isthmusandthelisps.com – Blog Here you will find blog-posts from members of Isthmus and the Lisps and a few of our close friends.
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By Zach, on May 12th, 2012
This was one of the first entries saved in a .doc I started back in 2006. It was aptly titled “shitmyprofessorssaid.doc”. The document has survived several crashed hard-drives, a conversion/upload to googledocs beta platform, and was renamed (early on) “shitgeorgeoharsaid.doc”. Sure I have other shit-so-and-so-said documents, but his is the most significant.
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So I was in the agora in Greece, and I heard these kids running around yelling, “Socrates! Socrates!”. I forgot that people in Greece still name their kids Socrates. I thought how cool it was to be walking exactly where socrates had once trod in his sandals while children shouted . . . → Read More: George O’Har – Interview
By Zach, on March 19th, 2012
I went for a drive today and wound up at a place called Fair Hill, which is in Elkton(?), Maryland. Apparently it’s a nature reserve/state park/horse-stable. Who knew such a combo existed? I sure didn’t. Despite the weeks of warm weather, it appeared I was exploring during the off-season as I did not encounter a single man, woman, child, or horse during my visit.
It was that pre-dusk time of day when colors start to fade, and the experience left me in a state of melancholy. It was probably just my reaction to being alone in a space that was so clearly . . . → Read More: Faith Hill? Oh wait, I mean Fair Hill.
By Zach, on February 3rd, 2012
So Mark Baumer had this idea I won’t bother explaining, but in the context of sharing it with me he asked me how much I would pay to see Spider-Man 5. I started thinking about some snarky way to answer his question and realized that my appreciation of various elements that all fall under the umbrella-term “spider-man stuff” really has no correlation to the amount of money I have spent (or would theoretically spend) appreciating them. I realize that thinking about this was a waste of my time, and reading about this is a waste of yours, but indulge me. I . . . → Read More: The Value of Spider-Man
By Zach, on December 11th, 2011
I stumbled upon a recent internet reposting of a 2003 article originally published in the Secular-Humanist magazine Free Inquiry titled: “The 14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism”, which seems (after briefly researching) to be a summary of or excerpt from something written by “Dr. Lawrence Britt” a “political scientist”- whoever/whatever the fuck that is.
This little list/essay packs a powerful punch when one compares the titular characteristics to say, post-9/11 America, or whatever country s/he’s in at whatever time s/he reads it. Why? Because the arguments presented by Dr. Britt (or whatever high-school drop-out actually wrote this piece) are mostly bullshit.
I’m not a . . . → Read More: “14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism” OR “Affirming the Consequent”
By Zach, on November 29th, 2011
I’ve been trying to better keep up with recording/writing down my initial reactions to the films I watch. Unfortunately, I saw all of these films at least 8 months ago (and have probably seen at least a hundred+ others since). The ratings and comments were based on initial reactions, but I admit to editing the grammar and syntax as I transferred these evaluations from the scraps of paper cluttering my desk.
Buffalo 66
10/10 – This film is officially in my top 50 of all time. Vincent Gallo is superb. Christina Ricci is far less annoying than she is often capable of being. . . . → Read More: Some (long overdue) Film Recommendations
By Zach, on November 2nd, 2011
Introduction -
Holidays are intellectually problematic (for me) for a number of reasons:
1. Religion (almost exclusively Christian religions) and/or Politics (and the negligent rewriting of history) have played, and continue to play, major roles in inventing and popularizing holidays as well as encouraging their observance by subject-populations; i.e. an idea is being crammed down my throat (however oversimplified and sugar-glazed the idea might be) by structures of power that I have hundreds/thousands of years of history fueling my mistrust of*.
2. Historically speaking, our culture of capitalism/materialism/consumerism has allowed the systematic rape/bastardization/commercialization of almost every single exploitable day that any culture (at least . . . → Read More: Halloween 2011
By Zach, on September 21st, 2011
so like not 2 b a a$hole or wuteva, but the new insta-feed in faye’s book is like the krystle meth of this soshul network here me out tho i got tuns of raisins to back it up (like that funny song on youtube hide ur kids hide ur wife i no right?!) hearz the proof number(0 or zed like they say in grate britan PS i bet u didnt no i new randem trivia like that sumtimes gurlz r smarter then we look n u shuldnt’ judge a book by it’s cover like MLK2KJR sed in that famious speach that . . . → Read More: OMG1111! how is this ova twitter and facboks word limmit?
By Zach, on September 14th, 2011
I’ve been thinking about this all day (I’m not sure why): How to survive a bear attack. Let me rephrase that, how to win a fight with a bear (no weapons). There are obviously plenty of places that will tell you all the tricks to live through the unlikely case of a wild animal attack. That stuff’s important, definitely. Curl into a ball to protect your head and vitals, I get that. Play dead so the animal becomes disinterested, I get that too. Worst case scenario go for the most vulnerable bits (eyes, nose, in the ears, whatever), I get that . . . → Read More: A bit of advice…
By Zach, on August 11th, 2011
So I started this project (which will probably go nowhere like most of my projects) in which I find random net-lit/blog-posts/what-have-you from the internet and edit them as if I were readying them for the author’s final adjustments before publication. This involves copying and pasting the post/story/whatever into googledocs, highlighting problem areas/words/sentences/etc., and commenting (to the side) on changes that need to be made and the reasons for these changes. I think of it almost like a crossword puzzle for my whole brain. It exercises a skill that I have cultivated over the past six or seven years and helps my . . . → Read More: Tao Lin – The Best Worst Writer of Our Time
By Zach, on June 26th, 2011
Last week I was graced with a few days off– in a row. We planned a sort of last-minute camping trip because it’s always fun to spend a respite from work sleeping on the ground. Here’s where we stopped (in order): Little Pine State Park in the Tiadaghton State Forest, PA; Jersey Shore, PA; and Centralia, PA.
Because of Erika’s work schedule, we had to arrive and set up camp in the dark of the night and pack up the site two days later in the dark of the early morning. It was a test of our camping abilities and comfort levels, but we . . . → Read More: Camping June 2011 – Susquehanna River
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