookie, grazing its way over to him through the clump of flowering bushes that framed the front of his hermit-cave so prettily.

I just thought you all might like to know that my NaNo is progressing slowly and disjointedly. It's day 9, and I'm already 4000 words behind, so I hope you feel better about yourselves, knowing that even my superior awesomeness falls short of perfection.

Having Just Watched 'Stranger than Fiction'

I can be your auditor
And you can be be auditee
I'll take you where we'll be alone
To muse over the oddity

Of how new skis relate to work
Or why the Gap's a charity
Of how your eyes are cute and blue
Or the fetishism of my commodity

When my buddies at the IRS
Threaten to tell my boss on me
I'll stick your receipts right up their ass
And yell something vaguely obscene about how professionalism
is overrated

Revelation

Nicole Richie's father is black!?!

Disclaimer

The opinions and mathematical calculations expressed on the "blog" are solely those of the individual contributor and do not reflect the opinions or mathematical calculations of the "blog" or its affiliates.

post 100

There is nothing wrong with the mercury content of fish these days, it's all in your perception really.
The other day I ate enough sushi to accurately tell the temperature.

Thought I had more to say but nothing lives up to the fact that we have accomplished a mile marker of 100 posts!

With that said we would like to thank and coongratulate all of the loving participants for the persistence and consideration toward reading this blog and we hope to bring you more of the same quality you expect and deserve.

As a tribute to this special occasion we ask our readers to comment with any hopes or concerns about this already highly acclaimed on-line series.

Thank you for participating and thank you for reading;
The Essential Works of Julia Uhr and Michael King

sincerely,
Maya Dentity

Massachusetts

One thing I've learned about Massachusetts is how it's spelled. Another thing I've learned is that, when it rains in Massachusetts, it pours, and when it pours, your roommate makes you go out in the rain to buy new sheets, because yours got stolen from summer storage, and you've been using her extra ones, which she now wants back, even though she still hasn't given you that sixty bucks you loaned her like two months ago.

Furthermore, I'm working on a fairly self-contained chunk of The Pirate's Wench right now, so you can look forward to reading that in the next couple of days. However, I feel I should warn you before hand that there is no sex. There is no groping, licking, ogling, or footsie playing. There is also no underage alcohol consumption, smoking, or il/licit use of controlled substances.
You needn't be too disappointed though, because there is a bit of dancing. If you're the parents from Footloose, it'll definitely get you riled up.

It's Guy Fawkes Day, and the Pope is Still Dead.

Remember remember the fifth of November
The day when I gave myself bangs
Because I'd rather dismember
A kitten in a blender
Than listen to pseudo-phrenological harangues

Since Democracy is Clearly Overrated...

I decided to go with The Pirate's Wench: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Romance. But don't stick your fingers in your mouths and pretend to gag yet. I registered it as a genre novel in the 'thriller/horror' category. To prove that my novel is not in any way mushy, here is the ending to one of the stories:

“Fuck those misleading ass holes on the Discovery Channel’s original series, Myth Busters!” You yell as your life drains out of the hole in the top of your head, percolates through your hair, and oozes into the dirt where it leeches into the ground water to be consumed by everyone who doesn’t filter their tap water.

Monogamy and Rodentia

It occurs to me that if you are reading this, chances are you are already disappointed, because I am not Julia. Coincidentally, me too. However, I thought I'd share with you some of the epic knowledge bestowed unto me through the magical lesson vessel some of you may identify as the television. I call it professor.
It was after nine o'clock and I was late for my lecture on the animated future, when the Discovery channel interrupted with cute footage of beavers.
Here are some gems of knowledge I feel necessary to pass on:

Beavers are included in a surprising 3% of all mammals which remain with a single mate through out life. (no humans are not members)

Beavers are 2nd to Human in environment manipulation, and often compete for the opportunity. Damming drainage tubes and flooding sidewalks among other methods of letting us know they are still here (necessary).

Their front teeth never stop growing.

They produce oils for the purpose of waterproofing and marine-dynamics.

In conclusion Beavers are natural wonders and marvelous example of evolutions better accomplishments.

This Star is Dedicated to Hargobind.

Another Chance to Win

The first person who can come up with a good explanation of why this argument is wrong will win a gold star and a free "B"RFO membership:

If horrible events, like the Holocaust, lead a person to believe that the world is absurd and meaningless, it would be silly for that person to commit suicide for that reason, because by doing so, he would be saying that living in an absurd and meaningless world means that life is not worth living. If life is not worth living, horrible events, like the Holocaust, would not be depriving their victims of anything worthwhile by killing them, and horrible events, like the Holocaust, would therefore not be so bad after all, and he would have no good basis for the opinion that the world is absurd and meaningless.