Category Archives: Awe

The Fog Of War

By terje | Published: July 18, 2009
Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.
Also posted in American stuff, History, Movies, Politics, Recommendations, Review | 5 Comments

Wonderful — 2009-03-29

By terje | Published: March 30, 2009
strange: aberrant, able, abnormal, absurd, alien, amazing, anomalous, apart, astonishing, astounding, atypical, barbarian, barbaric, barbarous, beguiling, bereft of reason, bewildering, bizarre, brainsick, crackbrained, cracked, crank, crankish, cranky, crazed, crazy, crotchety, curious, daft, deluded, demented, deprived of reason, deranged, detached, deviant, deviative, different, disconnected, discrete, disjunct, disoriented, disrelated, dissociated, distraught, divergent, dotty, eccentric, enigmatic, erratic, exceptional, [...]
Also posted in Quote of the day, Words | 16 Comments

Stranger than Fiction

By terje | Published: March 30, 2009
Watched Stranger than Fiction again tonight, and I was happy to discover that it was as good on the second viewing and in company as it was on the first and alone. The plot is a bit hard to describe without ruining it all, as discovering what the hell is going on is one of the [...]
Also posted in A Moistening of the Eyes, A Praise Chorus, Art, Bliss, Glee, Goosebumps!, Love, Movies, Pimping, Pleasant surprises, Recommendations, Review, Speculative fiction, Television stuff, Yay! | 9 Comments

Yeah, um… — 2009-01-29

By terje | Published: January 29, 2009
“The past is a grotesque animal And in its eyes you see How completely wrong you can be How completely wrong you can be The sun is out, it melts the snow that fell yesterday Makes you wonder why it bothered (…) Things could be different but they’re not Things could be different but they’re not (…) But it’s like we weren’t made for this [...]
Also posted in A Praise Chorus, Art, Goosebumps!, Hodge-podge rambling, Language, Music, Pimping, Poetry, Quote of the day, Whoa, Words | 2 Comments

Growing but grudging respect for an awesomely cold people — 2009-01-28

By terje | Published: January 28, 2009
“In order to stay in formation, soldiers tried not to run until they came within the reach of enemy missiles, at about 200 yards; experienced soldiers might manage to restrain themselves until they were at a mere 100 yards distance. (…) Spartan hoplites did not run at all, but advanced at a steady pace, singing marching hymns [...]
Also posted in Education, Goosebumps!, Greek stuff, History, Language, Literature, Quote of the day, Whoa, lol | 2 Comments

Fight Club

By terje | Published: December 30, 2008
I watched Fight Club again, a couple of weeks ago. It’s been a few years since the last time I watched it, but I still clearly remembered the plot. What struck me this time was how well the movie has kept; for a movie with such a major plot twist, it is remarkable how great [...]
Also posted in A Moistening of the Eyes, A Praise Chorus, Art, Bliss, Goosebumps!, Irony, Love, Movies, Music, Pimping, Pleasant surprises, Recommendations, Revelations, Review, Whoa | 5 Comments

An awesome coincident

By terje | Published: November 23, 2008
So I’m sitting in my room, working on my linguistics home exam, and I’m trying to explain why the verb paint in the sentence his father was painting a picture is not the same verb as the paint in the sentence his father never painted again, right? My line of resoning is the kind I [...]
Also posted in Coincidents, Collections, Education, English, Glee, Goosebumps!, Hodge-podge rambling, Hope, Impressions, Language, Links, Megalomania, Music, My microcosmos, Optimism, Pessimism, Pleasant surprises, Potential, Pride, Procrastination, Rant, Videos, Weird stuff, Whoa, Words, Work, Yay!, lol | 5 Comments

The Matrix

By terje | Published: November 20, 2008
Just watched The Matrix, but seeing as I’ve already reviewed this movie somewhere else on this blog, I’m going to limit myself to pointing out how much the whole Matrix/human batteries thing seems like something out of Marx. You’ve got your people, right, who can be likened to either the people in Marxist theory in general, [...]
Also posted in Ambiguity, Art, Bliss, Coincidents, Goosebumps!, Hodge-podge rambling, Karl Marx, Movies, Old Heroes, Pleasant surprises, Politics, Revelations, Review, Speculative fiction, Weird stuff, What I Learned Today, Whoa, Yay!, lol | 6 Comments

The Histories by Herodotus

By terje | Published: November 18, 2008
[Approximately 435 BCE] 2003. Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt (1954). Introduction and notes by John Marincola (1996, 2003). 600 pages of main text. 166 pages of paratext.
Also posted in A Praise Chorus, Art, Boredom, Collections, Conflicting emotions, Education, Glee, Gloating, Great Expectations, Greek stuff, History, Impressions, Literature, Loki, Pimping, Pleasant surprises, Pride, Recommendations, Review, Strategy/Plans | 3 Comments

For better or worse, you just don’t get life stories like this anymore (Or, the only thing missing is piracy)

By terje | Published: November 10, 2008
“Raised in an Ibo village (in modern Nigeria), Olaudah Equiano (ca 1745-1797) was kidnapped by African raiders and slod into slavery. He survived the horrors of the Middle Passage to the New World, where an English naval officer bought him ito serve as a cabin boy and renamed him Gustavus Vassa, after a sixteenth-century Swedish [...]
Also posted in Conflicting emotions, Education, English, History, Impressions, Literature, Misery, Nostalgia, Quote of the day, Relief, What I Learned Today, Whoa, Wistfulness, Words | 7 Comments