Welcome to Charming or Tedious.

It was cold that night, not unlike most nights

In most places.

He walked alone, the crunch of snow beneath foot comforting; hypnotic.  He rubbed the lining of his coat pockets between his fingers, savoring the soft, satiny texture between such calloused tips.

He walked, snow underfoot, satin in fingertips, walked and watched, walked and thought, walked and inhaled, exhaled, set in tune with the cadence of his feet.  The moon was a sliver; the streetlamps created ghastly shadows of trees and extended caricatures of himself.  He walked past homes with shutters askew; mostly televisions glowed and made silhouettes of the people inside, but sometimes…the people inside would be talking, or laughing, or even (he saw this once in Vermont) dancing, dancing with such exuberance he had wanted to walk right inside and join in, remove the heavy  coat he was burdened with and move his snow covered boots in rhythm to the music he couldn’t hear…

He had a girl who wanted to marry him once.  He had told her no and never regretted it but he liked to think of the fact she loved him on cold nights.

He passed an officer on the street corner.

“Close to home, mister?” the officer called out, tipping his hat.  “It’s gonna be a cold one tonight!”

“Oh yes,” he said, hands in pockets.  His gun seemed heavier in the cold.

Prince borders right on that line that makes most men uncomfortable: the “gay” line.  The man has pranced around in a whole lot of outfits that make men feel uncomfortable: speedos with thigh high stockings; a buttless yellow suit; high waisted pants with a lace mask; really, the list is endless.  Men, usually, aren’t into things that make them feel uncomfortable, regardless of the talent behind it.  Not to mention, Prince really is geared towards the female populace. He sings to us, dances for us, fucks us in his movies, and almost IS one of us.  He blurs the gender lines so effectively that in typical American fashion, the women drop their panties and the men run away.  Androgyny is usually the forte of females.

Goddamn I want you to stop sneezing.  Every hour or so, you sneeze twice in a row, then again about 5 minutes later.  It is fucking annoying.  Have you never heard of these things called antihistamine or, even, tissue, which you can use to cover your mouth and then therefore STIFLE THE SOUND OF YOUR FUCKING SNEEZE IN?!

Little things. Little. Things.

i love you so much i kinda peed and came at the same time. i’d feel ashamed but i think that was exactly the right reaction, no?

alexandernevermind:

Alicia Keys is a good artist but I’ve lost a ton of respect for her as a person. Though I have never watched her sing live with the exception of last night I did enjoy her music.  Since she normally has the stage presence of Rihanna or a manilla folder  I always end up changing the channel….but I digress. 

Right now Ms. Keys is five or six months pregnant with Swizz Beats child (y’all pray it looks like her).  As always a baby is a blessing and it totally has nothing to do with the circumstances it has been brought into the world under. But from what I gather about the situation, Alicia Keys is trifling.  Don’t preach the whole “Superwoman”, “female empowerment” deal while you’re dating a married man.  She didn’t even have enough respect for Mashonda to wait for their marriage to end before beginning to date Swizz. Now they’re engaged and if I’m correct, he’s not divorced.That’s just… gutterbutt-trollop-hussy-skeezer-skagnasty- ho shit.

I’m not going to put all the blame on Alicia either. Swizz is just as ugly as he is wrong….and he’s dead wrong.  He didn’t respect his first marriage, wife or child so what makes Alicia think he’s going to respect hers? SMH.

P.S. yes, I did pick an unflattering of Alicia. I don’t give a fuck.

Yeah gurl.  That’s why Alicia Keys is off the Sterner-Love-List.  Plus her last two albums were lame as fuck.

After I read Mashonda’s “open letter” I knew Alicia was a rahtard.  I posted that shit a while back if anyone is interested.

duckandpenguin:mollylambert:gifparty:

Hey, Sterner! Pictorial evidence.

OMFG, DP. Thank you and sweet Jesus for this!!! This is Prince while Alicia Keys’ slut ass danced around.  It is good to know The Purple One and I share the same opinion on that home wrecking betch. 

typically if you’re a blogger, you’re depressed.  Another “no shit” moment, brought to you by science!

psychotherapy:

New Software Can Detect Depression in Blog Posts (Psych Central)

A new software program can tell whether a blogger is depressed.

The program scans online text and blogs, identifying not only obvious keywords, but even subtle clues that can determine the blogger’s psychological state.

“The software program was designed to find depressive content hidden in language that did not mention the obvious terms like depression or suicide,” said Professor Yair Neuman of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, who led the study.

“A psychologist knows how to spot various emotional states through intuition.  Here, we have a program that does this methodically through the innovative use of ‘web intelligence,’” said Neuman.

Many people with depression are undiagnosed.  While there are a number of screening tools available on the Internet, only individuals who suspect they may have depression are likely to use these tools. 

To design the program, named Pedesis, Professor Neuman and his team first used extensive English language web searches to define word patterns associated with depression, analyzing the text associated with the search term: “depression is like….”

For example, the program might detect words that express different emotions, like colors that the writer uses to metaphorically describe a situation, such as “black.” Other concepts associated with depression that might trigger the software include terms like sleep deprivation, or loneliness.

To test the program they analyzed more than 350,000 texts from 17,031 bloggers. (Permission from the bloggers was obtained prior to the study.) The Pedesis software identified the 100 most depressed and the 100 least depressed bloggers.

A panel of four clinical psychiatrists reviewed the posts from each group and found that there was a 78 percent correlation between their clinical impressions based on the texts and the software’s diagnosis.

Computer-generated diagnosis or online therapy is not a substitute for human interaction, but may provide a useful screening tool.  “No one can actually replace excellent human judgment,” says Neuman. “The problem is that most people are not aware of their situation and they will never get to an expert psychologist.”

Although the Pedesis program was originally designed for academic purposes, Neuman hopes that these findings could be useful clinically, to screen for potential suicides. If implemented on a widespread basis, a screening process might increase the user’s awareness of his or her condition, and provide recommendations.  If the blogger agrees, he or she could seek professional help.

Professor Neuman’s results will be presented at the 2010 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agency Technology in Toronto.

Source: Ben Gurion University

alexandernevermind:

Shaking & crying.

Locker, Spanky and I talked to a makeup artist in the jacuzzi tonight who was at the BET awards and told us about Prince wearing a Prince outfit. I almost peed myself with joy.

Only that motherfucker can get away with that shit. *bows*

fringeelements:

I like to read history, and when I saw “Indoctrinate U” I could help but establish a paradigm. Maybe it’s a pattern-seeking mania, but I thought this:

The Universities epitomize “institutional thought”. Through license, the state limits entry into television and radio, and so television and radio can be considered the “institutional media”. Almost everyone in the institutional media has gone through the universities. And high academics at universities are in turn often cited by the institutional media.

Then there are the lower level education camps which everyone is required to attend for 10 to 12 years. In these camps, it is often stated that the “.edu” and “.gov” are reliable sources, as are stories from the news media.

There are many easy ways to educate people: books, audio tapes, an online course with “gateway” tests where students can progress at their own pace - and if they cheat that’s fine, it’s their money. If all one paid for was the salary of the instructor, for only the classes they need, and the building to have classes, teaching would be cheap and efficient.

An institution with fraternities, “undergraduate” classes, tenure, sabbaticals, sports teams, various ceremonies, seems to be about as interested in truth as churches are. And before someone says this comparison is posh, modern churches encourage people to explore scientific and intellectual concepts. It’s only when you start questioning the sacred cows that the fangs come out. The most obvious difference between churches and universities is that universities control much more of an individual’s daily life, that is the level of control the university has is much deeper than modern churches have, and I would posit that universities limit thought more than churches.

But my point: people in debates will invoke a long list of academics with many letters after their names as a way to intimidate their opponents. A title such as doctor or PhD is something that members of universities confer upon each other. I view it like “Reverend”. And many universities started with a very explicitly religious agenda.

Now Reverends can be very intelligent people in their own right. They could predict economic events very well, explain political economy in a way that coheres better than anything prior, or invent something and be a great technician in some way. But that wouldn’t come from his status as a reverend.

I’m speculating, but most people know very little, their egos are not defined by their economic acumen and thus are willing to learn. People who go to universities tend to have “anti-knowlege” on economics, that is they believe lots of things that are false and very strongly. As a result, these people are not only less intelligent than the average person (the average person has zero economic knowledge, while the average university student has -100 economic knowledge), but are more arrogant and less willing to change.

And since university students tend to have high IQs, this leads to the curious result of people with less “brainpower” actually being more intelligent than people with more “brainpower” on economic matters in a systematic fashion. And so we have the hilarious result of the lower-brainpower people resisting the economic fallacies of the institutional media, the universities and the higher brainpower people.

Unfortunately because they have lower brainpower and less institutions to fund research, free marketers are much more reliant on grassroots and low-level propagation of ideas, like this blog here!