Slowly Going Bald

"Look, we're gonna spend half the night driving around the Hills looking for this one party, and you're gonna say it sucks, and we're all gonna leave and we're gonna go look for this other party. But all the parties and all the bars, they all suck. I spend half the night talking to some girl who's looking around the room to see if there's someone who's more important she should be talking to, and it's like I'm supposed to be all happy 'cause she's wearing a backpack."

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

"If, in 20 years, I have the same opinions as I do now, my life experiences and education will have meant nothing. But a steadfast judge is what Bush wants, one who won’t stray from his own ideology, even long after he’s gone."

2 Comments:

If, in 20 years, you have the same opinions as you do now, couldn't that just mean that you were right all along?

By Cody, at 2:26 PM, October 14, 2005

Well, this was never really my fight to begin with, I just felt like posting a link to a column I enjoyed, the likes of which might not grace the pages of the hallowed Optimist after May. And while I don't really feel that excited about Miers, or Bush's constant refrain of "Trust me, I've been presidenting for a while now," and I can't help but notice the outspoken conservative critics of Miers and the (I hope) impending GOP civil war, I guess I'm going to respond to the topic at hand of life experience and its influence on a person's opinions.

Paul, I see the link between the second and third sentences of the excerpt quoted above. Many things drive people to achieve their ambitions: greed, power, desire for knowledge, or an eye on sitting on the Supreme Court. But a failure to achieve those early goals doesn't necessarily mean that the life itself has been a failure. It's only a failure if the attainment of those goals, or the lack thereof, is valued more than the process of attainment.

I also fail to see the link between the first and second sentences of the excerpt, and I don't grant the premise of the first. The first sentence states that opinions are not the sum total of life experiences; I could have sworn the opposite was true. Am I supposed to live my life and enjoy a wide variety of experiences, both good and bad, and refuse to let those influence the opinions I shape as I age? If that were the case, there would be no sense in going to college; after all, what's the point of trying to become more informed about an issue of my new experiences and knowledge won't have the possibility of changing my opinion? And how does your claim that life experiences have no bearing on opinion lead into a discussion on people's motivations?

I think it's pretty obvious that, even with a good job, I've still got time on my hands.

By Dan Carlson, at 4:36 PM, October 18, 2005

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: Name: Dan Carlson; Location: Houston, Texas, United States

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...a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces....

O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.

--Look Homeward, Angel

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

--John Stuart Mill

We have all read in scientific books, and indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

--G.K. Chesterton

We were, for the briefest of moments, something greater than the sum of our uncertain parts; we were youth itself, in all its painful glory and sharp joy.

--August Van Zorn

There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there's a time when things can go either way.

--Stephen King

Film lovers are sick people.

--Francois Truffaut

Slowly Going Bald

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

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