Benjamin profile picture

Benjamin

Vous ne me connaissez pas encore mais je vous déteste déjà.

About Me


I'm sad that you can't get a decent bagel or slice of pizza in this entire city, but I do like the rent. I listen to music. I read books. I occasionally do sound engineering or DJ. I would like to be at Joe's on Carmine St. right now having a slice, and I think the Wonder Wheel and the Cyclone are the best amusement park rides ever.
My greatest ambition is to get at least one decent night's sleep.
Oh, and I have a flickr and a Picasa .

My Interests

Cheap beer, expensive beer, loud rock, college radio, irresponsibility, British Empiricism, Continental Rationalism, ethics, rationality and the emotions, behavioral law and economics, French lit.

I'd like to meet:


Anyone who's fun, whimsical, a daydreamer, or generally impractical. People who don't do what they "should" do.

Music:

Phantom Pregnancies, 36 Invisibles, Scissor Girls, Comus, Amon Düül, Thee Headcoatees, Felt, The Orchids, The Bats, Magnetic Fields, LiLiPUT, The Rezillos, Stereolab, Hollywood Brats, Faun Fables, Joanna Newsom, Josef K., Bishop Allen, Freakwater, The Pussycats, CocoRosie, Incredible String Band, Vashti Bunyan, X-Ray Spex, Aislers Set, The Ex, Nikki Sudden and the Jacobites, Big Star, Sally Timms, Kelly Hogan, Vertonen, David Peel and the Lower East Side, Heavenly, The Softies, The 6ths, Happy Supply, Pylon, Shonen Knife, Puffy Amiyumi, The Yummy Fur, Cub, Le Mans, La Buena Vida, Gram Parsons, Simon Joyner, Cat Power, Girls at Our Best, Espers, 13th Floor Elevators, Future Bible Heroes, Plastic Crimewave Sound, The Dials, The Shapiros, Lake, CoCoComa, Functional Blackouts, Galactic Inmate, the Carter Family, the Louvin Brothers, the Stanley Brothers, Eliane Radigue, Harry Partch, Alvin Lucier, Stereo Total, The Kinks, The Ladybug Transistor, La Monte Young, Antony and the Johnsons, Au Revoir Simone, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle

Movies:

McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Nashville, Rushmore, Every Man for Himself and God Against All (a.k.a. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser), River's Edge, Grand Illusion, Slacker, The Magick Lantern Cycle, Peking Opera Blues, Idle Hands, House of Flying Daggers, California Split, Dazed and Confused, Army of Darkness, Heathers, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, Tonari no Totoro, Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa, Tenkuu no Shiro Rapyuta, Real Genius, Heathers, Mr. Vampire, Tokyo Monogatari, Ikiru, Kakushe Toride no San Akunin, Tatie Danielle, Paris is Burning, Capturing the Friedmans, My Best Fiend, Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter Jr., The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Nomi Song, Darjeeling Limited, pretty much any film by Jan Å vankmajer

Television:

Chic-A-Go-Go!, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, Project Runway, Buffy (duh), The Office (BBC), The Muppet Show, Veronica Mars, Kids in the Hall, Da Ali G Show, South Park, 30 Rock

Books:

The Fortress of Solitude (Jonathan Lethem). The Basic Eight (Daniel Handler), The Hollow Hope (Gerald Rosenberg), Among the Thugs (Bill Buford), Motherless Brooklyn (Jonathan Lethem), One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez), Tristes Tropiques (Claude Lévi-Strauss), Histoire de la sexualité: La volonté de savoir(Michel Foucault), Declare (Tim Powers), Please Kill Me (Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain), The Conquest of America (Tzvetan Todorov), The Process is the Punishment (Malcolm Feeley), Les Grecs ont-ils cru à leurs mythes? (Paul Veyne)

Heroes:

Herbert Simon, Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Benedict de Spinoza, Alan Gewirth, John Locke, Bernard E. Harcourt, Gerald Rosenberg, Ganesha

My Blog

Sarah Palin + Joe Sixpack = LUV 4 EVR!!!

From the NYT:BANGOR, Me.  It is not unusual for fans of Sarah Palin to shout out to the Alaska governor in the midst of her stump speeches. It is noteworthy, however, that the crowds are heavily male...
Posted by Benjamin on Sat, 18 Oct 2008 01:29:00 PST

How the West Was Tamed

On 20/20 tonight, John Stossel (or however you spell his name) revealed himself as an arch-libertarian, presenting a thoroughly simplistic version of free market economics that primarily relied on a c...
Posted by Benjamin on Sat, 18 Oct 2008 01:28:00 PST

Nausea

From the NYT...note how Palin neatly avoids her own practice of "looking to the past" when savaging Obama for utterly minor (and completely discredited) associations with people like Ayers. This is hy...
Posted by Benjamin on Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:24:00 PST

The Bailout

While necessary, the $700 billion bailout of the U.S. economy is the ultimate result of Bush and his cronies' irresponsible and ignorant policies. While milking terrorism to support his pathetically m...
Posted by Benjamin on Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:14:00 PST

More Rennes Nonsense

The Cook, the Rat, and the Heretic by Hugo SoskinHugo Soskin is Henry Lincoln's son ('Lincoln' being a pen name). Overall it's an enjoyable story of Hugo's experiences in the south of France, with a f...
Posted by Benjamin on Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:24:00 PST

It Only Gets Worse

Watching Letterman tonight, after Senator McCain canceled his appearance to "deal with the economy," I was treated to a rare occurrence: Letterman aired live coverage of McCain appearing on the CBS ev...
Posted by Benjamin on Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:44:00 PST

Ech...

We all know why Plato expelled the poets from his ideal republic, but I think the bigger question is: why should we let them back in? Why should we fund the arts at all?Most humanities scholars take i...
Posted by Benjamin on Wed, 24 Sep 2008 06:14:00 PST

Nausea

There was a time when the Republican Party stood for something meaningful. Sadly, that was about 40 years ago. I respect certain traditional Republican values, such as fiscal responsibility and a (bro...
Posted by Benjamin on Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:24:00 PST

How Utterly Predictable...

Sarah Palin exudes insincerity and fake down-to-earth folksiness. As usual, she's just another petty Republican hack who has no respect for anything beyond whatever she thinks is good for her...since ...
Posted by Benjamin on Sun, 14 Sep 2008 01:12:00 PST

The Plot Against America

The Plot Against America by Philip RothAt some point I'll have to give Roth another chance, since I hope The Plot Against America isn't characteristic of his fiction or style. While Roth tries to cons...
Posted by Benjamin on Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:08:00 PST