Office by Alex Penny
Here's the point of everything I have been trying to tell you...
In the past year and a half, my life has unfolded in ways that are hard for me to put into words. I have been up and down, here and there.. but, for the most part, I have become a person who I respect and am proud of. There are a few mishaps when deep seated demons have conquered the good that has come out of me. Luckily, their appearances have become farer and fewer between.
The Bad:
1. I moved 3,000 miles across the country to areas unknown without even a familiar soul in three time zones. I left my family and friends and, basically, everything I have ever known to move to a city I knew next to nothing about.
2. I had a serious scare of bedbugs that increased my insomnia and created even more turbulence in the chaos that is my brain.
3. Within one month, I had two of the best men I knew die without so much as even being able to say goodbye. I grew up with one of the closest family units I’ve ever encountered and to not be able to be a there to grieve with my family was truly soul wrenching.
4. I had my heart torn out, kicked around, and spit on. I am world’s worst person with affection, compliments of years and years of being surrounded by intensely awful relationships. Evading and refusing to address these issues preceded and ultimately caused the initial context of this pseudo-paragraph.
5. I embarked on a doctorate program that consumed the, arguably, most enjoyable years of my life. Instead of evolving and flourishing in my early twenties, a vast majority of my time has been spent in a poor posture of my nose in between infinate amounts of note pages.
The Good:
1. I moved 3,000 miles across the country to a beautiful city that provides more opportunity, for me personally and in every way, than I could have ever imagined.
2. I have traveled to and seen some of North America’s most beautiful sights. Many people will never have the chance to explore and appreciate the unsurmountable natural glory that I have basked in so many times.
3. I fell deep into love.
4. I fell deep into love and had my heart broken. This has granted me a juncture in learning who/what I really am and has allowed me to see who/what I want to really be.
5. I embarked on a doctorate program that has filled me with more knowledge than I could have ever fathomed. It has subtly changed who I am in a plethora of good ways. Although I frequently lapse into poor health decisions, I have become and enjoy being a much healthier person. It is an amazing feeling to know that so much of my effort is being put into something that I am passionate about in so many different ways.
Of course, there are more things that have been bad and even more things that have been good. I think that the extraordinary part, to me at least, has been how much my bad has deeply influenced my good. What I’m trying to say is that without having unfortunate times, all of my current fortune might mean nothing.
Blah, blah, blah, sap.
In Conservative Media, A “Race War” Rages
They don’t care if you call it racist. “In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering,” says Limbaugh.
Is this real life?
(via loveyourchaos)
It is astounding how significantly one idea can shape a society and its policies. Consider this one.
If taxes on the rich go up, job creation will go down.
This idea is an article of faith for Republicans and seldom challenged by Democrats and has shaped much of today’s economic landscape.
But sometimes the ideas that we know to be true are dead wrong. For thousands of years people were sure that earth was at the center of the universe. It’s not, and an astronomer who still believed that it was, would do some lousy astronomy.
In the same way, a policy maker who believed that the rich and businesses are “job creators” and therefore should not be taxed, would make equally bad policy.
I have started or helped start, dozens of businesses and initially hired lots of people. But if no one could have afforded to buy what we had to sell, my businesses would all have failed and all those jobs would have evaporated.
That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is a “circle of life” like feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist like me.
"![theatlantic:
What Does a Radical Look Like?
A week after the attempted comeback of the most significant political movement of the new century, a triptych by photographer Richard Avedon now on display in New York gets a person thinking about the clues radicals have used over the years to signal their political beliefs. The ”photo mural” in question, part of an exhibit that opened over the weekend at the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, features the Chicago Seven—the activists, Abbie Hoffman among them, charged with conspiracy after protesting the Vietnam War at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Though taken in 1969, as the Seven were awaiting trial, the three-part image looks as though it could have been shot in today’s Williamsburg. Many of the men are wearing high-waisted jeans; a couple are in whimsically striped shirts; two wear funky glasses; one has a woven belt, tied in a big knot. There’s also plenty of facial hair to go around. As a group, they come off as more goofily disdainful than revolutionary.
At the same time, they look quite different from their bourgeois contemporaries pictured on the other side of the gallery: the members of Allen Ginsberg’s extended family. Those photos feature men in crisp suits and requisite ties, ladies in polite cocktail dresses and kitten heels. No one would’ve mistaken the Ginsbergs for Yippies—members of the countercultural 60’s youth movement that Hoffman helped to found—just as no one would’ve mistaken Hoffman for a banker or any other kind of office worker. […]
But these days, differentiating the activists from the bourgeoisie on the basis of their attire can be much harder than it was in the past—perhaps in part because of the speed with which the fashion world is able to transfer looks from city trendsetters to malls across America.
Read more. [Image: The Richard Avedon Foundation]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3ras0ULTC1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
What Does a Radical Look Like?
A week after the attempted comeback of the most significant political movement of the new century, a triptych by photographer Richard Avedon now on display in New York gets a person thinking about the clues radicals have used over the years to signal their political beliefs. The ”photo mural” in question, part of an exhibit that opened over the weekend at the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, features the Chicago Seven—the activists, Abbie Hoffman among them, charged with conspiracy after protesting the Vietnam War at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Though taken in 1969, as the Seven were awaiting trial, the three-part image looks as though it could have been shot in today’s Williamsburg. Many of the men are wearing high-waisted jeans; a couple are in whimsically striped shirts; two wear funky glasses; one has a woven belt, tied in a big knot. There’s also plenty of facial hair to go around. As a group, they come off as more goofily disdainful than revolutionary.
At the same time, they look quite different from their bourgeois contemporaries pictured on the other side of the gallery: the members of Allen Ginsberg’s extended family. Those photos feature men in crisp suits and requisite ties, ladies in polite cocktail dresses and kitten heels. No one would’ve mistaken the Ginsbergs for Yippies—members of the countercultural 60’s youth movement that Hoffman helped to found—just as no one would’ve mistaken Hoffman for a banker or any other kind of office worker. […]
But these days, differentiating the activists from the bourgeoisie on the basis of their attire can be much harder than it was in the past—perhaps in part because of the speed with which the fashion world is able to transfer looks from city trendsetters to malls across America.
Read more. [Image: The Richard Avedon Foundation]
![theatlantic:
An Inconvenient Lawsuit: Teenagers Take Global Warming to the Courts
Alec Loorz turns 18 at the end of this month. While finishing high school and playing Ultimate Frisbee on weekends, he’s also suing the federal government in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
The Ventura, California, teen and four other juvenile plaintiffs want government officials to do more to prevent the risks of climate change — the dangerous storms, heat waves, rising sea levels, and food-supply disruptions that scientists warn will threaten their generation absent a major turnabout in global energy policy. Specifically, the students are demanding that the U.S. government start reducing national emissions of carbon dioxide by at least six percent per year beginning in 2013.
“I think a lot of young people realize that this is an urgent time, and that we’re not going to solve this problem just by riding our bikes more,” Loorz said in an interview.
Read more. [Image: Victoria Loorz]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3raw96rJI1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
An Inconvenient Lawsuit: Teenagers Take Global Warming to the Courts
Alec Loorz turns 18 at the end of this month. While finishing high school and playing Ultimate Frisbee on weekends, he’s also suing the federal government in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
The Ventura, California, teen and four other juvenile plaintiffs want government officials to do more to prevent the risks of climate change — the dangerous storms, heat waves, rising sea levels, and food-supply disruptions that scientists warn will threaten their generation absent a major turnabout in global energy policy. Specifically, the students are demanding that the U.S. government start reducing national emissions of carbon dioxide by at least six percent per year beginning in 2013.
“I think a lot of young people realize that this is an urgent time, and that we’re not going to solve this problem just by riding our bikes more,” Loorz said in an interview.
Read more. [Image: Victoria Loorz]
Best Coast - Bratty B
West coast femme pop relates oh so well.
(Source: cher-la-vie, via loveyourchaos)
