I was in the middle of writing a different blog post, just now, when suddenly and without warning, blogger-apathy struck, and I relegated my now defunct post on forgetting to the ‘unpublished’ pile of this website where posts go to die or be forgotten. I am happy to say that my unpublished list is much longer than Dave’s and is like the dark-side of my blog personae - posts filled with anger, expletives, and self-doubt. Hey, there’s a reason why they are unpublished.

Instead, I’ve decided to post two quotes pulled from the archives (June 2006). One year ago, I was writing things like this:

Things that have already happened this summer include a research trip to gulf shores, much hanging out with DC, missing at least one good party, and seeing my mom off for a trip to Chicago.

Things I should be doing: studying for the the graduate examination, searching for a graduate school and/or job for post-college.

I’m not doing these activities because mid-summer apathy has struck and crippled my ability to be pro-active about anything. Sigh. Eventually, I’ll get around to it.

One year later, I’ve actually gotten around to accomplishing those things. Wow. Clearly, it takes me a while to get things done!

Meanwhile, Dave was writing things like this:

june 1st.

another possibly perfect summer month, just asking to be filled with the hazy lazy mornings and hot rocking nights of yester-summer.

but we all know that this month may as well go by a neutral name, like Month 6. just another 30 days to work through and pass by (perhaps with a little patriarch appreciation thrown in). June will have its own special glory, i do not doubt that, and i am always a firm believer in the endless possibilities of new beginnings, but in my office which has no windows and is otherwise surrounded by concrete and asphalt plains, these days will translate only into paychecks.

It’s too bad about that.

I miss these funny, slightly melancholy posts that Dave used to make - now that he is blissfully married, perhaps I’ll just have to look back to the archives for that kind of thing.

At any rate, I didn’t accomplish any of the writing I wanted to in June. July, I’m feeling, will be a better month.

 More pictures are up over at Jess’ photostream. We’re past the halfway point of the trip now, but there is still lots to see!

trying to fix the mysterious comment problems, i severely broke my website yesterday (on the administrative end), and i just had the best time trying to put it back together. and the comments are still not fixed.

Once again, we still get the comments you send, even though it throws up an error message. sorry in the meantime.

and if you notice anything else going bonkers around here, let me know.

it may have been a coincidence that jon and i were talking about the different blogging softwares around these days, and up until just now, i’ve been more than happy with movable type. but i’m seriously considering giving up on MT after this.

Now available on DavidComeaux.com are the honeymoon photos! The set is meant to be shown as a slide-show, so put on some Bob Marley background music, click the first photo, and read all the captions for the whole (short) story.With all the photo-related posts these days, you’re sure to waste an hour or two at work between my photos, jessie’s photostream, dad’s endless photographic chronicles, and coming soon, a thousand more photos from the wedding.I’m trying to come up with a good format for my photo pages, so it’s slightly different than what you’re used to. The minimum recommended viewing resolution is no less than 1024×768, so you might have a little trouble if you’re on anything smaller. If you have any comments about the new photo style, please post em here.

Update: 6.24.07!

Jess is photoblogging our trip in Denver almost by the minute so you can check out her photostream for updates on the trip, should you be so inclined.

I’m off to Denver today to attend a conference with the family unit (minus one), so posting may be light next week.

I plan to take lots of pictures, see lots of interesting things, and generally enjoy being so far away from sea level.

Wiccans, pagans, naturalists, and animists of all stripes unite! Today is the summer solstice, or Midsummer for all you Shakespeareans out there.

The celebration of Midsummer’s Eve was from ancient times linked to the summer solstice. People believed that mid-summer plants had miraculous and healing powers and they therefore picked them on this night. Bonfires were lit to protect against evil spirits which were believed to roam freely when the sun was turning southwards again. In later years, witches were also thought to be on their way to meetings with other evil powers. 

So just remember, tonight is the most magical, supernatural night of the year - not to mention the longest day of the year! So enjoy the daylight while it lasts, because as the sun sets the seasons are going to begin the long march towards winter once again.Also, a word to the wise: you may want to avoid speaking about this over dinner - I made that mistake last night and mass hilarity ensued. Pan, as I was reminded, is often closer to our mundane everyday lives than we like to realize.

A striking passage from a book I just finished reading, The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula LeGuin,

“But in fact, isn’t that man’s very purpose on earth - to do things, change things, run things, make a better world?”

“No!”

“What is his purpose, then?”

“I don’t know. Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread of a cloth or a grass-blade in the field. It is and we are [emphasis in original]. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.”

LeGuin is a self-described Philosophical Taoist and it’s evident in the dialog presented here. I myself feel a very strong resonance with Philosophical Taoism - I often wonder if this is because it is such a stark contrast to the Christianity I grew up with?

Part of the irony of my college career is that I nearly minored in religious studies because I have such an avid fascination with world religions and their role in shaping society - however, after all those classes and all those hours of study, I am now a distinctly non-religious person.

While I am busily trying to motivate myself to write, here are some excellent articles that have been sitting in my newsreader for weeks just waiting to be shared.

A great article on the economics of productivity, academia, and how it relates to Mozart and Baumol’s Disease here from the New Yorker.

Forgive American consumers if they feel a bit perplexed. Policymakers and pundits have been warning them about the prospect of deflation (a prolonged and widespread decline in prices) but there’s no sign of any decline in many of th prices that people pay every day. Car-insurance premiums jumped more than nine per cent las year. Health-insurance costs are soaring, to say nothing of the cost of a haircut. Cable-TV prices have risen sixteen per cent since 2000. And then there’s college: tuitions at private colleges have jumped 5.6 per cent annually over the past three years, according to the College Board, and public colleges are even worse. In times like these, it’ hard to get worked up about deflation
Why the divergence? It may have something to do with Mozart.

Pardise Lost: Leo Hickman on the unsustainability of global travel.

The travel industry tells us that tourism makes poor countries richer and the whole world happier and more peaceful. Even the most beautiful places can retain their charm. But the truth is very different.

What the World Eats : a pictorial slide show of food and the people that eat it from around the world.

And finally, an article about lapdances that manages to be both insightful and entertaining.

Readers: you may have tried to post a comment recently, and it may have given you a 500 Server Error after a minute or two. However, rest assured that in most every case, your comment was recieved and sent to the “waiting to be approved” bin. Management is working on this. For now, think of the 500 Server Error as more of a We [Heart] Comments page.

An interesting argument (which I mostly agree with) in Slate magazine here:

But there’s a powerful case to be made that in an age of equitable marriage the engagement ring is an outmoded commodity—starting with the obvious fact that only the woman gets one. The diamond ring is the site of retrograde fantasies about gender roles. What makes it pernicious—as opposed to tackily fun—is its cost (these days you don’t need just a diamond; you need a good diamond), its dubious origins, and the cynical blandishments of TV and print ads designed to suggest a ring’s allure through the crassest of stereotypes.

All of this written, naturally, by a female columnist. Thoughts?

Here I am, LSU! back for a little summertime fun. This post is coming to you from Middleton Library, also known as Paul’s schooltime house.

Every morning i have a 10am class in Communications for Business and Professional students, then i follow up from 1 to 4 pm with a little Microcomputer Laboratory on mondays and wednesdays. This Communications class is the first class i’ve taken at LSU that has more than 2 girls in it. All of my previous classes here were in the EE discipline. My first summer semester, pretty light work if you ask me!

I miss the college atmosphere outside of class. It’s one of my favorite things on this planet. It is one reason why i would not be upset if i ended up teaching at a university level. I am wearing comfortable clothes and carrying fun stuff like ipod, hackey sack, magazine, pens and pencils and engineering paper, first aid kit, and light jacket in my bag. I’m prepared for just about anything. Just chizillin.

Here’s my plan for success: get work done early. HAHAHAHA!

I went to see Knocked Up this weekend, hoping that it would be a good film. In my opinion, it wasn’t .

After seeing the movie, I can’t say I understand why the film is getting such great reviews from nearly every major critic in the states. Sure, it had some very well-written jokes. It had a few interesting supporting characters. But a lot of Hollywood romantic comedies contain these elements - why the high praise for this particular film, I wonder?

Many will probably answer that question by elaborating on the “smart”, “fresh”, and “real” plot arc that this film supposedly contains. However, I found the storyline to be the exact antithesis of those pearly adjectives.

I’ve snipped a few comments from the web which basically sum up my feelings about the story:

This is white boy wet dream material not reality. Once you get over it being [not] ‘political’ it’s pretty funny.

.

[Knocked Up] feels very real… But the point is, it’s not real: it’s your basic formulaic romantic comedy where “unintended pregnancy” takes the place of, say “dinner reservation mixup” as the “meet cute” element of a standard plot. In real life, one night stands don’t go on (that’s um, why they’re one night stands), guys rarely stick around for the accidents and women, often, get abortions when faced with the personal and professional pressures this character has. That’s why we have movies, and why they’re not real life. Let’s just not mistake one for the other too much.

I also think this reviewer at the LA Times nails it.

I really wanted to like this film, and no doubt many others will, but I won’t recommend it. I really think your two hours and seven dollars would be better spent doing something else.

Going through my high school archives (!) this morning and finally transferring them over to my computer after years of languishing on CD-R’s, I found this picture:

Talk about an unexpected surprise from the vaults - enjoying my favorite hobby circa 2001 (02?)! I found lots of other good stuff in there as well, especially some old poems and some very revealing journal entries I don’t remember writing or saving from January and February 2002.

Trying to manage a personal ‘archive’ can be a pain, but it is so rewarding to rediscover things about your past self that you’ve long since forgotten.

Honeymoon was fantastic. Desiree uploaded the 184 photos that we took on digital camera and i will begin sorting through those so that i can tell the story in pictures and captions, as i am apt to do. It leaves less to the imagination, but works better on the instant-gratification-web.

Some people have already asked me: “So david, how’s married life?” What i say back is “Great! It’s just begun.”

What i want to say is “The familiarity of it all (apartment, girl, dogs, baton rouge, posessions) is disarming. But the rules have changed. As a result, my married life is testing the limits of human adaptability. For one, there is a completely new type of stress that has been introduced. Desiree thinks it is because our apartment, and therefore our lives, aren’t all in order yet. Boxes everywhere and things out of place, things with no place, but in the right general place. That’s how i feel right now. Out of place, but in the right general place.”