The blog as an ad hoc online dating profile? Sounds like unfogged.
Sound like ogged in specific. Too bad Adam doesn't know how to swim. He could learn something about the breast stroke. And the backwards dive.
I'll date Adam just because I'm so glad that he properly conjugated "carpere" to fit its place in his English sentence.
Except he had the 'to' in front of it. But I think that's okay, and I noticed that, too! Yayyyy latin geeks.
I remember once I did something similar and alameida noticed. I was ecstatic.
Kids today with their blogdating? Where's the soul, where's the romance of real dating, on IRC and Usenet?
This site needs more Europeans. Just because it's three in the damn morning doesn't mean I don't want to read about pettiness and awkard sex. Also, Japanese would work. Ogged, try to appeal to a broader audience. Such an audience might appreciate swimming posts, if they involved schoolgirls and tentacles.
Once Myanmar is freed by the forces of good and righteousness, the blog will ooze with late-night commentary for the East Coast late-night-ians. Mark my word.
his site needs more Europeans. Just because it's three in the damn morning doesn't mean I don't want to read about pettiness and awkard sex.
Yeah, but we Europeans don't have awkward sex. We're suave fuckers, you know.
Apparently, you're not having sex at all.
10: There's some truth to that. Not suavity, per se, but absence of bullshit. Scots, however, don't count. You're basically proto-Americans, which is why you loathe us so.
People of earth! Listen to Petra Haden's a capella cover of Don't Stop Believin'. Now.
Not suavity, per se, but absence of bullshit.
As I've said, repeatedly, in threads on dating and sex, Brits are largely free of said bullshit, also. Not actually suave, though. Drunk, mostly.
11. No, we just have reliable contraception which we can buy over the counter/get cheap on prescription without any religious cunt sneering at us. Try it some time.
You could get in on the ground floor.
Does this mean Kotsko's a virgin?
Insomnia, anybody?
Alameida's Narnia neighborhood is rife with classicists. I know of one quite nearby who's also a Dadaist, and there's also an anthropological linguist in the general area who does Latin.
John, I actually woke up at 6am. On purpose. I should do this more often.
I, on the other hand, am up late. Good night.
I should do this more often.
Good God, why? Is there something happening?
max
['The cold dew in the morning darkness reminded me of the glories of winter... especially the shivering parts!']
Well, I'm up to drive my kids to school.
I frequently get up early, but usually there's no one here.
Surprised to here you say that. When something big has happened that calls for a ping-like response, condolences or congratulations, a dozen or so people check in at this hour. They're out there.
The site is so tranquil in the morning. I usually just come here for an hour or so of quiet contemplation.
At this hour, I'm usually just reading RSS and trying to caffeinate myself.
Wait, so has anyone bitten the Kotsko bait yet?
Ideally I would go to bed at 1 am and get up at 7:30, but too often I'm sluggish at 10 pm so I go to bed. I keep hoping that I'll wake up refreshed and sometime I am (today). It's a different thing than being tired or sleepy, it's just blahness. It's related to aging or alcoholism or both, I think. Enjoy your energy while you have it, kids.
Lots of people.
The frustrating thing for me is how many people around here have actually attained the relationship-free life but don't appreciate it.
My 60 year old neighbor has women swarming around him. The quality is not super high but he's easily pleased. He's actually a total mess but women seem to like that.
He's jolly, uncritical, accepting, and easy-going. Not like us.
Wait, so has anyone bitten the Kotsko bait yet?
It's important for me to pretend not to be that creepy.
Do you keep track of these people in the cafe, or what? You know more about your neighbors than I do mine.
You also live in Woebegone, though. I have some friends from college visiting this week, and it's made me realize how very different it is meeting people and making friends here in NYC. Two of the people I was hanging out with were friends-of-friends at Nerd U, and they were all, "It's so wonderful to see you! We have to get a drink again before we go!" etc. And I kept thinking, not even my very close friends in NYC think I'm as special or interesting as my distant acquaintances from Ohio do. If you're a jolly, reasonably decent and fun person in Woebegone, people are excited to see you. Here, I'm not even excited to see Anderson Cooper; how can I expect anyone to be excited to see me?
Yet another reason to move to West Texas or whatever and just be done with the City.
My friend also has no discernment or judgment, and his most recent babe was a (literal) psychotic (or almost) who nearly ruined his life. Even in Wobegon a lit bit of critical thinking is necessary.
I never could figure out how to negotiate the snap-judgment minefield of highly ambitious urban people. I also had trouble motivating myself to want to try.
I've rarely been excited to meet a generic famous person I don't have any special admiration for. The few famous people I've met whom I did admire intimidated me.
Eh, I fare well in the snap judgment business, and I still think it's shit. Once every two weeks or so, I have a truly magical time with a new acquaintance, and then there's no follow-up, because everyone's off having new magical experiences with other new acquaintances.
For years, I loved it, because my biggest fear is when people latch on forever and ever out of fear that they'll never find anyone else to have a semi-mediocre time with again (hello, college!). But, when every tissue in the box is beautiful, intelligent, and soft to the touch, you can always throw the last one away.
I AM SO EMO. I DEFY ANYONE TO OUT-EMO ME.
With me you are safe throwing down that particular challenge.
I DEFY ANYONE TO OUT-EMO ME.
My ex-wife and son went to see Dashboard Confessional last weekend and I couldn't go because I can't afford anything beyond beyond gas and groceries until next month.
I AM SO EMO ELMO. I DEFY ANYONE TO OUT-EMO ELMO ME.
Potatoes: The almost perfect food.
If you're a jolly, reasonably decent and fun person in Woebegone, people are excited to see you. Here, I'm not even excited to see Anderson Cooper; how can I expect anyone to be excited to see me?
when every tissue in the box is beautiful, intelligent, and soft to the touch, you can always throw the last one away.
AWB, what I like about you is that you are a endless font of illustrations of Simmel's essay, The Metropolis and Mental Life. E.g.,
The same factors which have thus coalesced into the exactness and minute precision of the form of [urban] life have coalesced into a structure of the highest impersonality; on the other hand, they have promoted a highly personal subjectivity. There is perhaps no psychic phenomenon which has been so unconditionally reserved to the metropolis as has the blasé attitude. The blasé attitude results first from the rapidly changing and closely compressed contrasting stimulations of the nerves. From this, the enhancement of the metropolitan intellectuality, also, seems originally to stem. Therefore, stupid people who are not intellectually alive in the first place usually are not exactly blasé. A life in boundless pursuit of pleasure makes one blasé because it agitates the nerves to their strongest reactivity for such a long time that they finally cease to react at all. In the same way, through the rapidity and contradictoriness of their changes, more harmless impressions force such violent responses, tearing the nerves so brutally hither and thither that their last reserves of strength are spent; and if one remains in the same milieu they have no time to gather new strength. An incapacity thus emerges to react to new sensations with the appropriate energy. This constitutes that blasé attitude which, in fact, every metropolitan child shows when compared with children of quieter and less changeable milieus.This physiological source of the metropolitan blasé attitude is joined by another source which flows from the money economy. The essence of the blasé attitude consists in the blunting of discrimination. ... In the blasé attitude the concentration of men and things stimulate the nervous system of the individual to its highest achievement so that it attains its peak. Through the mere quantitative intensification of the same conditioning factors this achievement is transformed into its opposite and appears in the peculiar adjustment of the blasé attitude. In this phenomenon the nerves find in the refusal to react to their stimulation the last possibility of accommodating to the contents and forms of metropolitan life. The self-preservation of certain personalities is brought at the price of devaluating the whole objective world, a devaluation which in the end unavoidably drags one's own personality down into a feeling of the same worthlessness.
Whereas the subject of this form of existence has to come to terms with it entirely for himself, his self-preservation in the face of the large city demands from him a no less negative behavior of a social nature. This mental attitude of metropolitans toward one another we many designate, from a formal point of view, as reserve. If so many inner reactions were responses to the continuous external contacts with innumerable people as are those in the small town, where one knows almost everybody one meets and where one has a positive relation to almost everyone, one would be completely atomized internally and come to an unimaginable psychic state. ... And it is this reserve which in the eyes of the small-town people makes us appear to be cold and heartless. Indeed, if I do not deceive myself, the inner aspect of this outer reserve is not only indifference but, more often than we are aware, it is a slight aversion, a mutual strangeness and repulsion, which will break into hatred and fight at the moment of a closer contact, however caused.
[Silence, while everyone consults their copies of Individuum und Gesellschaft looking for witty responses.]
All my comments: pwned by Simmel!
On the other hand, in a small town you can't ever say anything that you don't want everyone in town to hear, (and often, to remember and repeat for fifty years). So there's reserve here too.
Shouldn't "font of illustrations" be fighting words?
It's not worth breaking heads over a mixed metaphor, is it, John?
Does Kotsko even have a publicly-accessible email address? I have this friend "M", see...
35 is somehow both Emo and Elmo.
AWB is describing the inner life of the social butterfly. (Actually, perhaps only full-time socialites are the proper "butterflies" and lesser variants are more like social caterpillars. But whatever.) Despite talking about "a life in boundless pusuit of pleasure," Simmel seems mostly to be describing the inner life of the office drone contending with crush and gridlock. Metropolitan alienation would thus be most fully described by a mixed AlbUrsine-Simmelian model.
42: If so many inner reactions were responses to the continuous external contacts with innumerable people as are those in the small town, where one knows almost everybody one meets and where one has a positive relation to almost everyone
That last seems a bit idealized, no?
JT, I'll send it to you. I wish to make this occur. Yes, I know who you are.
"Positive relationship" must mean something like "actual relationship" or "concrete relationship", though in fact small towns have trouble accommodating serious grudges or feuds. But decades-long smoldering resentment continually expressing itself in veiled comments, yes.
46: Agreed, DS. It's possible that the small town requires one to seem to have positive relations even where none exist, and where private animosity springs up everywhere. The city, however, requires one to mute one's genuine positive feelings to maintain the apparition of distance.
I think that "getting used to" is the fundamental small-town relationship. People around here are getting used to me, and me them.
I was having a conversation with my advisor recently about the ways moving to NYC has changed us. She said she felt it had made her a bad person because she wanted to punch people all the time. I said it made me a bad person because I no longer want to punch people all the time. My human emotional reactions to insult, but also joy, are not only repressed in their expression, but eventually even repressed in their origin. That's kinda fucked up.
That last seems a bit idealized, no?
Yeah, I wondered about that too. Specifically, I wonder in what sense is "positive" being used? "Positive" in the sense of good/affirmative/etc.; or "positive" in the sense of practical/actual (as against theoretical)?
I'd probably tend in the direction of irritability. London made me twitchy, and I want to punch people all the time when I spend more than a week in Toronto. I don't think I'd fare very well in NYC.
re: 50
Yes, my dad is friendly with a gay couple who moved into our village in Scotland. They started drinking in the local pub. This is emphatically not a gay-friendly environment. They kept coming back and because they were persistent and also actually fairly tough working class guys, the locals have 'gotten used to' them.
53 to 51. And re: 52, I think the latter sense. It's hard for me to assess because my exposure to small town life was at a very young age, and was very particular (e.g. South Africans in a Canadian small town).
London made me twitchy
Yeah, but in my experience, a really high percentage of Londoners are total pricks. More so than other cities I've spent time in.
I like things about London, and am regularly there visiting friends [who are Londoners]. But Londoners aren't generally one of the things I like about the place.
I'd have to agree with 56. It's a city of anal-retentives.
mornin', folks. John, are there really classicists swarming around me? I feel like I keep meeting biophysicists.
for some reason that sounds to me as if one may be the larval stage of the other. "he's a molecular biologist; it's the nymph phase." must be the swarming.
I think that "getting used to" is the fundamental small-town relationship
Nice! And also, given basic human tolerance, small-towners can get used to a lot more oddity than you'd think.
44: you can't make an omelette without breaking heads.
also, I'm sending my husband to Chicago next week to take Kotsko out for dinner. not sure what will come of it, but I can feel sure I've done my level best.
ftr, I happen to like New York. I'm sufficiently high-pitched and irritable that it's one of the few places where I feel in harmony with my surroundings.
58: they're classical biophysicists, he meant.
"To my mind, anything past Galvani is simply too recent to be considered canon."
I hadn't realized that you're an angry bee, slol.
There's a gay couple living in the most conservative township around here, but I don't think they're out.
But in Lake Wobegon many heterosexuals aren't out either. makes it easier to pass.
Ala, if you want to meet a dadaist Latinist near Narnia email me. He seems like a fun guy but I have no idea how sociable he is.
Suaviter in modo, irritable in re.
It's too early in the morning for Latin and me.
OMG. Not one, but two fans of Georg Simmel in one thread. That's approximately two more than I have encountered in total since college. He doesn't even get much love in Germany, where the name "Simmel" is associated with a more famous author of Trivialliteratur.
Quick, somebody quote Werner Sombart, I'm *this close* to orgasm.
Warum gibt es keinen Sozialismus in den USA?
I have the "Philosophy of Money" on my shelf as a project. "The Dyad and the Triad" sticks in my mind too.
I want to punch people all the time when I spend more than a week in Toronto
Damn. And it's such a friendly, clean city too.
68: Not enough Germans outside Minnesota and Wisconsin. Even North Dakota had a Socialist streak once.
Siiiiighhhh. [Lights cigarette.]
Germans don't explain the big Socialist vote in Oklahoma, though.
[Lights cigarette, wipes down keyboard and monitor screen]
Yeah, but in Minnesota and Wisconsin they actually ran the state for awhile.
Actually, perhaps only full-time socialites are the proper "butterflies" and lesser variants are more like social caterpillars. But whatever.
A girlfriend once called me a "social grazer." Which would I rather be: an insect or a cow? Hm. That's a tough one.
I think that "getting used to" is the fundamental small-town relationship
An guy I dated always talked about a one-man-two-women household in the teeny Austrian village where he grew up as evidence of this claim.
67: Don't know that I'd say I'm a fan, but I know a bit. My department had a grad student conference on Simmel several years ago, which drew an odd group. About half of the presenters talked about "The Metropolis and Mental Life" and related it to Benjamin or to the film Berlin, Symphonie einer Großstadt [gee, no one's ever thought of that before!], and the other half were rabid Simmelheads, thrilled to be among the few who appreciate the neglected genius.
Some very different lines of thought to back to Simmel: cult-stud type musings on modern identity and city life, on the one hand, and very mathematical social network theory (and experimental social psychology) on the other.
That's the crazy thing about him-- his work was so wide-ranging. Also wrote decent stuff on Goethe.
My favorite fact about him is that his first philosophy dissertation was about yodeling, and was rejected by his examiners.
There was a class on Simmel and Weber at U of C, which I originally planned on taking, but then one of my profs told me that it would be the most boring thing in the world.
The existence of this thread reaffirms my faith in self-fulfilling prophecies.
Be nice to us, Kotsko. We're trying to get you laid.
68: Not enough Germans outside Minnesota and Wisconsin. Even North Dakota had a Socialist streak once
I'm interpreting this as a gesture toward the "homogeneity" argument about Socialism, which most Americans believe explains their differences from "the rest of the civilized world." The feeling that we lack the necessary solidarity due basically to being too different from one another, or racism. I've seen Brad DeLong make this one.
People who think Michael Moore lacks subtlety or intellectual heft should note how he deploys this American ready-made explanation for why we're f–d, in Bowling For Columbine, by asking people why we can't be like Canada, getting the standard homogeneity answers, and going to Canada and showing it ain't so.
one of my profs told me that it would be the most boring thing in the world.
Well this is within the realm of possibility, depending on who was teaching it and why they cared about those guys.
83 was a way of expressing regret about my near-miss with this neglected genius.
4 was what I had in mind, but by the time I got to the bottom of the thread, I'd forgotten that I wanted to respond to it.
How can any other online dating profile compete with this?
Wow, Simmel seems really interesting; thanks for the pointers!
As Steve Punt remarked on the radio a while ago, these days a millionaire is someone who bought a house near London and then stayed alive for a few years.
When I brought up the site it geolocated my IP address, roughly, and said "Meet millionaires in [Podunk town near here completely dominated by Army Base]!" There are no millionaires there, believe me.
No, I actually think it's the Germans and Scandinavians and Poles. Minnesota and North Dakota are the two least Anglo-Saxon states in the U.S. Catholics and Lutherans are much less individualistic and more communitarian than Anglo-Saxons.
Have you guys heard Simmel's a capella cover of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'"? It prefigures a lot of the Frankfurt School's take on Def Leppard, but with more subtlety and humanity.
Also, Kracauer does some nice work with The Allman Brothers, but I can't find a link.
Wow. Without that, Adorno's cover of "Pour Some Sugar on Me" surely wouldn't have been possible.
Don't any of you fuckers read my goddamn blog, where I pointed out Petra's cover exactly a month ago?
Also, Simmel's article on fashion was in a package my mom just sent to me. (I had printed it out and left it at home.)
Also, Tyler, if you email me I'll send you adam's email address.
OT: Bruce Sterling has some hilarious/creepy/awesome robot videos: Actroid robot; Robot muppet on fire; and Dog bites robot dog.
Don't any of you fuckers read my goddamn blog,
You have a blog?
And w-lfs-n, I already emailed Tyler.
Everybody knows the real action at Ben's blog is in the comments.
This thread started out so well, but now it's fraying.
"Getting used to" is such a fundamentally humane relation. It's a shame that nations can't practice it. But people are so messed up that we only practice "getting used to" when circumstances prevent us from killing each other.
AWB must have a wonderful social circle if every last person she meets is so terrific that previously encountered terrific people can be discarded without regret. I think it's not so much that everyone is great, but that it's a mathematical certainty that there's someone else in the city who is just as great. You don't get that exciting illusion of "oh my god, my only possible soulmate!".
The thing is, that makes you lazy, and you can waste a lot of time wandering around in the vague security of knowing there are other good people out there.
in a small town you can't ever say anything that you don't want everyone in town to hear, (and often, to remember and repeat for fifty years). So there's reserve here too.
Unfogged is a small town. Except for the possibility of presidential anonymity.
A geography professor I had warned us that "The Philosophy of Money" was really interesting but had some "fucked up" stuff in it. I've never read any Simmel.
In truth, these wise people exercise a most annoying tyranny. For that reason is life in the small towns insupportable for one who has lived in that great republic which we call Paris. The tyranny of public opinion- and such opinion- is as stupid in the small towns in France as in the United States of America.
College teachers put much more energy than they should into telling students what not to read, which is especially problematic when the blackballing professor is also the recommending professor.
I used to be astonished at the intellectual narrowness of most PhDs I've known, but now I take it as the default state.
I made a breakthrough with Madame Bovary when I realized that Emma's fantasies of dashing aristocratic lovers were pretty much the same as small-town American girls' fantasies about guys with pencil-thin mustaches.
@106: Monsieur, this blog needs you now more than ever.
107: The only proscription I got in all my (four and a half) years of colleging was not to write a paper about Wilhelm Reich for a Western Civ survey called Sex and Violence.
Not to say that disciplines don't self-discipline, but I don't really vibe to the experience of being told not to read something.
I had a friend who asked me not to talk about certain topics when his adviser was sitting across the room. We also had two spontaneous examples above, and I've heard others.
The professor I'm referring to wasn't trying to get people not to read Simmel, he was concerned that his lecture had made it sound too appealing for the unwary. It was one of the best lectures he gave.
One does not address one of the greatest psychologists of the age with "tu", Mr Voet.
that's what i get for not reading a whole thread. and i have even read some of his novels!
Selon Nietzsche, Stendhal est « le dernier des grands psychologues français ».