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recently I drove down the west coast of the US, on hwy 101, from the middle of washington state down past SF, before cutting through the desert to the far west suburbs of LA, where I now live. LA is probably the worst place in the whole world and I can't believe I will be living here for 6 fucking years. but the coast road is a beautiful beautiful drive (like, laughing-out-loud-to-yourself beautiful) and everyone should find a time to drive it someday.
The American West is such an awesome place (except LA. LA sucks).
One night I was camping about 100 miles north of the california border and got to see a man give a lecture about crabs. the next day I pulled across the golden gate bridge at sunset, which was really gorgeous, but it meant that I had to stay in SF and there was no camping anywhere near (should have quit earlier and stopped much further north of the city - take note of this if you are trying to travel by camping along west coast.)
I had to get a motel room which was expensive and sucked and the man who worked there told me that my car would probably get broken into because there are like 4billion car burglaries per night there apparently. then he asked me if I smoked weed. I said "no" but that was obviously not true so I said "why?" and he tried to sell me a vaporizer. I declined and he gave me trash bags to tape over the windows of my car (stuffed full of my possessions) so that the junkies would not try to get into it. luckily they did not.
I drove a little bit of the beach south of SF which was very sandy and blue, but had to veer off because the 101 would have taken me all the way the wrong way around LA. so I drove through some desert which they were watering heavily to grow orange trees or some ludicrous shit like that, and got here. which is just sort of boring and sprawly and corporate. At least it cools off at night here, unlike in texas. + Show Spoiler +also I'm going to miss living in Seattle and hanging out with farvacola
school has been interesting and stressful in various ways. it's weird how many people commute to school from far away in the Inland Empire. dunno how much i'm going to say about that here.+ Show Spoiler +yesterday a stressful thing happened because I forgot a meeting that I made with my advisor. but I think I might have wu-wei'd it into being an advantage. I was on campus for four hours reading while I waited for him and I forgot that I was waiting to meet with him. I just totally spaced on the meeting I had made with him, out of his normal office hours, right before our seminar. i could tell he was pretty pissed off (the story of my advisor is a different topic, but he's a very interesting guy, and extremely informal with students outside of school, which is great). but seminar is 3hrs long so I had to sit there feeling mortified. i was so fucking embarrassed. after seminar i went to the liquor store and got him a good bottle of scotch (he likes scotch) and left it on his porch (he often has grad students to his house and i got invited, so I knew where he lived). it was a well-executed apology and I think it worked out, at least I hope so. anyway, that was not the most fun day of my life, since this was the first meeting I had scheduled to make with him and he is an important person in my career...
it's basically a culture shock in a lot of ways. i'm trapped in the sprawl, which means that I almost can't avoid driving on a disturbingly regular basis (hate driving, hate cars). I can ride my bike to school, to a clinbing gym (got a membership, grip sucks, trying to rebuild my skills so I can try some more interesting problems... takes time), and to one poor/shitty and one lame/bourgeois shopping center. there is an organic food store with limited selection run by some christians (some of your more useful christians, them). Other than that I have to drive anywhere, including to the credit union and one street which has the best liquor store (the only place to buy beer wine or liquor) and the best coffee shop (impressively good - Lift Coffee, check them out), and also a chipotle. chipotle is the pinnacle achievement of corporate america.
been reading a bunch of books about ancient science in greece and china, pretty interesting topic. other than that classes are not that hard (although I still have to write seminar paper) - I am taking an overload. Got a placement credit for Latin, next quarter I have to start taking a two-quarter French reading proficiency course, + Show Spoiler +so maybe then I will be able to read corumjhaelen's status on fb without taking the whole morning (and i'm sure he says interesting stuff because that guy's awesome). It's embarrassing that he can speak my language but I can only mangle his, but then again that's what he gets for a) not being one of the master race and b) living in a country with a functional educational system
there's a girl in my department that I'm a little in love with, she is hot and arrogant and knows about hegel which is the definition of beauty. on the other hand I am not sure that getting involved with her would be the best idea and she is quite intimidating, frankly. I see her on campus frequently and last week she invited me to go out to the bar (with a group of other people) after seminar and I have her number. kinda want to wait and see. in other news I met a cute girl waiting outside the door of the same professor as I was, she is from another university but is writing her dissertation with my prof. she gave me a couple of recommendations for reading about political confucianism, and we have a coffee date on monday to talk about classical china, which is a thing that she knows way more about than I do which is ideal. she has to go back to singapore (she is american) in january, but that might be even better, come to think of it...
shoutout to KaiserKieran because he's the asshole who put me on the spot so I had to write a blog, because I didn't really plan to. everyone else you know who you are. bookthread uber alles
oh and the economy is totally fucked, this is the final crisis of the capitalist world system, everyone who disagrees is just in denial. get ready for the flood bitchez
+ Show Spoiler +my old apartment (sob) ![[image loading]](http://s17.postimg.org/6v394e39b/CIMG0034.jpg) a shitty picture of the coast ![[image loading]](http://s17.postimg.org/6ma9s7fun/CIMG0051.jpg) more shitty image of beautiful place ![[image loading]](http://s17.postimg.org/468gecxrz/CIMG0047.jpg)
 
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congratulations on 5k posts sam!zdat
oops force of habit, anyway it's good to see you're enjoying yourself!
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congrats.
I enjoyed very much the art of war. Eastern philosophies always caught my attention. Aldo i must admit i am pretty ignorant on the subject, that book i read cover to cover and over again.
Here's too a new era of prosperity for animals and humanity.
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what is hegel? tried googling and got nothing concrete
edit: oh nvm hegel has nothing to do with physical beauty silly me
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On October 24 2013 13:31 pebble444 wrote:
animals and humanity.
fuck animals. apparently this new thing in the academy is animal studies which is like identity politics for animals. I don't really care about animals, except that we shouldn't torture them like sick fucks because it reflects badly on us.
On October 24 2013 13:52 Smurfett3 wrote:
what is hegel? tried googling and got nothing concrete
edit: oh nvm hegel has nothing to do with physical beauty silly me
http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/texts/royce - hegel apend c.htm 
she is super fine but the hegel has nothing to do with that aspect of it. it's more the conjuncture which is extremely rare and utterly intoxicating. she makes it difficult for me to think straight
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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
I'm glad that you have come to hate LA as much as I have.
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On October 24 2013 14:12 Souma wrote:
I'm glad that you have come to hate LA as much as I have.
it didn't take long, trust me
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5/5, you need to blog more.
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On October 24 2013 14:07 sam!zdat wrote:fuck animals. apparently this new thing in the academy is animal studies which is like identity politics for animals. I don't really care about animals, except that we shouldn't torture them like sick fucks because it reflects badly on us.
man, thats not cool.
good blog tho.
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Animal studies, good lord. I do agree about what you say it reflecting poorly on ourselves, that is Zizek’s line if I recall and seems the most sensible approach.
I read this morning in the Fortean Times about proposed concerns over post-traumatic stress disorder in ghosts in a study concluding that ‘a dead person “does not like to talk, remember, and/or explain things related to his/her own death because there is evidence that many events related to death are repressed in his/her unconscious (post-mortem cognitive repression)” and that “as dying can be very traumatic, especially in the murdered […] PTSD may even develop.”’
Needless to so this was criticised in the Australian Journal of Parapsychology as ‘unfalsifiable’.
Gratz on 5k. I am overdue for a contribution to the book thread.
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<3
Although that does mean I'll have to write interesting fb status from now on :/
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On October 24 2013 22:17 evanthebouncy! wrote:
share some pics man!
i took a few pictures of the coast on my phone. not really a camera person. i will see if i can figure out how to upload them
On October 24 2013 22:03 Deleuze wrote:
that is Zizek’s line if I recall and seems the most sensible approach.
it's just obvious for anyone who isn't so bamboozled by play-radicalism that they think it is cool and transgressive to be "post-humanist." You don't have to abandon humanism or play stupid games about nominalism and fuzzy category boundaries in order to oppose animal cruelty.
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On October 25 2013 00:53 sam!zdat wrote:i took a few pictures of the coast on my phone. not really a camera person. i will see if i can figure out how to upload them Show nested quote +On October 24 2013 22:03 Deleuze wrote:
that is Zizek’s line if I recall and seems the most sensible approach.
it's just obvious for anyone who isn't so bamboozled by play-radicalism that they think it is cool and transgressive to be "post-humanist." You don't have to abandon humanism or play stupid games about nominalism and fuzzy category boundaries in order to oppose animal cruelty.
Certainly, what I find refreshing it that Zizek's approach to animal cruelty isn't about the animal or what the animal feels per se, its about what it makes us.
I remember listening to a podcast of Zizek at the Birkbeck critical theory summer school where he talked openly about seeing a photo of a cat that had been subjected to immense force in a centrifuge such that most of its bones had broken and even its fur had been stripped from its skin (why such an experiment was necessary is beyond me). In the photo however that cat is alive - though in obvious pain - and stares with a vacant expression directly at the lens; Zizek asks, what kind of monster am I to this cat?
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plus cats are among the most sadistic fucks on gods green earth. So there's that. Is 'animal studies' prepared to hold animals to the ethical standards to which they want to hold humans visavis animals? Is that even coherent?
but ok no more talk about animal studies I'm sick of this whole topic
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Haha, of course - god forbid the animals get opposable thumbs.
Going out camping in the American West much be such an awesome experience. When I was 15 my parents took my brothers and I on a coast to coast drive through the US. One night we stayed in the badlands and there was the biggest lightening storm I have ever seen in my life, and we woke up with our tent floating in a small lake. It was classic, we had just two cassette tapes to last us three weeks, the Led Zeppelin BBC Sessions and the Best of the Grateful Dead.
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On October 25 2013 05:29 sam!zdat wrote:
lol damn hippies
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You lived in seattle as well... o.O
Gl with your studies! And write a gb next time.
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EPT
