The Archer Pelican

Thoreau on Time

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

-- Henry David Thoreau

Plato Not Prozac includes this quote at the beginning of its chapter "Midlife Without Crisis"

We Got Obama

"We Got Obama", downtown Durham next to the former "We Want Oprah" building.

Missed Connections Nostalgia

Remember the Indy's old Missed Connections ads?  If you're from the Triangle, I'll bet you do.

Seven years ago when I was having a perfectly lousy winter into spring, I fantasized about people writing Missed Connections ads with me in mind:

And I sent them to the Indy under a pseudonym:

From: Lucas Merriman
To:     Indyweek
Date:  May 14, 2002
Subject: semi-fiction inspired by the Indy

Hello Indyweek --

There are two things I read every week in the Indy – Red Meat and Missed Connections. In every issue, they speak directly to my sense of optimistic, out-of-synch despondency over my own condition and the way I connect with other people: just enough to create an eye-rolling sense of despair.

If I could draw, I’d do my own strip and probably that would make me really happy. So of course I don’t draw. Not even as well as Max Cannon’s kid who did this week’s strip.

But I do fantasize, and this January I got to thinking about all the strangers whose paths I cross while wandering through Durham and Chapel Hill. Do they ever notice me, as I sometimes wonder about them?

Just reviewing the last few days, I could think of a dozen moments when I might have been noticed by people at the bank or at the grocer's, at a party or on the town. If they saw me, what were they thinking?

Below, my hypotheticals. For your amusement. Or for the amusement of your production staff.

If, for some reason, you feel like printing it...feel free. Just sign it "Lucas Merriman." Not my real name. But definitely my real fantasies.

The Indy editor wrote back and said she'd love to run them as a guest piece if I would supply my own name, but for whatever reason I declined.  These days I'd say "sure, run 'em with my byline!"  Then again, these days I wouldn't write anything so glum.  I'm damned happy about that.  Best as I recall, 2001-2002 really stunk.

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ALRIGHT! Seven years ago I was very pleased with myself for formatting my Word document to look like the original Indy print ads.  Today I'm even more pleased to have converted that document into a readable, non-fuzzy .jpg.  It only took an hour to figure out, but that's what peaceful Friday nights are made for.

Which Philosopher Are You?

Having recently quoted Nietzsche at my ADDexecutive blog, I started thinking about one of the great questions of this age: Is there a website that will tell me which philosopher I most think like?

Of course there is:

Which philosopher are you? Your Result: Sartre/Camus (late existentialists)   The world is absurd. No facts govern it. We live well once we truly accept the world's absurdity. YOU give our life's meaning, and YOU control your world. (see Nietzsche for very closely tied beliefs) --This quiz was made by S. A-Lerer.
Nietzsche
Aristotle
Early Wittgenstein / Positivists
Plato (strict rationalists)
W.v.O. Quine / Late Wittgenstein
Immanuel Kant
Which philosopher are you? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

And of course there are other sites, including this one by Vassar professor Bryan W. Van Norden that (gasp) indicates Nietzsche is far down my list:

	My #1 is:	Augustine
	My #2 is:	Aquinas
	My #3 is:	Kant
	My #4 is:	Aristotle	Aristotle" NAME="result4">
	My #5 is:	Hume
	My #6 is:	Sextus Empiricus
	My #7 is:	Protagoras
	My #8 is:	Nietzsche
	My #9 is:	Plato

Sorry for the ugly graphic, above.  Here's a prettier link that also links to a profile of Augustine (including his relationship to the web):

See more Philosophy selector quizzes @ SelectSmart.com® Which famous philosopher do you most agree with? Here's my top result for this selector quiz by Bryan W. Van Norden:

Augustine

And lastly, here's What Philosophy Do You Follow? from Quizfarm that I'm too lazy to take right now.

Enjoy yourselves!  (Assuming your philosophy allows pleasure.)  If you discover others that are better than the three above, let us know in the comments.

Addendum: motivated by Buck doing it, I took the Quizfarm quiz, which I think I like best of all three:

You Scored as Existentialism Your life is guided by the concept of <b>Existentialism</b>: You choose the meaning and purpose of your life. <br><br>“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” <br>“It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.” <br>--Jean-Paul Sartre <br><br>“It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.” <br>--Blaise Pascal <br><br>More info at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Arocoun">Arocoun's Wikipedia User Page...</a> Existentialism 95% Utilitarianism 65% Hedonism 65% Divine Command 55% Justice (Fairness) 45% Strong Egoism 40% Kantianism 25% Apathy 15% Nihilism 15%

While two of out of three surveys agree, I can't say that I feel like an existentialist (and I don't feel tardy, either. Heh. Funny that it was in 1984 that I took a class in existentialism and enjoyed that Van Halen video which was still in MTV rotation.  Class dis-MISSed!)

Trinity Millsaps Football ("now with 40% more 'holy crap'")

Many of you have already seen this fantastic final play in the October 2007 Trinity vs. Millsaps football game.  What's new is that someone recently released video taken from the end zone.

In Trinity's Lateralpalooza rocks Division III and beyond, ESPN's Pat Forde covers the play and includes the original video.  In Student Announcer Ensures Laterals Are Heard Round the World, the New York Times' Joe Lapointe has a very nice interview with the Trinity announcer, Jonny Wiener, who hadn't planned to be at the Millsaps-hosted game but managed to stop by on his way back from a student-journalism conference in DC.  Appropriately, William Faulker also gets a quote.

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\Incidentally, if TypePad makes one more frickin' "improvement" to their interface, I'm going to scream. I can't control the formatting to save my life.

Where More Credit is Due

An emerging thought:

In America it seems to me that we often give too little respect to how hard things can be: whether the length of time it takes to mourn a lost relative, or how difficult it is to find the courage to apologize, or how scary it is to leave a job or a relationship.

That said, it also seems that we have to little faith in how strong we can be: whether in the ability to keep functioning while taking the time to cry, or the resolve to push our way through to saying what needs to be said, or the will to walk out a door and to keep walking while everything tries to pull you back.

I could be wrong, but that's the way it seems to me.