Seth's Adventures into Fandom

thedailywhat: Movie Trailer of the Day: Jack Kerouac’s...

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 12:53:34 -0400

Movie Trailer of the Day: Jack Kerouac’s bestseller finally will make it to the big screen after years in development — and a perfectly timed scandal from star Kristen Stewart.

On the Road, starring KStew, Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley, Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams, Kirsten Dunst, and Terrence Howard, hits theaters December 21.

[bestweekever]

I can’t decide if I’m going to see this movie. When you read a good book you imagine things so vividly— you can just see the characters and the cars and the landscapes. Sometimes you see things not quite as they are described, or you flesh out the details not provided for you, but somehow it’s more real that way. After you see the film adaptation, you can never fully imagine it the same way again.

I first read On the Road in the eighth grade and then feverishly made my way through the rest of Kerouac’s works, then Ginsburg and Burroughs, then Gary Snyder. This then led me to existentialism. Which led me to absurdism. Which led me to nihilism. What I’m saying is that even though I wouldn’t count this in probably even my top 25 favorite books, it had a profound impact on the direction of my life. And I’m not sure it’s worth potentially ruining that.

Via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal …applicable to any...

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 12:24:01 -0400

Via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

…applicable to any number of topics.

astroprojection: im-a-chemical-kidd: pink-macarooons: cutest...

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 17:55:44 -0400

astroprojection:

im-a-chemical-kidd:

pink-macarooons:

cutest thing ever! Matt Grevers proposed to his girlfriend, another athlete, at the olympic trials

the guy in the background of the second gif tho

#that guy in the bg just saw his otp become canon

that tag.

mymostpreciouslife: adamantium-tauntaun: paperskeleton: poobut...

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 14:04:27 -0400

mymostpreciouslife:

adamantium-tauntaun:

paperskeleton:

poobuttface:

suddenlyapples:

zahzu:

…. PBS ACTUALLY DID THIS. THEY POSTED AN AUTOTUNED BOB ROSS SONG.

Even though I will never understand HOW he can make his brush do amazing things like that… THIS IS STILL STUPIDLY INSPIRATIONAL.

GUYS, I WANNA PAINT SOME HAPPY TREES.

THIS MAY JUST BE MY FAVORITE POST ON TUMBLR NOW

WOW

This reminds me of the Symphony of Science videos which are awesome. Just sayin.

This is the single best thing I have ever seen, so many memories. Inspirational. A+

Oh my word! Happy little clouds =) I’m half crying…

This is just great.

The most elementary and valuable statement in science, the...

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 13:53:20 -0400

The most elementary and valuable statement in science, the beginning of wisdom, is ” I do not know.”

-Data

fuckmaniknowbuthey: Retta is the queen of reaction faces

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 13:43:30 -0400

fuckmaniknowbuthey:

Retta is the queen of reaction faces

"It is a curious emotion, this certain homesickness I have in mind. With Americans, it is a national..."

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 15:03:17 -0400

“It is a curious emotion, this certain homesickness I have in mind. With Americans, it is a national trait, as native to us as the roller-coaster or the jukebox. It is no simple longing for the home town or country of our birth. The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.”

- Carson McCullers

I like this because it validates my longing for American...

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 07:05:26 -0400

I like this because it validates my longing for American measurements while I’m over here.

Or, of course, if I’m in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I...

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:20:37 -0400

Or, of course, if I’m in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV’s and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, 40-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children’s children will despise us for wasting all the future’s fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.

You get the idea.

If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn’t have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It’s the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I’m operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world’s priorities.

The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it’s not impossible that some of these people in SUV’s have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.

Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket’s checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.

Again, please don’t think that I’m giving you moral advice, or that I’m saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it’s hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won’t be able to do it, or you just flat out won’t want to.

But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.

They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn’t sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don’t just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

“This is water.”

“This is water.”

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

I wish you way more than luck.”

So… I am currently sitting in the airport waiting to board a flight to London. I am going to...

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 17:08:09 -0400

So… I am currently sitting in the airport waiting to board a flight to London.

I am going to be studying abroad in Cambridge, UK for the next three months. I will be studying economics with 24 other students from my college at Cambridge University, with classes being taught by both professors from my college and Cambridge economics professors. The classes I will be taking are:

Contemporary British Economy
Economics of Multinational Enterprises
The Life of J.M. Keynes
The Industrial Revolution in Britain

We will be living in Hughes Hall for the majority of the summer, but with a week at Homerton College. I wanted to do a study abroad through my college specifically because direct enrollment seemed too daunting, especially for an introverts such as myself, and the programs that aren’t affiliated with colleges are not academically rigorous. My college’s programs are notoriously difficult for study abroad academics, so we’ll see how this goes!

The trip starts in London where we will spend three days. We then move on to spend three days in Brussels, meeting with members of the EU and visiting several multinational companies, and then we move on to Paris for three days, where we will mostly be doing touristy things. We then settle into Cambridge and into summer classes. We will take a trip to Shrewsbury at some point in July and we have a week of independent travel in the middle, where I plan on going to Italy to visit one of my good friends. She is living in San Remo, but I also want to visit Florence if possible. We have rail passes to go anywhere in the UK so I am going to try and go up to Scotland some weekends, as well as getting into London proper to explore the city.

I will also be going to see some of the Olympic games. Right now, I am definitely going to the Japan v. Sweden and Canada v. S. Africa women’s soccer games, but I might get tickets to some other events.

I’m really excited for this experience, but I also feel like it hasn’t really hit me yet (and I’m sitting in the airport enjoying complimentary wifi as I type this!). I visited London (with a brief stint in Paris) for 10 days back in the fourth grade, but that has been the extent of my European travel. We are also expected to be relatively independent on this trip. For example, they just gave us a stipend for food, some entrance fees to museums, some funds for independent travel, etc. and we are expected to budget for the entire three months. I realize this shouldn’t be difficult for a group of economics majors, but I dunno, I’m still nervous. What if I blow all my money on beer in the first week?

To all of my ten followers— and that is only a slight under-exaggeration— as of right now I am planning on writing some thoughts on this main blog. I feel weird doing one of those blogs that you link to your Facebook with all of your travel updates and photos… Seems too voyeuristic to me. Sharing with complete strangers is totally better.

I will tag everything with “study abroad” though, so if you are completely bored by my thoughts/travelogue type writing, feel free to do that thing where you ignore that tag. Also, if any of my ten followers live in the UK and have advice of things I have to do or see or visit, please, please, please let me know! I am completely making this up as I go along!

Cheers! See you all in the UK!

I was trying to explain the plot of the iconic TNG episode, “Darmok,” to my mom and...

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 17:49:30 -0400

I was trying to explain the plot of the iconic TNG episode, “Darmok,” to my mom and brother. I got really into telling them the whole plot line, and about how moving the episode is, but maybe three minutes into my explanation my mom stopped me and said, “Seth, I’m glad you like the show, but I’m pretty sure this is why they invented Star Trek Conventions.” Welp.

Photo

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 21:57:36 -0400

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a..."

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 14:16:14 -0400

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.”

- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Thank you for leaving behind what you did.
—Daisy

‘Fahrenheit 451’ Author Ray Bradbury Dies At 91

(via npr)

Separation

Mon, 14 May 2012 01:16:00 -0400

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

-W.S. Merwin

virginiachance: Good news, son. You have just won a Ron Swanson...

Sun, 13 May 2012 02:24:50 -0400

virginiachance:

Good news, son. You have just won a Ron Swanson scholarship.

Photo

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:59:21 -0400

Consent

Sat, 12 May 2012 04:28:18 -0400

Tonight I was at a bar with a bunch of my friends. A great band from school was playing upstairs, a bunch of young alums were back for alumni weekend, and everyone was drinking and having a good time. I ran into a pretty good friend of mine (let’s call her Ellen) and she was really drunk— not to the point where I thought she was going to puke or anything, but probably one of the drunkest people in the bar.

I was talking with one of my friends by a window when I saw her making out with some guy (let’s call him David). I was reasonably surprised because she has been hooking up with a guy (let’s call him Thomas) for a while now and I thought they were either exclusive or something like it. About ten minutes later Ellen came up to my friend and me and started talking about how upset she was because she thought Thomas didn’t like her, that she had very sincere feelings for him and didn’t think they were reciprocated. I spent some time trying to talk to her, but she was just too drunk to really comprehend and fully process the logic of what we were saying. Then she asked if we thought she should hook up with David. We both told her we thought it wasn’t a good idea— both because of her personal relationship with Thomas and because she was really, really drunk. She didn’t listen to us and said, I’m just going to go hook up with David anyway. I heard David tell her they should go back to his place.

Now, as her friend, I thought she probably shouldn’t hook up with David in general, because it is my opinion that Thomas does like her. But as a human being who was sober enough to realize what was going on, I was particularly worried because she was so drunk— too drunk to really give consent. I didn’t know David, but Ellen is my friend, so I asked someone to please distract her for a few minutes and I went to talk to David.

I walked up to him and just said, “Hey, I really think that Ellen is too drunk to give consent tonight and I don’t think it would be a good idea to go home with her.” At first he was somewhat defensive. He said some things to the effect of: “I don’t even know you. Who are you?” and “Ellen and I’ve hooked up before.” I told him, “I know you don’t know me, I’m just a friend of Ellen’s. I’m sure you all have hooked up before, but I still don’t think that she is sober enough to give real consent.” At this point he looked over at her maybe 20 feet away (where she was obviously pretty drunk) and said, “Yeah, I mean, I don’t want to be that guy, I just…” I said, “I know, I know. I’m sure you’re a good guy and I know you want to do the right thing. I would just strongly suggest that you do not hook up with her tonight.” At this point he actually said to me, “I actually really appreciate you coming to talk to me. I know it’s really hard to say this to someone.” We shook hands and I left to go talk to Ellen and my other friend. Ellen was still debating whether or not she wanted to hook up with David. First she would say she didn’t want to, then she would bring up Thomas, then she would say she was just going to do it. She wasn’t making a ton of sense though as she was drunk.

Finally, she just said fuck it, I’m going to see David (imagine this said very drunkenly) and left. David had left after our conversation, so I don’t actually know what happened. In my head, I hope that David had internalized our conversation, and even if Ellen did catch up with him, he would understand just how drunk she was. Certainly too drunk to give meaningful consent. And despite his suggestion to the contrary, prior consent doesn’t mean consent now. If someone is ambivalent about hooking up with you, just don’t do it. If it’s really something that both of you want to do, you can do it tomorrow night.

Talking to David was hard— I didn’t know the guy and he is a year older than me (though, to my personal credit, I could take him in a fight)— but I think it was the right thing to do. Maybe Ellen will be mad at me tomorrow, but I would rather have talked to him than spend hours, days, years, ruminating on what I could have done to intervene. I also think men have a hard time talking to other guys about this stuff. You don’t want to be a “cock block” or anything of the sort, but at the end of the day, standing up for your friends when they are not in a position to do so for themselves is more important than your reputation. As a man who feels physically safe because of a number of factors—gender, size, strength, athleticism, etc.— I feel I particularly have the obligation to step in where someone else might not feel empowered to do so.

I hope everything works out. I hope that Ellen isn’t mad— or worse, hurt. I hope that David feels that he made the right decision and will have an easier time navigating consent while drinking in the future.

"If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a..."

Tue, 01 May 2012 17:32:41 -0400

“If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather. Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side.
It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.”

- Stephen Fry (via misswallflower)

As someone who has suffered from both clinical and situational depression, I mostly agree with this, with some caveats. Not all depression is “curable” or “fixable,” and certainly not in the immediate sense. But depression can be improved for many people, whether it is through therapy, medication, or other non-traditional means. You have to learn to say it out loud though: “I’m depressed. I need some type of help.” Then tell people. Tell someone or someones that you need their help. Or tell them that you need their accountability to get that help.

There comes a time though when someone refuses to get help even when you offer it to them. They will not (or can not) help themselves, even with your repeated support. Sometimes, in those situations— and I have very recently been in one—it no longer becomes kind or noble to be their friend in that way. You must learn to be their friend in a different way, or perhaps not their friend at all. This is hard. And it is hard to distinguish between the situation where you need to be someone’s friend while they are depressed— even if they are not a great friend right then— and the situation where you are actually enabling their inability to get help. It is important, at least for me, to know that friendships that hurt you, that tax your existence, and that do not offer positive benefits do not have to be continued. Your wellbeing as a non-depressed person does not need to always come behind the wellbeing of a depressed person.

I used to watch this show all the time with my mom when I was...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 13:12:47 -0400

I used to watch this show all the time with my mom when I was little and Johnny Depp’s interview was always one of my favorites.

funniest10k: The two most awkward hugs in the history of...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 09:37:08 -0400

funniest10k:

The two most awkward hugs in the history of mankind. Sheldon Cooper and Voldemort.

This is actually how I hug people.