My favorite installation in

My favorite installation in the Stuart Art Collection at UCSD is Jenny Holzer's Green Table, a granite picnic bench tucked away in a shady corner of a large eucalyptus-lined plaza. One of the slabs bears the following text:

In a dream I saw a way to survive and was filled with joy.

I can never decide whether this bears hope or signifies the brink of disillusionment.

Need a good laugh?

Need a good laugh? Neil at work sends a pointer to this brilliant article: Bird Dropping Casts Pall Over Tennis Tournament. Be sure to read the fourth paragraph, about the lorries.

I'm back, I guess.

I'm back, I guess. Last week was perfect. Everything else seems... routine.

Seinfeld fans and philosophy

Seinfeld fans and philosophy students alike should read Salon's Jan 7th Masterpiece critique. Author Bill Wyman takes a look at the underlying philosophy of the "show about nothing". The fourth page of the article is probably the most enlightening (especially if you're still brooding over the infamous last episode). Here's a clip in which the author explains the existentialist premise of the show:

Could they have said, that is, We'd like to do a situation comedy about man's inhumanity to man? The petty desires, the arrant cruelties? The lack of perspective, the meaningless hostility? The lack of commitment, of sympathy; the confusion, the hostility, the isolation; the impossibility of love; the futility of even attempting to break out of the molds we'd stuffed ourselves into?

I spent the first

I spent the first week of the year in some sort of murk, as if I had been waking each morning without really having slept at all. And then, Monday evening, I surfaced. And for a few hours the night was clear. I fell into a deep, long sleep.

As I dreamt, I saw a girl at the window -- maybe she was the younger sister of some friend I had since forgotten -- and I knew that she had the answer to my question. I followed her outside and all the way to the backyard of the house in which I had grown up, where I waited for her to tell me the answer. But before she could speak, I woke. And I couldn't get back, no matter how hard I focused on recalling the dream.

I moved through the rest of the day disappointed, slowly forgetting the details of the dream, and desperately trying to figure out what the question was.