I was going to leave this as a comment on Perry's blog but sometimes it is intimidating leaving comments places where people who are probably wittier than you might read them. Fuck all.

Everytime I get a call from someone, I try to write down their number and the date they called, because I want to keep the numbers up-to-date and I don't trust my office phone's memory or my cell phone's address list. I have many pieces of paper lying about my office with scribbled names, dates and numbers on them...I think it freaks people out. I try not to answer my phone unless I know who it is, in order to make sure, I have to reference my scribbled notes, which takes too fucking long...thus the person ends up leaving a message, which I don't want to listen to because it will be so fucking long and their number may or may not be at the end of it.

I'm growing a beard, I'm going for that Ted Kaczynski look (I almost didn't include that part because I wasn't sure how to spell Kaczynski). I also wear a waist coat sometimes but it isn't as cool you would think. I realized this weekend that I hadn't worn jeans in over a month...I immediatly retrieved a pair from my dresser and put them on, fearing that if I didn't, I would start laughing on the inhale.

The Beat, circa 1892, w/ hats.

I don't need to tell you that this photo collection of students from Patrick Henry College called Right: Portraits from the Evangelical Ivy League by (my brother?) Jona Frank hits a little too close to home.

Here's a selected photo essay from Mother Jones. The interviews with some of the students are amazing — though, as you'll read, you've already met them all.

Like Shant Boyajian, 20. President of the Patrick Henry College Republicans.



"I came to the school because of the education and the professors and particularly because it was offering a Christian education from a classic liberal arts perspective."

Yo ho ho

What is it, exaclty, about Hillsdale and pirates?

There is Dr. Arnn's known association with pirates, dating from the start of his tenure as president, then there's Peter Leeson's Austrian-buccaneer economics and now Hillsdale alum Erik Prince is going to have his mercenary company, Blackwater, fight pirates?

What the hell people.

Reading on the current 1st ammendment case in the Supreme Court, I have to wonder why some of the Beat Boys haven't converted to Summum.

I mean come on. Gibs? The third aphorism is about vibration.

According to Stephen Colbert, part of the economic crisis is due to computers, which are programed to dump stock (for example) at times when humans might hang on. Some ridiculous percentage of the stock market is actually computer-run. This, for me, revives questions about whether it's really a bad idea to attack machines that do human-like jobs. Maybe if we'd all started stabbing automatic vacuums when I said we should, we'd be okay now ....


You know they're evil

Say what you will about Hillsdale College (I will, thank you), but Arnn is actually a good sport. After generations of getting called a pirate, for no real reason, getting a pirates flag flown from his office window (we suspect Bob, obviously), and having himself refered to as Arrrrrrrrn, he's gone ahead and accepted the joke. A tamed down version, clearly, but still, according to the Collegian, Arnn presides over an annual pirate party.

In other Collegian news, Hillsdale Hardcore is lamer than I remember. And the Manning Street racists are ridiculously aggressive.

On the other hand, Hillsdale homophobia is exactly as I remember, as you can see in the perfectly expressed in this awful driblet:

Heneveld wasn't "losing his morals,"- his Facebook "Interested In" status clearly states "women."

I talked to Dr. Scalia on Wednesday. He is over in Baltimore these days. He inquired about his Post Modern Students and I gave him the updates I had. Also, he was the volume editor for the Bloom's Critical Companion to Emerson, and I think he has a few other books/chapters coming out in the near future.

By the way, does anyone happen to know what became of the Post Modern video? I'd like a copy before it gets too lost.

In the early morning and late night hours, the Danger Cart and Beat door/flag, respectively, were "liberated" by three brave, anonymous souls. They're undergoing treatment to preserve their status as historical relics, and shall be proudly displayed as such.

Let September 10, 2008, then, stand in history as "Beat Reclamation Day."

Also, happy early birthday, Hugger.

The Beat's door, with all the signatures, is in the basement of a house. The last remnants of The Wake, children of The Bench, live there.

It's being used for beer pong.

Sad day.

Someone reminded me about Scoutmaster and former Hillsdale College student/theocrat Hans Zeiger so I wanted to see what he doing now in light of being cut off from the warm nationalist paternal love-milk of his alma mater.

Turns out he has out-Zeigered himself and is now writing (at least part-time) for an Orthodox Anglican publication called, and I am not making this up, Virtue Online.

Since Zeiger, who claims to be stationed in Canterbury, and other writers for the site aren't reporting any news other media don't have, it seems the only purpose of Virtue Online is to elaborate on what they see as the sinfulness of gay people, people who don't hate gay people and, especially, other Anglicans who don't hate gay people.

His blogs and columns have stopped, though the Virtue Online articles could arguably be a violation of his promise to stop writing about current events. As he said in a January 2007 column:

In most activities of life, silence is the prudent thing. If words are to be used, let them be about the Savior of mankind whose incarnation we have just celebrated. Of Him, may we speak as fervently, as humbly, to one soul as we write to thousands.

Anyone else heard of any news, stories or travels of Zeiger or the Zeigerish peoples?

I have become engaged. To a woman no less. The wedding will be June or July of next summer after she finishes her thesis on elements of literary criticism in Poe's detective short stories, and after I get back from Argentina.

For those of you who swooned @ Ron Paul, any thoughts of what you'll do come November? Thoughts about the capital-L Libertarians and Bob Barr?

Favorite word today: Swag. Meaning: Stolen shit,
or, stuff that was once pretty valuable but now is sort of 25 cents on the dollar, but maybe it's worth something to someone.

Allegedly, the word's police report jargon for "Stolen Without A Gun," though that's obviously fiction. Fun though.

Also ... because Bush is almost gone
& because I keep finding myself sucked into politics
& because
I can:

I live in a country where, 7 years ago, the government seized virtually every bank account in the country--denying people access to their money--and later returning (if one was so lucky) only a third of it. The government routinely denies the visible, palpable inflation and relentlessly increasing poverty rates. There is no abortion, except in back allies in "villas miserias"--shantytowns built using whatever people can slap together. These, my friends, are problems.

I do, however, know that a scarf is not a problem. What the fuck is this?

For Dave

I think Farnham needs some of these....and Dr. JJ

Someone has been watching too much SNL.

'I'm a big fan of Radio Control'

One Valentine's Day, Hugger and I watched that movie with Paul Giamatti about the guy who lived in Cleveland, was really sad, and drew a series of comics about how sad his life was. American Splendor, about Harvey Pekar. I remember we went to the video store and every movie about anything remotely related to love was checked out, even "Assassination Tango" and Maggie Gyllenhaal's S&M-romantic comedy.

Not that we were looking for a romantic movie, but the shelves were wiped and the desperation of that was sort of stark.

So we got this really really sad movie about a really really sad man, who seemed a lot like my friends, and a lot like me.

Case in point: Hugger didn't watch the movie, because he was drinking peach schnapps and had been drinking peach schnapps since he woke up that morning. He will claim that this has nothing to do with the fact he was spending Valentine's Day with me, but he's full of shit.

The movie really depressed me. Not because Pekar was pathetic or lonely or sad, but because he didn't have any fight left in him. I wanted to have some way to fight back, even if I was pathetic, some way to hope things could be better, even if that made me pathetic. This is why I thought American Splendor was sad, but thought Love Liza, with Philip Seymore Hoffman, was beautiful. Dave Frank used to try to push that movie on people.

I really like it, he would say. I just really like it.

Dave and I didn't watch that movie together, so every time he told me he really liked it, I would say I did too.

Did you see it? he would say, and he would point at me. Dave always pointed at me, his hand like a pretend gun, like I wouldn't know he was talking to me unless he pointed.

Yes, I would say. I did.

I really like it, Dave would say. I mean, I really like it. A lot of people didn't like it. They were like, 'this is sad,' but I just really thought it was good. It was a good sad.

Hoffman's character in the movie, Wilson, thinks that Radio Control planes could save him. He tries to get over his wife's suicide and his addiction to huffing gas by becoming a fan of Radio Control. He was really really sad and lonely and pathetic, and seemed a lot like my friends and a lot like me, but maybe more than Pekar, because he had some kind of hope. He could get excited about things and in one scene he goes crashing into a lake, just so he can tell people that he has an identity.

Do you know who I am? he says. I am a big fan of Radio Control.

I thought he was going to say he lived at the Beat.

I was thinking about this when I read Dave's last column. I really like Dave's columns. He makes himself sound sad, like what my mom would have said was sadsack, though I don't know exactly what that is. But like that. Except he also has that kid-like consternation, and he sounds really sweet, which was always Dave's big secret.

In every one of his columns, I keep wondering if Dave's going to suddenly get excited and start yelling that he loves Radio Control. If he ever does, I hope someone's there to tell him they do too.