Phil profile picture

Phil

As Phil destroys, so he creates

About Me

Hi. I'm Phil. I'm insecure and I apologize too much. I'm sorry, does that bother you?Check out my blog at: http://philcreswell.com

My Interests

Books; Music; Guitar; Bass; Language; Linguistics; Philosophy; Physics; Anthropology; Sociology; The American Indian Movement; History; Civil Rights; Liberalism; Feminism; Metal; Sarcasm; Culture; Psychology; Svenska!; Scandinavia; Archaeology; Web-design; Nintendocore; The Interweb;

I'd like to meet:

I don't know who I'd like to meet. But YOU'RE asking to meet your maker.

Music:

Iron Maiden, Nobuo Uematsu, R.E.M., Opeth, Katatonia, Radiohead, The Beatles, Vintersorg, Murder by Death, Kent, Vienna Teng, Amorphis, Pink Floyd, Anathema, Sonata Arctica, Simon & Garfunkel, Bad Religion, Depeche Mode, Billy Joel, Jethro Tull, Muse, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Antonio Vivaldi, In Flames, Yann Tiersen, Tom Waits, Georg Friedrich Händel, Ulver, Blaze, Ludwig van Beethoven, Amon Amarth, Nocturnal Rites, George Winston, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Apryl Electra, Kris Kristofferson, System of a Down, Symphony X, Orphaned Land, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ásmegin, Propagandhi, Europe, Blind Guardian, The Black Dahlia Murder, Rammstein, Crowded House, Dark Tranquillity, Jim Croce, The Cure, Check out my music taste: http://www.last.fm/user/metalphil/

Movies:

City of Lost Children; Stigmata; Liar Liar; Ace Ventura (1&2); The Lord of the Rings Trilogy; The Star Wars Trilogy; The Exorcist; Harry Potter Movies; Indiana Jones Trilogy; Fiddler on the Roof; Rock in Rio; Cannibal the Musical; Monty Python Movies; Office Space; Bubba Ho-Tep; Baseketball; Undercover Brother; Amélie; Margaret Cho; K-Pax; Italian for Beginners; Amadeus; Pi: Faith in Chaos; The Evil Dead Trilogy; But I'm a Cheerleader; City of God; Dr. Strangelove; Dodgeball; Das Boot; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Aladdin; Frida; Gangs of New York; Run Lola Run; The Saint; Stargate; This Is Spinal Tap; Velvet Goldmine; Heathers; Vargtimmen [Hour of the Wolf]; Såsom i en Spegel [Through a Glass Darkly]; Tystnaden [The Silence]; Nattvardsgästerna [Winter Light]; Scenes from a Marriage; En Passion [The Passion of Anna]; Monsters, Inc.; Tillsammans [Together]; Såsom i Himmeln [As It Is In Heaven]; Clue; The Very Long Engagement; the Die Hard trilogy; Blade; Stargate; Serenity (and all Firefly related things)

Television:

Come look! The box is telling us how to live!

Books:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and subsequent related novels and stories), Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson, Regeneration - Pat Barker, Burmese Days - George Orwell, The Thief of Always - Clive Barker, Manufacturing Consent - Herman and Chomsky, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends (and other related novels and stories), The Sagas of the Icelanders, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism - Max Weber, The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher

Heroes:

Wowbagger The Infinitely ProlongedWowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged was - indeed, is- one of the Universe's very small number of immortal beings.
Most of those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed, he had come to hate them, the load of serene bastards. He had his immortaility inadvertantly thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch, and a pair of rubber bands. The precise details are not important because no one has ever managed to duplicate the exact circumstances under which it happened, and many people have ended up looking very silly, or dead, or both, trying.
To begin with it was fun, he had a ball, living dangerously, taking risks, cleaning up on high-yield long-term investments, and just generally outliving the hell out of everybody.
In the end, it was Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in at about 2:55 when you know you've taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.
So things began to pall for him. The merry smiles he used to wear at other people's funerals began to fade. He began to despise the Universe in general, and everybody in it in particular.
This was the point at which he conceived his purpose, the thing that would drive him on, and which, as far as he could see, would drive him on forever. It was this:
He would insult the Universe.
That is, he would insult everybody in it. Individually, personally, one by one, and (this was the thing he really decided to grit his teeth over) in Alphabetical Order.
When people protested to him, as they sometimes had done, that the plan was not merely misguided but actually impossible because of the number of people being born and dying all the time, he would merely fix them with a steely look and say, "A man can dream, can't he?"
And so he had started out. He equipped a spaceship that was built to last with a computer capable of handling all the data processing involved in keeping track of the entire population of the known Universe and working out the horrifically complicated routes involved.

My Blog

How much to give..

There's a curious balance between how much wants to give and how much one should give, given the returns one gets. Sure, to give is the virtue--and in a very basic sense I agree. However, some of us...
Posted by Phil on Tue, 09 Oct 2007 07:45:00 PST

Succeeding at the Northern Lights!

Ok, so I have to read this crappy book called Svek which is all about the psychology of a middle-aged woman whose husband doesn't love her anymore. To paraphrase my friend Anika, the only character ...
Posted by Phil on Tue, 02 Oct 2007 06:20:00 PST

Floating and swimming..

I think that there is an important differentiation between swimming and floating. This means that knowing where one stands and functionally getting things done are two very different things. I don't...
Posted by Phil on Mon, 24 Sep 2007 05:01:00 PST

Theres really only one question to ask you...

Hej alla click the pictures to see them bigger.. or just look at my pictures section-In an effort to not be disowned by my family I am writing a blog entry. I think it'll mostly be pictures, and face...
Posted by Phil on Sat, 22 Sep 2007 06:27:00 PST

Not for the family approved blog..

Alcohol can be weird. Most of the time, I'm pretty good about my booze. I try to take things slowly, not go too overboard, y'know.. not make an ass of myself.Apparently, last night I failed miserabl...
Posted by Phil on Sun, 16 Sep 2007 05:40:00 PST

"You’re not from around here, are you?"

"Jaha!" is the best phrase in the Swedish language. Aside from the mildly jarring sharp intake of breath that individuals do when they agree with you in conversation, I've not been taken aback by any...
Posted by Phil on Tue, 11 Sep 2007 08:45:00 PST

Cross posting is the life for me...

Hej alla!So, I had my first real prolonged Swedish encounter today.. though granted, it was with two German students who are in my SVUS class.. still, we decided to go out for lunch downtown and see a...
Posted by Phil on Wed, 05 Sep 2007 09:43:00 PST

The beginning..

Well, I'm in the Netherlands.  For those of you I didn't see before I left: I'm sorry.  I was SO busy before I left, far busier than I expected. I'm staying near Den Haag while I v...
Posted by Phil on Wed, 22 Aug 2007 02:03:00 PST

So, you think you’re actually going to miss me?

Well! If that's the case then fear not! I shall have Skype, a handy-dandy program, that can be used not only for regular chat but for voice and video chat as well. Therefore we can stay in touch wh...
Posted by Phil on Wed, 15 Aug 2007 07:19:00 PST

He’s leaving home...

So, wow.I'm having trouble believing this myself but I'm going to be gone soon. Not just gone from Madison but gone from the United States completely for an entire year! I had a little get-together ...
Posted by Phil on Wed, 08 Aug 2007 11:31:00 PST