The Sweepers Chapbook

2011-04-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

In the near future, new books that are not binary data files will be a luxury of the leisure class. Expect a handful of firms to emerge specially licensed by the major publishing houses to crank out quality editions to order. Books on a shelf will be a statement about who you want people to think you are, not what you actually read.

2011-03-26T12:55:00.001-07:00

You laugh at hippies, but there are girls from 1966 still sipping a high that watches glaciers meander like billowy clouds over sunflowers. Meanwhile you just tweeted five times.

2011-01-17T10:26:00.000-08:00

Imagine a level at which the effects of racism slip below the noise of normal human social interaction. In advanced societies, that is the level racism will find.

2010-08-14T13:16:00.001-07:00

War for the city-state was a civic affair. For the nation-state, it was a newspaper headline. For the future-state, it will be an engineered virus that misses several deadlines and goes way over budget.

2010-08-11T05:37:00.001-07:00

We treat emotion, reason, and the spiritual as distinct, even absolute, ontological categories. They are fuzzy varieties of neural patterning. Capgras delusion and temporal lobe epilepsy help to reveal the overlaps.

2010-07-19T19:18:00.001-07:00

Evil is better categorized as a mental defect than, say, evil. It is an exceptional, perhaps pathological, form of cognition that, almost arbitrarily, gets recognized as such.

2010-07-18T17:41:00.001-07:00

Acing a standardized test is still, in the end, just a regression to the standard.

2009-11-05T22:09:00.000-08:00

In a perfectly ironic world, the number of lives saved by self-appointed militia men exercising their Second Amendment liberties would exactly match the number of lives lost to the escalation of petty arguments and the general crossfire.

2009-11-03T20:07:00.000-08:00

Being young is much easier when you are young. It is also a lot less desperate.

2009-06-20T11:15:00.001-07:00

The problem with the global warming debate in America is that more people's views are informed by abortion than they are by environmental science.

2009-03-26T21:04:00.001-07:00

The correct answer to all Microsoft interview questions beginning with the word how? Google it.

2009-03-25T21:03:00.000-07:00

The correct answer to all Microsoft interview questions beginning with the word why is: marketing research shows that that is what white people find most reassuring.

2008-09-07T16:57:00.000-07:00

Even if the CERN Large Hadron Collider destroys the earth and the universe, you won't really notice. For the multiverse would just keep spawning random universes until you ended up in a universe in which everything else was the same except that the CERN Large Hadron Collider didn't destroy the universe when it was turned on.

2008-05-22T19:50:00.000-07:00

My birthday: just another holiday invented a few years ago by marketers as an excuse to sell more scotch.

2008-03-12T22:19:00.000-07:00

We're all prostitutes. Some of us just get to take our clothes off while we work.

2008-01-19T14:24:00.000-08:00

My Las Vegas Hotel

It's called Fin de Siècle. It would use so much Tiffany glass, there would be shortages for decades. And I would bring Oscar Wilde back from the dead to deal blackjack.

2008-01-18T18:22:00.000-08:00

The first rule of taco salad: don't eat the shell.

2008-01-17T14:21:00.000-08:00

Mathematics is formally consistent theology. Theology is sloppy mathematics.

2008-01-15T22:33:00.000-08:00

A racist is merely a progressive tribalist.

2007-12-16T16:30:00.001-08:00

Let others provide the drama in your life. They'll invariably provide the comedy, too.

2007-12-04T20:48:00.001-08:00

If the looming mockery and derision of your peers isn't motivation enough, I hardly think a well-meaning phrase is going to help.

2007-11-19T21:45:00.000-08:00

Human society needs the critic. The fair critic. If not for this jaundiced censor, with his nice discrimination and contempt for the folly of his peers, civilization would have ended in a Ponzi scheme about 300,000 years ago.

2007-09-21T20:04:00.000-07:00

Confronting your own mortality can be rather invigorating really. Confronting the mortality of others, especially loved ones, will crush you.

2007-08-15T10:52:00.001-07:00

Starbucks: like a coffee enema for your mouth

2007-08-01T12:35:00.000-07:00

People overestimate the demands of devilry. The position is little more than a sinecure. Man will eat tigers and assassinate gorillas. Assassinate gorillas. I'm taking the rest of the week off and going fishing. In a barrel. With a shotgun.

— The Devil

2007-07-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

Before biology, there were rocks.

2007-07-06T11:41:00.000-07:00

Extraordinary satire transcends art and approaches the level of reality.

2007-06-18T16:56:00.000-07:00

The study of Literature and the study of Computer Science are actually much more similar than most people appreciate. In Literature, the algorithms are just a little more complicated and the applications more pervasive. Naturally, as a result, Lit grads tend to make much less money.

2007-05-25T13:20:00.000-07:00

Over-protective mothers don't create gay sons. Gay sons create over-protective mothers.

2007-05-23T14:10:00.001-07:00

Don't bother arguing with your friends, neighbors, food servers. The only place you can win an argument is on the internet.

2007-05-08T18:22:00.000-07:00

Half a billion dollars for one over-hyped movie might seem like a waste of money. For Anthony Lane's review of that movie, it's a small price to pay.

2007-04-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

To talk about God is to diminish him. To want to understand him is ridiculous. To claim to divine his motives arrogant. We have some hope maybe of understanding his creation -- whether he indeed created it or not. That is what science is for. Any other approach is inappropriate.

2007-04-11T15:49:00.000-07:00

God is a victim of our grammar – in English, at least. To say he or him in referencing the deity seems patronizing. She or her equally so. The transcendent It better address the problem, I guess. Better just not to refer to the subject at all.

poetic suicide

2007-02-09T15:02:00.001-08:00

half-price sushi

2006-10-22T13:01:00.000-07:00

All spirituality is new-age spirituality.

2006-09-19T10:32:00.000-07:00

Information wants to be free. It's misinformation that pays the bills.

2006-09-09T10:25:00.000-07:00

Of all the people who said they'd come back from the dead, few had the power to actually convince others that they'd do it.

2006-09-07T11:23:00.000-07:00

Act with perfect discretion and indiscretion is impossible.

2006-08-29T21:22:00.000-07:00

If there had been Nazis before the Nazis, the Nazis would have called their critics Nazis, too. As a matter of fact, they did.

2006-08-18T21:04:00.000-07:00

I hope that there is a hell so that someday I may finally meet, and converse with, Oscar Wilde.

2006-05-17T09:16:00.000-07:00

People who believe in hell usually have a good reason to fear it.

2006-04-28T17:30:00.000-07:00

Innovation, said Machiavelli, makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime, and only inspires lukewarm support from those who would prosper under the new. Open source innovation makes even stronger enemies among the old regime. And upper management tends to prefer the status quo where possible.

2006-04-25T18:52:00.000-07:00

Epicureanism today begins with a rental car in Provence and ends with herpes in Minsk.

2006-04-19T16:39:00.000-07:00

Before Girls Gone Wild, there was frutiger.

2006-04-11T16:43:00.000-07:00

For the most evil figures in history (take for your example who you will, I personally offer Hernando de Soto), hell may be too generous a thought. It implies conservation, even immortality, where a more just fate would be dust scattering unto atomic material.

2006-04-06T22:11:00.000-07:00

The first three seasons of Seinfeld would have made no sense if cell phones had been around.

2006-03-28T16:36:00.000-08:00

Don't manage a problem. End it.

2006-03-27T11:36:00.000-08:00

Eighty percent of success is showing up. The other twenty percent is having a good excuse for when you're not there.

2006-03-09T07:05:00.000-08:00

A simple rule for dealing with the unexplained or supernatural: assume a natural explanation and wait for the explanation to arrive.

2006-03-08T13:35:00.000-08:00

People who talk about choosing people based on their good character usually wouldn't recognize bad character if it walked up and robbed them blind.

2006-03-02T19:38:00.000-08:00

Some people are masters of denial. Others of us aren't but do a pretty good job pretending we are.

2006-02-22T16:24:00.000-08:00

Parents have trouble understanding their kids because they anthropomorphize them. Stop mistaking your kids for human beings and they'll make a lot more sense.

2006-02-21T16:39:00.000-08:00

As Machiavelli pointed out, those benefitting by the status quo tend to favor the status quo. So do those not benefitting by the status quo.

2006-02-19T10:22:00.000-08:00

The United States is a nation subjugated by its pets. Americans don't just make their dogs members of the family, but in confusing the wishes of a dog with their own wishes, they make the family dog head of the family. It is premature to say that America has descended into dogocracy. But how can a nation that fails to understand the nature of its own pets be trusted to judge the character of its politicians?

2006-02-18T16:20:00.000-08:00

If you're a non-partisan with this administration in office, you're a partisan.

2006-02-17T17:48:00.000-08:00

In a free market, consumer activism is the ultimate form of social activism.

2006-02-13T23:05:00.000-08:00

Every one of your relationships, carefully studied, offers a lesson for your next one. Disregarding these lessons is one of the first steps toward falling in love.

2006-01-31T22:56:00.000-08:00

All trade implies a price.

2006-01-31T21:46:00.000-08:00

The moralist wants to believe, whether as an assumption or a demand, tha certain things cannot be traded. Where the law enshines this belief, crime flourishes.

2006-01-22T21:23:00.000-08:00

x16#869552

catholicpewter

2006-01-17T21:31:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you comb your hair. And sometimes your hair combs you.

2006-01-16T14:50:00.000-08:00

The only thing worse than a humbug is a goldbug.

2006-01-08T12:10:00.000-08:00

In love, vengeance is a dish best served steaming hot.

2005-11-28T20:54:00.000-08:00

We exist at the caprice of aliens more powerful than us.

2005-11-21T00:04:00.000-08:00

When tortured for the first time, do not make the rookie's mistake of trying to tell your torturers the truth. Simply tell them what they want to hear.

2005-10-20T20:21:00.000-07:00

Good things are behind barn doors.

2005-09-23T11:13:00.000-07:00

Anyone who uses the word "moral" outside the confines of a philosophy seminar is probably full of shit, if not deeply immoral.

2005-09-20T01:13:00.000-07:00

Where there is an incentive, there is an ethical dilemma.

2005-09-11T23:32:00.000-07:00

I hope the Mountain Goats don't use myspace.com to promote their albums. The internet is beneath them all together.

2005-09-06T15:35:00.000-07:00

It is possible that events occur entirely at random or even all at once and our minds are the outport of a kind of search engine or algorithm that filters through it all and puts it in the kind of order which we take for the arrow of time. It would look a lot like a mental disorder to be the outport of an engine that did not filter through events in a way that puts them in the kind of order which we take for the arrow of time. Metaphysically speaking, this would not be a disorder so much as a difference.

2005-08-30T16:49:00.000-07:00

Some writers almost make me sick to my stomach.

2005-08-28T11:14:00.000-07:00

Like the tale of Icarus, Burning Man reminds us that art projects are for burning, not flying.

2005-08-21T22:11:00.000-07:00

If you don't bomb the London underground, the Neocons win.

2005-08-17T23:18:00.000-07:00

Waste youth! That's what it's for.

2005-08-12T17:23:00.000-07:00

If you really believe humans were intelligently designed, you understand next to nothing of human anatomy, history, genetics, or love. You are a person of true faith.

2005-07-16T10:20:00.000-07:00

Nothing ruins my sense of humor like people without a sense of humor.

2005-07-15T16:16:00.000-07:00

To paraphrase Groucho Marx, the liberals married the Lutherns and that's how jackasses were born on the Internet.

2005-07-10T15:32:00.000-07:00

Those with status tend to favor the status quo, in poetry as much as politics.

2005-07-04T10:22:00.000-07:00

In a closed society, people are often denied freedom and liberty. In an open society, there is greater opportunity to romanticize the absence of these ideals. But this comes with a price. Specifically, the price at which you are bought or sold or merely bought out.

2005-06-20T08:12:00.000-07:00

Where there is a will, there is a conflict-of-interest.

2005-06-13T17:14:00.000-07:00

The worst thing about opening Pandora's box is all that packaging material.

2005-06-09T13:40:00.000-07:00

Chances are you aren't really going to need it.

2005-06-08T16:15:00.000-07:00

Of all the ways of making the weaker argument seem the stronger, merely stating that the weaker argument is an alternative to the stronger is one of the more subtle. Saying that further research into the matter is required is subtler still.

2005-06-03T09:51:00.000-07:00

In the future, optimism will merely be a euphemism for denial.

2005-05-19T10:04:00.000-07:00

Wearing a tie is a good way to hide a deplorable lack of productivity.

2005-05-06T17:07:00.000-07:00

Judge a man by the companies he buys and sells, not by the companies he keeps.

2005-05-03T12:11:00.000-07:00

If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the accession of Clinton to the death of the dot-coms.

2005-05-01T13:06:00.000-07:00

If you died so we could say the Pledge of Allegiance, you wasted your life.

2005-04-24T23:31:00.000-07:00

Some people say I'm cynical. I say get back to me in twenty years when the surface of the earth is uninhabitable, jackass.

2005-04-24T23:28:00.000-07:00

Some people say I'm cynical. I say, boy, are you going to feel like an asshole when you're dead.

2005-04-19T10:03:00.000-07:00

Science cannot inform us whether or not Jesus owned a dog. It is a matter that must be accepted on faith.

2005-04-17T17:28:00.000-07:00

It is difficult to turn the internet upside down but not necessarily impossible.

2005-04-17T16:15:00.000-07:00

In certain contexts, a bird in hand is the precursor to unspeakable human tragedy.

2005-04-16T13:43:00.000-07:00

After seeing Ring of Fire, I was inclined to say that Emile Griffith was the greatest gay boxer of all time. Then someone reminded me about Joe Louis. And Rocky Marciano beat Joe Louis.

2005-04-12T13:32:00.000-07:00

Philosophy is not the love of knowledge so much. It is more like a curiosity that transcends mere gossip. There are few true philosophers in the world today. Especially among philosophers.

2005-04-11T16:50:00.000-07:00

There is an infinite number of unintelligible statements. There is an infinite number of intelligible statements. However, as there is a finite number of intelligible beings, there will only ever be a finite number of intelligible statements.

2005-04-11T16:49:00.000-07:00

There is an infinite number of unintelligible statements. There is an infinite number of intelligible statements. However, there are less intelligible statements than there are unintelligible statements.

2005-04-08T10:52:00.000-07:00

It is really too bad that masturbation doesn't pay better. If only it paid a living wage, many of the world's problems could be solved.

2005-04-06T21:34:00.000-07:00

Life on the network -- at once ever tenuous and inextricably inextricable.

2005-04-05T00:07:00.000-07:00

I'm getting money back. Not that it matters. Either you have a shitload – so it doesn't matter – or you have just enough to get by – in which case it doesn't really matter. Or you have none – in which case it really doesn't matter. Of course it doesn't matter for completely different reasons.