http://www.sellingwaves.com A graduate student in mathematics and a modern languages major take on politics and culture with the following aspirational motto: ‘Deregulate your mind.’ Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Last week I performed stand-up for the first time. Afterward, one of my friends asked me how I felt. I said, "Well, it burns when I pee. I don't know if that has anything to do with the comedy, but it might have something to do with ... http://www.sellingwaves.com/2010/03/12/the-half-light-of-poetic-inexactitude-2/ I have a lot of friends who are Russian. Every Russian seems to have seven nicknames but, as one of my friends pointed out, childhood photos from Soviet times all look the same. Those pictures, at least the ones I've seen, all seem to be of grumpy-looking children ... http://www.sellingwaves.com/2010/02/25/devils-are-too-enthusiastic-for-socialism-to-be-hell/ When I was little and read Batman comics, a silhouette of black pointy ears meant crime was about to be thwarted. Since I've had a cat, it's come to mean no ankles can swagger around safely any more. A girl once told me the most embarrassing thing that ... http://www.sellingwaves.com/2010/02/23/canada-flocks-north/ At a certain age I think most people stop wanting to apotheosize their birthdays and want instead to obliterate all memory of them. Fortunately for me and most of my friends, both impulses find identical expression. Maybe something about that simplicity made me able, while we were staggering ... http://www.sellingwaves.com/2010/02/15/sublunary/ Have you ever noticed that in Monet paintings smog seems to be the actor playing all the main roles? Today smog probably would need to disguise itself as the side of a cliff or an ornamental Japanese bridge in order to hide from the banditry of environmentalist brigands. ... http://www.sellingwaves.com/2010/02/11/premeditated-nostradamus/ I always enjoy how marketing expands our consciousness towards new and stupider horizons. Last week I saw a motion-activated soap dispenser commercial that tried to frighten the simple people of America with the news that soap pumps have "hundreds" of germs on them, which would make them cleaner than ... http://www.sellingwaves.com/2010/02/08/chasing-the-dragon/ I now know that there's at least one gun store in Boulder. I have laid eyes upon it. It's not even that far from the Naropa Institute. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, even in a place like Boulder, since society generally tolerates two kinds of people: ... http://www.sellingwaves.com/2010/02/02/blamapalooza/ Who says math can't be entertaining? Even the simplest equations can, like cat + shower. Of course, only one of my cats can actually clamber up the stairs to the shower and poke her face into the deluge. The other one has too much joint pain to ... http://www.sellingwaves.com/2010/01/29/error-404/ I find it interesting that half the country seems to be under the impression that Harvard, like all the other famous universities in the country, is run by a bunch of communists, since it's definitely the most capitalistic organization I've ever been a part of. And since they had ... http://www.sellingwaves.com/2010/01/28/deep-in-the-crimson/ After mounting a campaign that thrust deep into enemy territory, the back and forth along the horizon between earth and sky in Shanghai has become a stand-off again. Have to keep giving people a reason to look up though, distract them from looking down and remembering how many fetuses ... http://www.sellingwaves.com/2010/01/25/switzerland-without-even-a-cuckoo-clock/