is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Let me tell you about Kant.
On Saturday Gus and I were at a cafe in Philly getting some work done. It was staffed by a hipster guy with a really aggressive affected-tousle hairstyle. The music he was playing was appropriately challenging. It wasn't terrible, it was just terribly distracting. But he turned it down and then changed it to Feist, so that was OK. I was reading articles, trying to figure out which ones I should require my students to read for the course I'm teaching on the Philosophy of Rights. My new job starts TOMORROW.
Then a couple of affected-tousle's friends stopped by and they started talking. They started talking about knowledge and how you get it. It sounded supremely idiotic. It wasn't even naively cute or promising, their conversation. Just idiotic. Then they turned to philosophy, and philosophers, and it was really really embarrassing/funny (as in, ugh, are any of them aware that they just said any of those things out LOUD?). Topics included why Kant is lame and stupid (apparently Kant is lame and stupid because his philosophy is difficult to read) and Sartre's lazy eye. Also: have there ever been any attractive philosophers? (I wanted to volunteer Wittgenstein or the young Heidegger, or Judith Butler, but also did not at all want to get involved with the conversation.) It kept getting worse and worse. Finally, Gus leaned over and said to me, "I feel like we're in an episode of 'The Real World' that was created just for us, and I really don't want to watch it right now." I laughed wholeheartedly, packed up my bag. We marched out of there and went straight to the magical store where there are beers from all over the world and you can buy one of each of your chosen beers for the day, and put it in a mixed six-pack. It's magical because it's so hard to buy liquor in Pennsylvania, and then there's this easy beer store on a nondescript corner in Center City Philly, where you can buy single beers instead of a CASE.
In other news, last week I was at a meeting of a professional society and, in one of the panel discussions, one of the panelist-guys kept talking while another guy was talking, kind of echoing the first guy, so it was like watching The View. I think 2nd guy was "confirming" what 1st guy was saying, but the result was that no one could understand either one of them. 2nd guy made me feel unsettled. Like I wanted to interrupt and say, "DUDE, you are totally freaking me out with your apparent inability to follow social cues!" But then I figured maybe he has some disorder which involves him not being able to pick up on social cues.
Perhaps that is also true of everyone on The View?
I'm currently really in to L.A. Ink. There just isn't anything wrong at all with hot tattooed ladies who like to dress like pin-up girls on occasion, and who tattoo other people and wear crazy clothes.
8:43 p.m. - August 27, 2007
josiah leet - 2007-08-27 21:28:56
I have seen many things through Sartre's lazy eye, he and I share a slightly similar occular slant so I've been told by opt'metrist... evidently, those trendy young sods have yet to savvy their own nausea...truly sad, in a way, that you and the Gus were front seat to all of that bluster and nonsense.
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