With lots more free time to kill this winter break I've been rediscovering my affinity for video games. With Xbox Live and Halo 2 at my apartment, things like exams, papers, and presentations seem like so many insignificant bloops on the radar, slowly ebbing away along with all their accompanying deadlines and sacrifices. Yet even now as I have ( Read more... )

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I had to slow down the song to half-speed, but eventually I was able to transcribe these heartfelt lyrics:

life is a beautiful struggle.
people search through the rubble
for a suitable hustle.
some people using the noodle,
some people using the muscle,
some people put it all together
make it feel like a puzzle.

-talib kweli

Last Friday night my old high school drummer from Chicago came down to play at a party at Ryan's house. We rocked out with our cocks out, finished our set and mingled within the party, as more people eventually spilled in. On my way to the kitchen I saw a plus-sized, curly-haired, blurry-eyed young lady stare ahead drunkenly as she leaned back ( Read more... )

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i'm not complaining. i'm bragging ( Read more... )

No one ever wants to go the Department of Motor Vehicles unless they really have to, or, sadly, work there. A man wearing a Carhartt work suit standing at the back of the line was testing out each and every one of his different cell phone rings. Happy birthday, the hokey pokey, silver bells, incessant chimes, the hungarian waltz - he just stood ( Read more... )

The Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold

"One of the most beautiful, heart-warming, and important nature books to appear in years."
The Chicago Tribune

"There is a rudeness and vigor to Leopold's writing that goes directly to the heart of the subject and to the heart of the reader ... One of the seminal works of the environmental movement."
The ( Read more... )

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...but sometimes all it takes is a wink or a nod from some an unexpected place to vary the tedium of a baffling existence.-Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume I ( Read more... )