Neva

the destructive character

Oct 222011
 

(via Sean. Previously posted here on 11/29/08)

The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room; only one activity: clearing away. His need for fresh air and open space is stronger than any hatred. The destructive character is young and cheerful…it cheers because everything cleared away means to the destroyer a complete reduction, indeed eradication, of his own condition.

…The destructive character sees nothing permanent. But for this very reason he sees ways everywhere. Where others encounter walls or mountains, there, too, he sees a way. But because he sees a way everywhere, he has to clear it everywhere. Not always by brute force; sometimes by the most refined. Because he sees ways everywhere, he always positions himself at crossroads. No moment can know what the next will bring. What exists he reduces to rubble, not for the sake of rubble, but for the way of leading through it.

The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.

–Walter Benjamin, “The Destructive Character,” 1931, (quoted in this piece about Sophie Calle)

Movie Quote of the Day

Oct 012011
 


–She underlines the fuck scenes for ya? Jesus, if she underlines the fuck scenes for ya, she must worship the ground you walk on.
–They teach you how to underline in college.
–Not the fuck scenes, they don’t. Braden, you gotta learn to put out more, you know what I mean?

Why Do People Tweet?

Apr 202009
 

From The New York Times Magazine, Let Them Eat Tweets by Virginia Heffernan:

“Connectivity is poverty” was how a friend of mine summarized [Bruce] Sterling’s bold theme. Only the poor — defined broadly as those without better options — are obsessed with their connections. Anyone with a strong soul or a fat wallet turns his ringer off for good and cultivates private gardens that keep the hectic Web far away. The man of leisure, Sterling suggested, savors solitude, or intimacy with friends, presumably surrounded by books and film and paintings and wine and vinyl — original things that stay where they are and cannot be copied and corrupted and shot around the globe with a few clicks of a keyboard.

Sterling does have a point, however the ability to professionally network from the ground up via social networks can’t be dismissed. Becoming connected gets people ahead and to the place where they can afford to turn their ringers off. There are too many uses for social (media) networks to generalize it as Sterling has, as Ashton Kutcher proved a few days ago.

But let me put in my two cents on Ashton Kutcher. He challenged CNN and recently beat them to one million followers on Twitter. He’s talked a bunch of big shit about “new media” giving “everyday people a voice” and I agree with him on that note. But here’s where his hyppocracy lies: Kutcher may have 1.2 million followers on Twitter as of this posting, but he only follows 84 people–mostly other celebrities–and his posts are mostly blather about nothing. If you’re going to clammer for that much attention, Ashton, you better continue to promote causes such as World Malaria Day and do something more than tell us you loved ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. If you want to be heard, you should listen as well.

I know what you’re thinking: I should practice what I preach and tweet less about what I had for dinner and more about shit that is, you know, important. But I’m not into social networking for the power or for people to hear my “voice”. I’m on Twitter to network, to socialize, and for entertainment, so I will continue to mostly talk about me and my little world…and continue to read about other people and their little worlds as well.

On Perseverance

Apr 172009
 

He has a strong vision of death and sadness inside him, but since he has such energy, such working power, such desire to do extraordinary things he prevails.

Life & Art Quote

Apr 112009
 

“Life being all inclusion and confusion and art being all discrimination and selection, the latter, in search of the hard latent value with which alone it is concerned, sniffs round the mass as instinctively and unerringly as a dog suspicious of some buried bone.”—Henry James

Quotation

Apr 052009
 

A repost from nevafeva.com, December 14th, 2004:

“Computer games don’t affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music.” –Kristian Wilson, CEO, Nintendo Gaming Corporation, Inc, 1989.

Where Malia Obama will do her homework.

Nov 272008
 

From KATU.com. I’m still get chills thinking about this last election and what it means to our country as a whole.

The girls, who will be attending the prestigious Sidwell Friends School, also will be expected to do their homework as usual. Although, the president-elect said, Malia has her eye on a special spot to write important papers.

When she came back from her White House visit recently, she told her dad that she plans to work at the desk in the Lincoln bedroom.

Obama, who is known to be an avid reader of Lincoln history, said his daughter told him “I’m going to sit at that desk, because I’m thinking that will inspire big thoughts.”

During the interview, Obama described the desk as being the spot where Lincoln signed the Gettysburg Address. While there is a copy of the address on display in that room, it actually was the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves that Lincoln signed there.

 Older Entries