Birthday pie.

French Silk pie that has 560 calories and 40 grams of fat per slice (one half of the size shown). So good.

So nice.

Nicola is so sweet:) I have been spending my birthday in my grand style of doing nothing. I didn't go into my office at the university. I didn't crack a book. I didn't shave. I didn't cook. I didn't do any housework. Nothing. It's my favorite way to spend my birthday. More coffee and the movie I always watch on my birthday, Amelie, later. Going out and getting drunk or getting into bed with a stranger are never ways that have occured to me of spending one's birthday. But to each hers or his own. I'm sure I'm guilty of cultivating the laziest birthdays on the planet.

Being an ass.

A very close friend of mine has a fellow graduate student who is, plainly, a bitch. She cuts people down whenever she gets the chance, usually in front of professors. She openly says, "Oh, I wish I were you," outloud to people. She calls people lazy and passes judgment on who goes to which meetings. She's just entirely unpleasant, disagreeable and bad-mannered. Two minutes spent with this young lady shows, as my friend correctly points out, that such nastiness comes from this person's insecurity. There is another person with whom I was in a graduate program once who was equally unpleasant. He was the kind of person who would say the most obvious things in a seminar with the air of making the most immediate connection between Heraclitus and Taoism out to be the most profound thing ever uttered in a class on ancient Greek epistemology. He would loudly retrieve stinking food from a greasy bag in a class that was not so long that one needed to take one's meals in the middle of a seminar. He could not have a regular conversation, even with the unfortunate suckers who were his friends. He was, in short, an ass, an arrogant ass. So, as the new graduate students arrive in my department,* I asked my office-mates what characteristic/world-view makes a person more of an ass: insecurity or arrogance. I think that insecurity does, because it introduces a level of pettiness/nastiness/meanness to the mix. Arrogant people might cut one down in class because they feel that such a person is ignorant and ought to study more. The insecure person, in my experience, is out for blood. The lurid desire to make another person "less" is, in my estimation, far worse than exposing another person as already being "less." An arrogant person might mutter to a person in front of a seminar, "Perhaps, my friend, you fail to understand the importance of Scheler's notion on suffering because you need to go back and re-read his Formalism." It seems so much more cruel to say, "See, you don't know your Scheler, either." I can't quite say why I feel that insecurity is more likely to make one behave as an ass. Sure, I can be arrogant sometimes, and perhaps I thereby sympathize with arrogant asses. (I would never cut down a colleague in private, let alone in a room full of people, however.) Maybe it is a case of, "Oh, well, he's an ass, all right. But at least he knows what he's talking about." Who knows? Asking which is worse is not asking a very pragmatik question, is it? *[Most of whom are perfectly nice folks, really. I haven't actually met a new ass yet this year:)]

How lovely.

Armand is so nice:)

"My So-Called Life."

Paige reports that"My So-Called Life," our favorite 90s angst show is returning to the air. Unfortunately for me, it's on cable, the Family Channel. In an effort to watch less television, we don't have cable. We make up for it by purchasing dozens and dozens and dozens of DVDs. But now, I want cable.

A super-Earth?

It seems some scientists have found one.

Sugarbowl: A tribute to Mr. Roland.

A sugar bowl on the deck at my family's home in Baltimore. August 2004. I wanted to post something good today. But I was in graduate seminars from 9:30-4:30, and I'm pooped. So, instead, here is a tribute to my youngest brother, Baby Joe, A.K.A., Sugarbowl.* *[So called because he leaves the sugarbowl empty as revenge for when he finds it empty.]

The Killers.

We bought a coffee-maker in Baltimore.* Low and behold, the damned thing didn't work. So we exchanged it tonight. As we pulled into the parking lot, the song I have had in my head lately came on, and I finally found out who performs it: The Killers. We picked up their album. It's...(get ready)....killer. Really, check out the samples on Amazon, and see what you think. "Somebody Told Me" is their current single. It's a good record. You heard it here first. *[We have not had a normal coffee-maker in two years, as our five French presses have reigned. For multiple morning cups, however, we need something that keeps the coffee hot. More on the new toy later.]

More birthdays.

My brother Tom and my one-day-sister-in-law Heather, Rehoboth Beach, Deleware. August 2004. Tomorrow is my younger brother's birthday, and his girlfriend's birthday was last Tuesday. A very happy birthday to a very nice -- and very tall -- couple.

Updates and crack.

My sincerest and severest apologies for the lack of updates lately. My trist in Baltimore has been much more busy than I thought it would be. No car wrecks this time, but there was a death in the family. Maybe I shouldn't jinx Maryland anymore. I visited my old Polish grandmother yesterday, where she lives in Canton: a very posh and expensive neighborhood near the water in Baltimore city. The real-estate there is so hot that folks call her weekly to see if she'll sell her house. My grandmother's fat little poodle has a thing for Burger King french fries, so we went there to get some, a little after the lunch-time rush. A dingy-looking chap comes in and approaches a slightly-less-dingy man who is sitting with a woman eating his lunch. The dingy character gives the man something wrapped in a Burger King receipt, and the man gives him a small vial of crack. Rather than putting it in his pocket, the dingy crack-head holds it up to look at it. He then grabs a cup from the trash can, fills it with soda and leaves, crack in hand, smiling (I guess smoking crack makes you thirsty). Weird. So much for one of the yuppies' (not Bobos') favorite "new" neighborhoods.