He could at least get off your lawn.
It's like these kids today don't even have a word for dolce far niente.
What with all the cognitive benefits of boredom he's probably getting smarter by the minute, too, the little brat.
I couldn't even remember the feeling of having a whole summer free.
Up til 16 and legal work age, I did. Chores, family vacations, odd jobs and babysitting, but mostly free time.
5: But what did it feel like, Bob?
I guess I'll be the first european to come and say that that's insane. Cause it is.
Harold Von Braunhut, the inventor and seller of sea monkeys and x-ray specs channeled much of the profits channeled a lot of the profits to the American Nazi Party and similar organizations, despite being jewish.
Link">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Artemia_salina.jpg">Link.
6:Don't remember really, which is the point and purpose of unstructured time, I suppose. Walking in sunshine, warm summer showers, west coast baseball on the radio. Wasn't bored, tho a lot of my friends were.
There were comments here recently about Huckleberry Fin in Mongolia Afghanistan, and elsewhere. When I was a kid my summers were unscheduled and only very loosely supervised.
I was just saying to my two sisters (the "Fuck off the Pounds" sisters) that it was a lot more fun then pretending to be an adult than it ever was being an adult.
I'm looking forward to my impending law school graduation so that I can return to unemployment and enjoy boredom again.
Boredom is always a failure of the imagination. You should tell your brother that. Then he'll really hate you.
Related: I just saw this rather incredible article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/weekinreview/05greenhouse.html?ref=europe
Mostly, I have not had a summer free since I was 15, which is over 35 years ago. It was a glorious summer.
The closest I have come since was after I returned from the first Gulf War in 1991. I took 45 days leave. Being between wives, I was on my own. I flew to Oregon to see my folks and then drove from there to Mexico, back up to Montana to see my sister then back to Pennsylvania, where I had been stationed, taking an indirect route so I could visit friends.
Once I got to Pennsylvania I was told that they all appreciated that I had volunteered to leave my nice ROTC instructor job to go to combat in the gulf, but they had filled my position and I had to go find another one. After about three weeks of hanging out in a motel room and not working very hard, I was told that my next assignment was in Korea. So I took even more vacation, plus travel time, to drive back across country to San Francisco, via Montana and Oregon to fly to Korea. It was quite fun, just me, my Saab and my collection of CDs.
Watched this This Uber-Indie last night, which is partly about misogyny and Buddhism. Near the end, the lead is slowly waving his hand thru a light beam, gettin illuminated. It's all he has left, but gives him the only peace he's ever known.
God's truth, I feel guilty being productive when I could be watching a creek flow over some rocks. I want too much.
Lots of activities, parents, wouldn't want your kids to grow up to be me.
14: Right. Remind him that only boring people are ever bored.
||
A sign that I may have followed various science blog links a few clicks too deep:
Let me explain this, in terms even a Ph.D. mathematician can understand.
|>
The thing is, the world is full of things to do, if you just shut off the part of your brain that worries about how other people will judge your pastime.
Why not make a giant statue of Cthlulu out of toothpaste? Paint a series of monochromatic canvasses using magenta house paint. Design a full suit of metal armor for a barbie doll. Do an entomological survey of your backyard.
As long as you don't worry that other people will think you weird, all these and more are live options.
Take up cross dressing. Invent a language for the aliens in Larry Niven novels. Make your own pornography. Form a band using only instruments found in your kitchen.
From the link in 15:
"I actually believe that Americans believe in their political system more than workers do in other parts of the world," Mr. Gerard said. He said large labor demonstrations are often warranted in Canada and European countries to pressure parliamentary leaders. Demonstrations are less needed in the United States, he said, because often all that is needed is some expert lobbying in Washington to line up the support of a half-dozen senators.
Yes, like the expert lobbying that got the U.S. the best healthcare insurance system in the world.
7 gets it exactly right.
My 12 year old is so happy to be on her Easter holidays. She's loving school, and her only gripe is that it has severely curtailed her reading time. She's planning to read a book a day for the fortnight.
Talking of the youth of today .... we've been away at a party all weekend - ended up with 8 families (21 kids) all staying over at this one house. My 8 year old and his friend managed to stay awake the entire night playing on their DS's. We left at 2 this afternoon, he immediately fell asleep in the car, and hasn't woken up since (now 10something pm).
Write Little House on the Prairie fan fiction. Start a chili pepper garden. Bake bread.
20: The thing is, the world is full of things to do, if you just shut off the part of your brain that worries about how other people will judge your pastime.
Seriously.
As a one-time professional student and now self-employed person (which a friend described once as being a perpetual graduate student), non-work-time is a given. You pay the price, income-wise, of course.
Becks's brother is bored during a single isolated week because he's young, man! Probably wants some action! Doesn't know how to self-stimulate.
Probably wants some action! Doesn't know how to self-stimulate.
Oh he probably does. After a while things start to chafe, though.
He could go to a dairy and see how milk is made! He could produce and distribute a series of window displays on home safety!
I think there is serious dramatic potential in the possibility that teenaged Almanzo hooked up with teenaged Mary, because teenaged Laura wouldn't go all the way.
28: I took an environmental ethics class to a dairy farm. We saw the manure lagoon, the newborn calves separated from their mothers, the guys changing the milking machines while norteño blasted over the sound system, everything.
Later I received an anonymous tip that the guy who ran the farm was exploiting his illegal labor. I passed it on to the local NPR reporter, who said it was probably a slur.
Self-stimulation is boring.
Yeah? But I read David Foster Wallace essays all morning, and wasn't remotely bored! At some point if those who have a familiarity with him might tell me what else of his I might read, I'd appreciate it.
Norteño on the sound system? Milking machines? Bah, when I was milking cows we had to use needlenose pliers, and as for music, all there was was a transistor radio blasting the sounds of Lawrence Welk stabbing himself.
32: The Girl with Curious Hair and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again are both good Sunday reading.
33: Oh, ouch, on so many levels. My family brought my grandmother to see Lawrence Welk - live -- many years ago, for her birthday. She was transported.
34: FM, the latter is what I've been reading and enjoying tremendously. I can probably answer this question myself, but DFW is plainly intriguing me (crush-level) and seems a bit dangerous to my psyche.
I'll just go and look up some reviews, shall I?
Something I read said that boredom isn't an absence of things to do, but the presence of repressed desires. You can't do what you want, so you don't want to do anything else either.
It may have been a Freudian thing.
Someone else (Bertrand Russell) said that boredom (cynicism?) is leisure without power. I believe that too.
DFW is plainly intriguing me (crush-level)
My wife knew him when he was at U of Arizona, and she said he had that effect on all the laydeez. She has a signed first of his first book, BTW (in ppbk, though).
boredom isn't an absence of things to do, but the presence of repressed desires. You can't do what you want, so you don't want to do anything else either.
As extravagant solutions came easily to him, he swore never to go back to Paris and never even to enquire after Madame Arnoux.
All the same, he found himself pining even for the smelly gas jets and clattering buses. he'd turn over in his mind every word that had been spokedn to him, recall the lilt of her voice, the light in her eyes; and since he saw himself as a dead man, he ended up doing precisely nothing.
He would get up very late and look out of his window at the wagoner's carts going by. The first six months were particularly agonizing.
I finished law school on May 1, 1991, and didn't have to be anywhere until bar review started like June 20, in Missoula. I went via Quebec City, Iowa, and Seattle. Then school half days until the end of July, and I could cut whenever I already knew the material well enough to get a C- on the exam (fairly often). All together, it was a pretty good little interlude.
Bored people can come over to my house and pack stuff in boxes.
Synopsis of article: The American tradition of individuality, which nobody would give up for the world because they don't know of any alternative, leads to most people's lives being pervaded by hopelessness and dread. Union leaders steer clear of having their members be militant in any way, because they know human beings are valueless cogs and their jobs can be shipped overseas at any time. Nobody has any idea why things are different in Europe.
40: I'm fighting that, the crush thing, though I'm not sure why.
Thing is, very few people write that way (not referring to Infinite Jest and such, haven't read the fiction). He's good at the essays; I can see the narrative craftsmanship at work. Generally, though, the ladies will fall for expressions of vulnerability that edit out any grandstanding at all. It's not exactly an art: it's being human. Hrm. That's feeble.
Anyway it doesn't hurt that he appears to have been good-looking.
39: Write an opera based on Chris Claremont era X-Men! Masturbate! Read David Foster Wallace!
He ought to get himself down here. Over on the Redneck Riviera there are loads of young Yank students on spring break and they seem to be having a cracking time. My new mates had to go home, but little Napoleon and Lucretia have been having the greatest time. Napoleon Adolf has learned to body-surf.
Throw rocks. Dig a really big hole. Gather crayfish.
46: But I have no musical talent, see 29, and... okay, I guess I could read.
Stare fixedly at a point in space until you get a food pellet! Learn to chew through your own arm! Curse the uncaring god that put you here!
Man, how hard can this be? Walk in the woods by yourself with a half-loaf of crusty bread and some cheese and marinated something-or-other in the pocket, sit down and nosh and chill out. Have a sunbath.
Drunk-dial strangers in faraway places. Mix explosives. Have a desultory affair.
50: Ironically, I had good intentions of buying paint today and starting on Rory's room redecorating. Had I been industrious, I could indeed be watching paint dry, and would be happy to do so!
Pull a sweater halfway over your head then give up! Punch holes in the wall! Find some plastic to burn!
Convince others to whitewash a fence! Explore a cave! Swing a dead cat around in a graveyard!
Have a desultory affair.
Bad. Avoid.
Go at dusk through narrow streets! Watch lonely-men in shirt sleeves! Lean out of windows!
Boredom is the death of the self.
57: Let him figure that out himself!
I'm trying to convince eekbeat we should go on a bike ride while it's still light out, but it's really part of a broader advanced tax-avoidance strategy.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat ad infinitum.
Stand on a rooftop and listen to the city tell you of its sins!
The flesh is sad, alas! - and I've read all the books. (Mallarme)
I've always hated that. It just doesn't make any sense. There's no way to read all the books, and I've had to start trimming down my to-read list because of mortality considerations.
Presumably it's a persona, etc., and Mallarme's message was quite other, but I hate that stupid persona.
We are sitting, for example, in the tasteless train station of some lonely minor railway. It is four hours until the next train arrives. The district is uninspiring. We do have a book in our rucksack, though---shall we read? No. Or think through a problem, some question? We are unable to. We read the timetables or study the table giving the various distances from this station to other places we are not otherwise acquainted with at all. We look at the clock---only a quarter of an hour has gone by. Then we go out onto the local road. We walk up and down, just to have something to do. But it is no use. Then we count the trees along the road, look at our watch again---exactly five minutes since we last looked at it. Fed up with walking back and forth, we sit down on a stone, draw all kinds of figures in the sand, and in so doing catch ourselves looking at our watch again---half an hour---and so on.
Have a sunbath.
The freezing rain is getting in the way of that one.
See how many pencils you can sharpen in an hour and then try to beat that record!
No, that's where the bath part comes from.
Have an interest, and then pursue it!
But where does the sun part come from?
Determine the country of origin of everything in your house. Blow a bunch of money on a really good bottle of absinthe. Avoid your taxes.
Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for a skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.
Start preparing dinner far too early. Avoid the books that surround your desk. Go for an aimless walk, and feel as if you've wasted the day.
Go to a playground and chase the kids around! Dress up as a naturist and surprise your friends! Write hundreds of letters to a favorite actress!
Obssessively lurk on a group blog for years, without commenting due to inability to find a suitable pseudonym.
Take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.
Sit around in boxers and a tank top drinking prosecco and watching the second season of Buffy!
Dear Lord, the author of Sentimental Education has left my brain. Bronson Pinchot.
Lather was sixty years old today.
Fish is biting So exciting Lunchtime sounds so inviting Angler Bill He gets a thrill Sitting, watching bobbing quill Time seems to stand quite still In a child's world, it always willYesterday's dreams
Are tomorrow's sighs
Watch children playing
They seem so wise
Stare out the window. Click on 'refresh'. Wait for something to happen.
76: you're not giving us a lot to work with, there.
Flaubert!! Flauflauflaubert.
In there somewhere, just needed to relax.
? (Help a brother out), have you considered 'Thurgood Micklethwait'?
57: Let him figure that out himself!
If I'm understanding you correctly, no, really. Not a good idea, the desultory part. Unless you're a younger person, maybe. You're just looking at that terrible moment: why am I doing this?
It's better, if you're just bored, to leave other people out of it, if you're just going to be using them as sources of stimulation.
Oooh! Beefo Meaty just spoke to me!
Seriously, it's like I've been building this pantheon of all you lot in my head for a long time now, without actually participating in any of this.
My initials are U.S.
Suggestions?
76: how about "THE SNACKMASTER"? Or "Gigglesaurus"?
'Wry Cooter' is still available.
THE SNACKMASTER is nice, but the all-caps might be offputting (and I couldn't always be an opinionated one). Gigglesaurus is... not me.
Interests? Peeves? Distinguishing characteristics.
Sorry, "awlgh0[igrhiefbj" s/b "Swlgh0[igrhiefbj"
Gigglesaurus is... not me.
It could be ironic.
hmm.. Let me walk in it a little, this might work.
86 and apparently 89: Person, you need to provide your own pseud. You're unknown. Come up with whatever suits you. If it takes some time, that's fine. It's not a cleverness competition.
It is one of the distinguishing features of Gigglesaurus to deny being Gigglesaurus.
'Mission Creep' would be good for an active-duty military type who's kind of skeezy.
We began by remarking how nice it would be to have a general characterization of what makes for boredom (or conversely, a manual or compendium of the interesting). But now that we can see how interest depends, at least partly, on fluid connections to further foci of interest, it is apparent that any topic-based
characterization would be undercut by an analogue of Moore's Open Question Argument. Given any description of some subject or topic—I mean, of course, one that does not specify howinteresting it is up front—it still makes sense to ask: but is it interesting?
…
Neither Mill nor Frankfurt seem to have noticed an obvious way out of the problem of boredom. Both assume that the solution would have to be a way of locking interests into place, and enabling them to keep one's attention indefinitely. But even if ideas and ends are constantly being withdrawn from circulation, flatlining can be avoided if there is a steady introduction of new ideas and ends into the system. Why not gracefully concede that one is eventually bound to get bored with whatever ends, ideas or concerns one now has, and look for ways of forestalling tedium by generating new interests to replace them?
Durkheim & Beckett should be coming, if not already in 73. I guess I could go for the unmemorable unreadable mess between Circe and Ithaca. But that's exhaustion, not boredom.
Or we could go the other direction:
Sorrosaurus, Sleepysaurus, Tyrannosaurus Tex (you don't happen to be from Texas, do you?)
95: On the other hand, receiving a pseud from the Mineshaft would make unnamed commenter's formal entry here downright baptisimal.
"Unpronounceable Awl" is good in that one could easily just address you as "Awl". I like it.
You could be known as "Commenting person with no pronounceable pseudonym", or "Intercal" for short.
How about "Bone Awl"?
Or "Awl Sideways"
Oh, you should go by the pseudonym "write".
102: right, since I've decided to start joining in, I need something to make it stick. If I were to put in a small comment without a clear pseud I probably wouldn't say anything for the next year.
Let the baptism commence?
Suggest silly names to a person about whom you know nothing.
102: Whatever. I'd rather see originality.
This isn't the first time someone's gotten a new pseud as a result of asking around for one.
Person, you need to provide your own pseud.
Aw(l), don't be such a killjoy.
Golly, how can a suggestion of a diverting group activity to a bunch of people talking about boredom possibly be a bad thing?!
I'm liking Nite Awl, right now.
113: True! Carry on! So who's this Awl person?
I like the "Unpronounceable" part. It reminds me of "The Unspeakable Thing" and also makes the whole thing pleasantly Goreyesque.
If I had to pick a new pseud, it'd probably be 'Antic Clay'.
I love U. Awl. I mean, as a pseudonym. I'm sure I'll grow to love U. Awl as a commenter, too, of course. Welcome!
If I had to pick a new pseud, it'd probably be 'Antic Clay'.
Antic clay, antic flesh, our heritage from Adam's animal nature!
Browse other peoples librarything. Those of Cosma, Helpychalk or Teo are good.
124: Thanks! I'll stick with this for the time being, then.
You can all go back to being bored now!
Set up surveillance. Picket a church. Hit on the crippled.
Are you the Kansas or Massachusetts Euwal?
Almanzo hooked up with teenaged Mary, because teenaged Laura wouldn't go all the way.
My hilarious comment disappeared. Let me try again.
Almanzo hooked up with teenaged Mary, because teenaged Laura wouldn't go all the way.
No, it was that snooty Nelly from town.
132: Now you're just trying to tempt me into taking "Euvrard". But I stand firm.
Ireneo Funes.
Simonides, the inventor of mnemonics.
Solomon Sherashevsky
Make a pie and call someone cute to come over and eat it.
Ride the rails. Dodge the railroad bulls. Set up a consultancy.
Unfogged dream last night: Virtually everybody who comments was now a main page poster. Except me. Sigh.
Make a pie and call someone cute to come over and eat it.
This doesn't work.
142:
Make a pie and call someone cute with prodigious appetites to come over and eat it.
How 'bout now?
Become an economist. Ignore reality.
You have to interweave the lattice, neb.
Like the army in Oz: thirty officers and one private.
Persist in never having made a lattice-top pie.
Pie seduction doesn't work, are you kidding? Half of humanity doesn't like pie. Muffins, now.
Watched this This Uber-Indie last night, which is partly about misogyny and Buddhism.
buddhism is the only solution to misogyny(andry). Only when you have transcended your desires can you truly cease to blame the opposite sex for not magically fulfilling them.
I was just saying to my two sisters (the "Fuck off the Pounds" sisters) that it was a lot more fun then pretending to be an adult than it ever was being an adult.
surely you tried sex, drugs, and exotic travel? You must have had a very nice childhood, anyway.
150 was me.
Muffins, now.
Are you out of your gourd?
I like pie. Businessmen like pie. Movie producers like pie. Who doesn't like pie, who knows of it?
I don't really like it that much. With certain exceptions.
Thumbs up to pie. Thumbs down to muffins.
Unless "muffin" is slang referring to a part of a woman's body. Then I like it. But even then, "pie" is better.
the exceptions being varieties that include rhubarb, mainly.
Or meat.
No, no, I prefer muffins on the whole. Blueberry or zucchini or a nice poppy seed. Much less trouble.
I'm not crazy about pie. I like meat pies, though.
mmmm, rhubarb.
People must have been bored all the time before the Internet came along. Now, I can't imagine being bored.
yesterday a friend and I made cookies. Except we didn't have enough butter, and are very lazy people, so we had to look for alternatives. Then, since there was one using olive oil (Olive Oil and Rosemary Cookies) on the internet, we made them.
These are some weird cookies, people. The recipe includes the advice "if the mixture is stiff, add a little more wine" which we found to be applicable to many aspects of the day.
164- yeah? I think so? they're just... weird. I like them. They are not very much like what I think "cookie" means though.
Also they're kind of lumpy and purple. Extremely weird looking which probably makes me think they taste weirder than they do.
Overall I am a fan though although I think if I made them again I would put more black pepper in the mixture, and maybe serve them with cheese of some sort.
now it is time to go drink beer on a porch. I will see what the neighborhood thinks of these purple lumpy cookies.
Olive oil, rosemary, and wine are good ingredients. If everything else is a neutral medium the food will be good.
Well. I read, ok skimmed an entire book since this thread began. Book is about memory and time, starting with "infantile amnesia" and penultimately concluding with Alzheimers.
The last chapter ends with an extended discussion of This Vanitas
The Bailly who painted it is in the oval in the center, according to the dated signature.
166: yeah, they're a savory, not a sweet. The urge to make cookies comes from the desire for sweets.
They sound like an appetizer at a fancy Italian restaurant.
162: Seriously. I can read about incan knot language or opposition to primogeniture any time I like. Kids today don't know from boredom.
I made pine nut/rosemary shortbread as part of my Christmas cookie festival. They were incredibly yummy, but they had like 2 sticks of butter in them, which sort of guarantees yumminess.
172: 162 was actually meant ironically, in reference to the fascinating rhubarb pie related discussion, but rereading it I can see that the wit was so dry that it vanished completely.
I will see what the neighborhood thinks of these purple lumpy cookies.
Wins the thread.
As for you you "muffins, what?" people, there's a whole wide world out there.
30: Were Almanzo and Laura teenagers at the same time? I thought he robbed the cradle.
163: Whiskey also works against stiffness.
I actually disliked my last summer of leisure, because it wasn't exactly by choice and all my friends were making money, leaving me behind.
I'm not going to get into a pie fight.
Were Almanzo and Laura teenagers at the same time? I thought he robbed the cradle.
Well, that will just make it even skeevier when he sleeps with Mary because Laura won't put out.
Everyone knows you shouldn't bring a muffin to a pie fight.
As for you you "muffins, what?" people, there's a whole wide world out there.
You're one to talk, pie-denier.
(Parsimon's secret identity revealed!)
I recently learned that Spanish speakers pronounce pi like "pee". I admit this news brought me greater delight than what was probably apt.
Alright, look, half the time pies are gooey, half the time they're made with way too much white sugar. Dislike the white sugar. I tend to steer away from these things. I'm thinking mostly of fruit pies here. I do like, say, key lime pie and other more citrus-y pies, which tend to stay away from the goo.
183: When I was very little and in Montréal, I almost died of glee when my question about whether a bathroom stall was occupied was answered with "Oui oui!"
U. Awl, come back now. You hear.
I thought ? (Help A Brother Out) was a good start. ?(HABO) or even the long form should be fine. If band names can be very short sentences then commenters' certainly can.
Parsimon, if you enjoyed A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again the next obvious (but very much recommended) choice is Consider the Lobster which also happens to contain "Authority and American Usage," one of my all-time favorite essays on teaching and writing.
A well-written essay is incredibly satisfying. My suggestion for boredom - spend an afternoon randomly reading essays from Joan Didion's collected works.
Or, set out a bag. Obtain cat. Watch and be amused endlessly. (I'm not saying this is how I spent my afternoon, but it is a possibility).
the neighborhood doesn't really like the purple lumpy cookies. they were pretty polite but I can see a number of half-eaten remnants stashed in unobtrusive areas of the porch.
Or, set out a bag. Obtain cat. Skin. Repeat.
Becks' brother's problem is not that he's bored, but that he's lonely, but saying "I'm lonely" is instant social death (unless you are a hot woman leaving a drunken booty-call voice mail, of course). So "I'm bored" is a euphemism.
191: Okay, will do. On the Lobster.
Cecily: neighborhood's reaction is a good test, though! Sometimes you can slide these unusual things past people, and they like them despite themselves. I find it sort of fascinating. I brought a kale salad (liberally tossed with olive oil, herbs, and fresh-grated parmesan, plus normal salad-looking ingredients) to a Thanksgiving of people who were otherwise used to iceberg lettuce, and they were actually enthusiastic about it, to my surprise.
I am bored with my work very often now. Everything routine that comes in I pass along to somebody else. This makes my boredom worse. It's a real problem to decide whether it's more boring to do something boring than to pass along everything boring that comes in to somebody else and then have nothing to do at all.
(I'm not saying this is how I spent my afternoon
Too late - the cat's already out of the, uh, never mind.
194 is very likely true.
One of the things about all of our crazy suggestions for relieving boredom is that they can all be solitary, and some are positively anti-social.
Learning to be alone is important for avoiding boredom.
Close the barn door after the horse leaves!
196: Being bored because you are trapped in a task that is not stimulating is different than being bored because you don't know what to do with yourself. There should be different words for the two situations. I feel the former occasionally, but I haven't felt the latter for decades.
Also, both feelings are different than full-blown anhedonia.
Read essays so that you will be able to see further by standing on the shoulders of the giant that goes with you wherever you go!
201: Nay. Read essays so you can remember who you are.
Or, set out a bag. Obtain cat. The cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river.
Insist on yourself! Never imitate! Become a transparent eyeball!
Now you sound silly, eb.
I meant that about remembering who you are; at least, that's what the DFW is doing for me. Other writers do it as well. It's a good lesson, in any case, a good cheerful look in the face that I'm obviously welcoming. The overall thought is: pay attention! You know you're becoming downtrodden by all this crap, but pay attention, dearheart. I welcome it.
Now you sound silly, eb.
Mix together quotations from Emerson's essays! Reformulate some of them with other famous quotations! Cross-post to standpipe's (other) blog!
Being bored because you are trapped in a task that is not stimulating is different
I'm sorry;the saffron monk spending all day perfectly raking the rock garden remains in control of himself.
This, with no offense, is I think the class snobbery of the intellectually employed. They think adding the side panel to the truck on the line, 20 times a day for thirty years, is either impossible or contemptible:they cannot appreciate of the intellectual achievement involved in overcoming one's self, even after reading about Levin and the scything.
Being bored because you are trapped in a task that is not stimulating is different
Tell me about it. I am so fucking bored with this thing.
206: Emerson, Ralph Waldo?
I fall down.
Browse other peoples librarything. Those of Cosma, Helpychalk or Teo are good.
Glad to hear my library is entertaining. I just read a chapter in this book on Hopi attitudes toward mortuary studies. They're not fans.
I appear to be the only person on LibraryThing who owns that book.
I guess I apologize for 207, because everyone encounters and overcomes repetition and drudgery at work and at home.
But that just makes 200 even more perplexing.
John Cage said, "If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." He's right: there's a certain kind of unboring boredom that's fascinating, engrossing, transcendent, and downright sexy. And then there's the other kind of boring: let's call it boring boring. Boring boring is a client meeting; boring boring is having to endure someone's self-indulgent poetry reading; boring boring is watching a toddler for an afternoon; boring boring is the seder at Aunt Fanny's. Boring boring is being somewhere we don't want to be; boring boring is doing something we don't want to do.
209 is to say that I know Ralph Waldo Emerson's writings pretty well, so whatever you're saying about mixing together quotations from him is looked at with a complete question mark unless you know what you're talking about.
213: Requires acknowledgement this Unfogged post by the Beninator.
213: I see you John Cage. Shakin' that ass.
naw, 204 is good. It's all transcendentalist types.
I read essays so I can forget about who I am and replace my own inner monologue with the inner monologue of a smarter, more eloquent person.
Reading is escapism, big time. Except for the dry econ reading that I am avoiding doing.
boring boring is watching a toddler for an afternoon
I beg to differ. Toddlers are great fun. I can see not wanting to watch one every afternoon all year long every year until they're no lobger toddlers.
Emerson says: Do your own thing. But that' sort of the crux of the problem. What if I have no idea what my thing is?
221: If it weren't a link to a google results page showing a shitload of things I don't have time or inclination to read, it might be.
At 220.last, John Emerson says "Emerson says: Do your own thing." No. That's not what "self-reliance" is about.
Sorry, I actually take readings of R.W. Emerson seriously, and find myself not amused by his misappropriation, it would seem. I'm also off for the night.
I give up. Comments 201 and 204 were, literally, almost entirely short quotations from Self Reliance and Nature*, with a bit of that Newton (I think) quote about shoulders of giants. That is all, no deeper meaning, no mystery. The google results show these to have been quotes.
*Exclamation points not in original.
AWB and I went to hear some music a few weeks ago, and the final piece turned out to be a truncated version of Satie's Vexations performed on ten toy pianos. The whole piece takes more than 24 hours to perform, I think; this version was done faster than it should have been, and the leader of the ensemble announced they would play for one hour exactly. I got bored after twenty minutes and dragged AWB out of there ten or fifteen minutes later. It was the kind of thing that would have been fascinating if they'd planned to play for at least six hours, but one hour was not enough; it wasn't worth it to stay for the whole thing.
I did a meditation retreat last summer where I spent the first three days just paying attention to my breath at the entrance to my nose, 12+ hours a day. This Vexations performance was much more boring, with less promise of a payoff.
Parsimony, you're being extraordinarily grumpy and annoying. "Do your own thing" is also a direct quotation from Emerson, and it's public domain and not licensed exclusively to you.
parsimon has been kind of hilariously anti-fun in this thread. I like it!
The transparent eyeball thing is one of the most famous quotes from RW Emerson. There was even a famous contemporary caricature of a transparent eyeball wandering around on stick legs.
I've been kind of anti-fun in this thread.
This is very well done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkJdEFf_Qg4
Argh. Quoting Emerson out of context is not a good idea, at all.
I admit to grumpy. 'night all.
Well, 8 was at least not anti-fun.
I'm tempted to paste in the entire text of an Emerson essay + Emerson's entire life and the times in which he lived, but this comment box is too small to contain it.*
*Apologies to fans of Fermat for misappropriating his words.
Misappropriating Fermat's words out of context is deprecated.
I think parsimon means you can only quote Emerson if you're currently residing in 1840s America.
And the Vexations mention requires linking to yet another w-lfs-nator post.
if you're currently residing in 1840s America.
Sometimes I feel this way.
On an extended visit to Aunt Bellum's place?
ToS posting as John Emerson's name backwards is no good -- he should pick an entirely new nick if he's going to try to start over as a good little Unfogged commenter. I thought Perezoso, which he's been using on other sites, was good.
I always thought the transparent eyeball thing was Melville, but he was spoofing Emerson.
I always thought the transparent eyeball thing was Melville, but he was spoofing Emerson.
Melville had a lot of experience trolling deep waters.
If I have trolled deeper than others it's because I was spoofing a master.
228: There was even a famous contemporary caricature of a transparent eyeball wandering around on stick legs.
For the record, I sort of like RW Emerson but he's not a favorite and I have no proprietorial interest. And [ta-dum] we are indeed relatives, but the lines diverged in England about 1620 or so, so the relationship is distant indeed.
Nonetheless, all y'all transparent eyeballs should do your own thing.
A google image search for "eyeball on legs" is pretty darn mind-warping.
I guess it's time to see if I can find my old Residents records. I hope Parsimon won't mind.
Eb is a very clever fellow, you know.
Emerson is the reason we get stuff like 15.
19: Let me explain this, in terms even a Ph.D. mathematician can understand.
That blog is so weird.
253: I'll say. I subscribed, god knows why. Ooh, look at the pretty equations I can't display unless I install a bunch of fonts! Read the sentences full of words I don't understand!
255: It's all much simpler when you realize that you must love category theory with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
I got sucked in by a post about applications of category theory to machine learning. It seemed like it made so much sense!
I was a fool.
hey, i'm reading larry niven novels. I'm quite glad for torrents, because being too poor to afford all the books i'm reading while unemployed would sure suck.
cannabis or adderall help with being bored, although in completely different ways.
EVER TO CONFESS YOU'RE BORED MEANS YOU HAVE NO INNER RESOURCES.
It augers a great movement in our realm, a piercing hole through which wisdom will shine upon us.
This is a pretty good article about boredom.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=bored--find-something-to-live-for
At 220.last, John Emerson says "Emerson says: Do your own thing." No. That's not what "self-reliance" is about.
Parsimon is Jamie Lee Curtis:
Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself." And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.
