water drinks michael phelps

yeah, it's been a while.

yeah, i've got a list - two lists, actually - of shit i've been meaning to blog about. like twelve things. that's pretty pathetic, i admit, to have a fucking list - no, wait - TWO lists of things to blog about and still not be able to manage to do it.

oh well!

i've been happy lately, a shocking, delicious, and (most of all) new sensation to me. it's hard to figure out how to go about my life-as-usual now that i'm pretty consistently happy since a) happiness is so novel to me it mostly spawns nothing but anxiety and shit, let me tell you, being constantly anxious really shoots your schedule all to hell and b) as sadness was my motivation for a lot (read: most) of the creative things i did, it is quite challenging to figure out how to completely shift my ground for creativity.

again - oh well. this is why we are alive, this is the magic of the ego.

lately everyone's been all into this sports thing - let's see... i think they call it the... olympics. olympics, right! everyone's been all into the olympics! and hey, i don't have anything against that at all. i'm not, or rather, i'm trying not to be one of those academics who thinks shit like, "ugh, this shit has no real meaning, purpose, being, it's just mindless athleticism, trained apes, etc." because obviously that position is complete bullshit for several reasons. the first is that these olympians should be lauded not only for their extreme skill but for the fact that they celebrate, nourish and cherish their bodies, and most likely have a relationship with them that is quite foreign to most americans (who delight in torturing their bodies with processed food that their brain wants to eat but that their body fights in vain, and, who, even worse, spend most of their time ignoring the subtle language of their aches, drives, hungers and pains). secondly, anyone who can sit on a futon for hours at a time, usually intoxicated on some kind of substance, and think things like "hmmm.... it's like, when you consider death, it splits into notions of language and self, which are really the same thing, equivalent, in the eyes of death. hmm, fascinating..." cannot really be too critical of the purposeful utility of anything, especially something which results in a pure, physical action.

i haven't had access to cable in about two years now, and haven't actually owned a tv in almost a year. this means that my news of tv-related things is usually quite derivative and distorted, and that's perfectly fine with me, just the way i like it, actually. i am, of course, proud of michael phelps, proud of his historic contribution to sports and to america, but, being me, i am much more interested in seeing what people do with the facts of this situation, how they get digested by society at large, than actually watching him glide through the water, in a speedo, at superhuman speeds. (this, according to some, could be my loss.)

for instance, while i smiled at phelps' modest face in photographs after each medal and warmed to him when he declared that he missed his own bed, these things didn't really stick with me, they didn't penetrate, or rather, they only penetrated my mind so far. however, two other things i read, things that used his victories as a springboard to other ideas connected to but far beyond michael phelps, will stick with me for a long, long time. (the second one, especially.)

i offer them as documents, as testaments to the indefatigable human spirit (both intellectual and physical), below:

1.
2.