Category: Sumana Harihareswara

Brendan Talks About Things He Doesn’t Understand

March 9, 2006 /

Reading Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun, finally, I came across this sentence:

“Beauty is found in the tension between our expectations and reality.”

Which contrasts interestingly with Rebecca Borgstrom’s assertion that suffering is the disconnect between desire and reality (which, as I vaguely understand it, is derived from viparinama-dukkha and sankhara-dukkha).

That’s not to say that together, they imply that suffering is beauty; in fact, Borgstrom (who I think would not disagree with Koster’s statement) has specifically denied as much. Whatever I’m fumbling at here is more subtle than that. So why not crush the subtletly beneath our old friend proof-by-analogy?

According to our premises, beauty is derived from expectations and suffering is derived from desire. Sumana has said that hope leads to expectations, secret or otherwise; I believe that. I also believe that desire invariably produces hope. So desire leads to suffering and hope; hope leads to expectations; expectations lead to beauty; beauty leads to desire. Insert ASCII diagram here. Suffering is the byproduct of the desire-hope-expectations-beauty loop.

Or make up your own better diagram, and tell us about it.

January 9, 2006 /

Sumana takes the old disappearing sock meme and makes it funny and touching. That’s skill, gentlemen–skill like we’ve not seen. Not since Morocco. Haskins! Initiate the Marianas Contingency! Good God, man, there’s no time to lose!

November 28, 2005 /

Ian has been and gone, leaving giggles and makeouts in his wake. Thank you very, very much to Deb Core, Sumana Harihareswara, Joan Wood, Sharon Calhoun, Lisa Brown, Scott Stauble, Kyle Neumann, Angel Brooks, Ken Moore, Monica Willett, Sean Hoban, and especially Maria, whose idea this was in the first place. You guys are the champions of friendship!

I associate exclusively with overachievers

November 16, 2005 /
  • As my mother reports, my sister will be interviewed for an appointment to continue studying at Oxford. My predictions are on target so far! Yay Caitlan!
  • I have been thinking lately of what a little expletive I was from, oh, about ages nine through nineteen; my hyper, piping self-absorption stands in sharp contrast to Sumana’s high school martyr complex, but I still identify strongly with the behavior she describes. I wish my motivation had been as progressive as hers, and I wish I regularly could come up with the kind of beautiful phrasing she uses at the end of the column. (But read the whole thing first, dammit.)

November 12, 2005 /

Sumana asked the other night whether there was any depth to which I wouldn’t sink for a story idea. I have discovered that there is. I just can’t try to pawn this off as fiction.

C O R Y

– – – –

PALO ALTO, CA — Researchers at Stanford University have announced that the hole in Earth’s ozone layer is rapidly being filled by another stratum of the atmosphere.

“We’ve done spectroscopic analysis,” said Doctor Cory Wonkette-Searls on Thursday, “and Dooce Gaiman at Washington State has obtained confirming results. The replacement gas is coming from the blogosphere.”

“I wouldn’t want to be in Antarctica right now,” he added. “Wheeoo.”

The ozone layer absorbs ultraviolet radiation, and has been depleted by chlorofluorocarbon pollution. The blogosphere, composed of superheated air and self-absorbed methane, is separated from life on Earth by several orders of magnitude.

May 17, 2005 /

I’ve written about talking on the phone to Sumana before, but now you can experience it vicariously yourself: her interview with Diana Abu-Jaber resembles my own conversations with her. Ms. Abu-Jaber is much quicker on her feet than I, of course–even the moment when she belatedly realizes that she and Sumana have met before is graceful. (Oh, spoilers!)

I would have said “priceless” for “graceful” there, but Mastercard has ruined that word forever. I wish they’d make that campaign die, but this is unlikely as long as I keep pouring money into them.

Sumana also has a brand-new permalink to her column, MC Masala. It is an excellent column!

February 12, 2005 /

So I lied. I still don’t trust that my funny-filter is better than yours, but I do think it’s better than Dog Bites Dog’s funny-filter (if not, alas, its funny-generator). It also occurred to me that a DBD weblog has a function other than filtering: I think it’s a good thing to archive and save the best bits for future humans, who won’t understand their context, because the links have rotted. But still.

Relatedly, like most postadolescent males, I have harbored in my gut the desire to start a satirical news publication. Since by far the best part of any such rag is the headlines, though, that’s all I ever bothered to produce. For the last few months, whenever I’ve felt particularly savage about something in popular culture, I’d come up with a headline and archive it. That wasn’t often enough to be a viable source of content on its own. Combined with somebody else’s generated headlines, though, it might be!

It is for these combined purposes that I’ve set up Dog Bites, a weblog in the vein of Spam As Folk Art. It should have new content every day or two, or more often if DBD is on a hot streak and I’m feeling hateful. I hope you like it! (And hey, my SAFA co-maintainers, let me know if you want in on some of this action.)