ASK TREESHIP whats your favorite gilmore girls episode

like god was gonna catch u by the ponytail

ask dayo

dayo, what's your favorite gilmore girls episode?

Dylannn what's your favorite Mountain Girls episode

this isn't the ask dylannnnn thread. please direct your questions to treeship.

i like the episode where rory turns down logan's marriage proposal. a huge victory for the ninety-nine percent.

foxy or kim?

I don't know if anyone comes out of that rivalry looking great.

treeship how did you find ilx

in college i stumbled across the original M.I.A. thread, which i thought was great, and then i lurked here, off and on, for years, sometimes posting something or other under my real name, which is not Treeship. i started posting here regularly partly because i broke up with my long-time gf and was feeling really lonely (we used to talk, online or off, about music, books, and films nonstop, pretty much all day long, for over four years). i thought that ilx could be a place where i could talk about the stuff i like to talk about basically whenever i had down time. the level of discourse here is higher than other message boards i think.

i'm glad this thread was revised though. i'd like to answer whatever questions people have. i like all of you so far, basically.

*revived.

real name = al shiptree

shhh!

treeship,
do you prefer anglo-american fiddle music or eastern european fiddle music?
if you have a different favorite type of fiddle music, what is it?
one love
ij

what are your professional ambitions, treeship

with eastern european fiddle i keep imagining klezmer music, although that uses other instruments too, and i like that. have to go with bluegrass fiddle though. so anglo-american.

my professional ambitions are sort of confused. i write book reviews for tottenville review (unpaid) and i want to expand that and try to write different types of freelance criticism for other outlets, but don't know how to go about that really. currently i am looking for an entry level job in publishing, and hope to do that and maybe move to new york, but it's been tough. ultimately i would like to be a literature professor but i think a phd program would be too much for me to take on right now for numerous reasons... idk. right now i am a substitute teacher and reading tutor.

treeship do you really like buzza

i think buzza is doing what he feels he needs to do to protect this board from socks. maybe. i don't know, he's not my favorite so far.

ouch

i didn't mean that as an insult to buzza, and i don't dislike him -- he posts funny things sometimes. but, i mean, he did say i was worse than a "shitbin" on one thread so...

Treeship, what do you feel are the biggest gaps in your musical knowledge?

i have many. probably classical music. i am decently conversant about jazz, and i love it, but i don't know nearly as much as i'd like to. popular music from the non-english speaking world is not something i tend to know that much about either.

oh also, i don't know anything about music theory. i played trumpet in high school but that is the extent of my music-playing, unless you count fooling around with the ukulele once in a while. so yeah, not being a musician seems like a pretty serious gap for a music fan.

Treeship, Which is the better Roy Orbison song with the word blue in it: Blue Angel or Blue Bayou?

Blue Angel, duh. "Sha la la, doo-bi-wah, bum bum bum, yep yep, bumm..." come on. Serious questions

do u like bunheads?

also what your favorite style of beer?

i do not like bunheads but i find myself attracted to the quirky lead character, played by sutton foster. my favorite kind of beer is IPA. i don't know if i have a favorite IPA, but i really enjoyed the Green Flash Red IPA that i had recently even though BeerAdvocate only gave it an 87.

So who is your favourite so far, treezy?

Me obv

Treezy, whiskey, y/n and which

don't have a favorite right now, but when i was a lurker i was a big admirer of nitsuh. he sat next to me once at a coffee shop but i was too nervous to tell him that i knew who he was and that i was a fan of his writing.

i'm not a big whiskey drinker so i don't really have educated opinions on which whiskey is best. every so often i'll have a glass of scotch for nostalgia value because my grandfather was a johnny walker drinker.

Educated opinions v often lack charm. Nostalue is the word you seek btw.

nitsuh still posts here as "frogbs" btw

origins of the faux-naif froggy voice

my professional ambitions are sort of confused. i write book reviews for tottenville review (unpaid) and i want to expand that and try to write different types of freelance criticism for other outlets, but don't know how to go about that really. currently i am looking for an entry level job in publishing, and hope to do that and maybe move to new york, but it's been tough. ultimately i would like to be a literature professor but i think a phd program would be too much for me to take on right now for numerous reasons... idk. right now i am a substitute teacher and reading tutor.

― Treeship, Tuesday, May 7, 2013 11:05 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you came to just the right place to have these dreams promptly crushed

lol

Lol @ faux naif froggy voice. I dont really want to talk about the feasibility of my dreams tbh, but Jordan asked.

treeship, who would win in a fight -- bugs bunny or the riddler?

bugs has the more advanced jiu jitsu

thanks ian, i was waiting for someone to ask that question. the answer is bugs bunny. bugs understands that you must spare no effort in outwitting your enemies. the riddler is always giving his opponents clues... he is too cocky, and for no real reason because there has never been a time when batman failed to foil his efforts. basically, i don't think the riddler is a serious competitor, whereas bugs will always find a way to victory.

are you on 77 yet?

if so, come to the "what's happening to our borad" thread plz

Treeship, would you rather have been a Ronette ("yes, I was a backup singer on "Be My Baby", and yes, that was my real hair. settling down to write my memoir these days"), or have climbed the Seven Summits ("I still keep in touch with all my old Sherpa guides! settling down to write my memoir these days")?

(also I implore you to listen to the Ronettes' "Here I Sit" one time in your life)

would you rather die being shot by Mark David Chapman or trapped in the Apollo 1 command module

thanks unregistered and VegemiteGrrl. to unregistered's question, i think i would rather have climbed the seven summits, if only because i don't want to have had to deal too closely with phil spector. i know this might seem hypocritical in regard to the fact that i would rather be a beatle than an astronaut, but really, the beatles didn't have to deal with spector as intimately as the ronettes did, and i feel that the beatles always had the "upper hand" with him, whereas the ronettes probably felt they had to "put up" with all kinds of bullshit for the sake of their careers.

in response to VegemiteGrrl's question, obviously i would rather be gunned down in front of the dakota. dying in a fire is worse than dying of a gunshot wound, especially if you are trapped in an enclosed space. also, apollo 1 never left the earth's orbit so dying in the command module would not have even been a poetic death. if dying in space was an option, i would probably prefer that to dying on the upper west side.

tree --

did u grow up in new england?

no. i moved a couple of times as a kid but i primarily grew up in long island and new jersey.

more new jersey than anything though.

okay. still a pretty heavy dunkin donuts munchkin presence.

"munchkins"

what part of jersey?

xpost yeah, there are a bunch of them. not as many as in boston though, which is a city i've spent some time in. for some reason when i picture back bay station i remember there being two dunkin donuts in that train station, but that seems impossible.

i live in central jersey in a really small town outside of princeton and this is where i have lived for most of my life.

i didn't know jersey had a central part. i grew up in north jersey and i'm back here for a job. doesn't matter, DIRT JERZ REPRESENT ON ILX. ME AND TREESHIP WILL FUCK U UP

sweet. good to hear there are more new jerseyans on here. it's a pretty good state, all things considered. i am a twelve minute drive from my favorite record store, the princeton record exchange. have you ever been there?

xpost yeah, there are a bunch of them. not as many as in boston though, which is a city i've spent some time in. for some reason when i picture back bay station i remember there being two dunkin donuts in that train station, but that seems impossible.

― Treeship, Thursday, May 16, 2013 11:17 PM

the next time you're down here you're gonna hang out with us

sure, that would be awesome. i think there's a boston thread on here and next time i'm up there i will post on there.

what area of boston do you live in markers?

sure, that would be awesome. i think there's a boston thread on here and next time i'm up there i will post on there.

― Treeship, Thursday, May 16, 2013 11:26 PM

do it

suburbs

Boston -- Classic or Dirty Water?

xxxxxp no, but i've heard good things about it. last time i was in the princeton area was 2005 when i interviewed at dow jones and pretended to be a hayek-loving freako... didn't work out. i'm in the montclair area.

i just assumed you were from vermont or ontario.

interesting. i have never been to either of those places.

alright.

i guess it was a special blend of twee-terse overearnestness and undergraduate sociology seminar talking points leftleaning
that i associate with those places for whatever reason

man even trying to explain that sounds fuckin ridiculous but yall know what i mean

or you TREE SHIP know what i mean

ok. i think my "overearnestness" has been exaggerated but whatever, it's not the worst thing.

do you like joe budden?

i don't really know enough about joe budden to have an opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUvguNA33ek

i want your thoughts on that

hey treeship what's it like to make love to a killer whale

i need some tips/advice, have a potential "thing" this weekend going on

that's not a thing i have experienced waterface. sorry i can't be of help to you. i would like, however, to discourage you from having sex with animals in general because it is illegal, exploitative/abusive, and in the case of large animals like killer whales, dangerous to you as well. cheers.

really? that's weird, i heard you make love to killer whales on the reg

anyway thanks for the advice, that's very helpful

xpost to dylann, i listened to that joe budden track/series of tracks you posted and like it. my favorite thing about it is the echo effect, where certain words he says are repeated in the background of the recording. i like how these echoes seem like a second voice in the track, like they are commenting on the main course of the lyrics. it's also moody and introspective and about relationships so it's my kind of rap song in that sense. thanks dylann.

hey treeship this isn't a 'question' but i like how "all i want" is your favorite LCD soundsystem song, because that is also my favorite song of theirs

thanks kevin. i like that you like that song too. the lyrics always get to me, and i love that he takes the risk of ratcheting up the volume on that squeaky synth part toward the end, which adds a bit of noisiness and imperfection -- "character" -- to it.

I wonder, who wrote The Book of Love?

idk but it is long and boring, no one can lift the damn thing.

alright. moody and introspective rap about relationships, and he's from jersey, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9sOcpFsyPg

now, how about this?

right off the bat, i like the repeated tupac line as the refrain. and those cheap sounding synths are strangely bleak, and fit the song well. B+

Treeship, what are some of your favorite diners?

http://www.americanadiner.com/

i eat at this place pretty often... more often than makes sense for my budget. they have good craft beers there, or at least a couple, so it's not the most diner-y diner out there, but when i go for lunch i'll have like a turkey sandwich with coffee and then it seems more like a diner.

also there is pies and thighs, a brunch place in williamsburg that i like a lot. and this place in greenwich village that i can't remember the name of but their coffee is amazing and the vibe is sort of "french." i do not like pj's pancake house in princeton even though that's a local favorite.

Ooh, swanky place. I went there with my dad about 13 years ago. I agree that it's not much of a real trad diner but it is pretty good.

Los Blue Jeans: i just remembered the name of a diner/brunch place i wanted to recommend before but forgot the name of. Sullivan street bistro in greenwich village. Amazing coffee and french fries. Really comfortable couchlike seating.

Much of the criticism leveled at Lin would apply equally to Beckett, Hemingway, Camus, and any minimalist or writer concerned with ennui. So maybe it's the critics who say Tao Lin is "too detached" and "hates language" who need to read more and not the people responding to those critics who say, essentially, "it's not trying to do what you seem to think fiction is supposed to do."

― Treeship, Monday, July 8, 2013 11:42 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

treeshit

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, July 8, 2013 11:44 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

http://localtvwjw.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/treesh.jpg?w=1300

That's not a picture of me, ftr

It has your name on it though! You should send in a correction.

I don't know how to interpret your comment.

I'm still accepting questions by the way.

what's your favorite william vollmann novel or novellike non fiction?

have you ever had a homosexual experience?

1.) i am ashamed to say i haven't read anything by william vollman. he is "on my list" though. my plan is to start with europe central. do you think this is a good choice?

2.) i have never had a homosexual experience. i believe sexuality is something like a continuum and that categories like "straight" and "gay" are far to rigid to describe most peoples' sexualities. that said, i have never even found myself attracted to a man at all really and so probably believe in the continuum argument not due to my own experience but because a world in which everyone is in some sense "queer" seems preferable to me to a world in which certain sexualities are identified as normal and others as "deviant". so... yeah, i am attracted to women and my sexual history, um, reflects that. gay dudes have given me their phone numbers in the past and things like that though so maybe i seem like i might be gay to some people who knows.

what's the last good non-fiction book you read?

i re-read nabokov's short biography-ish book on gogol recently and that is a great book. also, i read and reviewed curtis white's "the science delusion" and enjoyed it, although not as much as my review probably indicates. http://www.tottenvillereview.com/romanticism-for-the-21st-century-curtis-whites-the-science-delusion/

will instapaper

you might be interested in the science delusion because there is a long section at the end devoted to defending the legacy of german idealism to a non-academic audience which is a relatively rare thing to see.

i'm gonna go read yr review now.

one more question: how many books do you average a week?

one maybe? less some weeks if i am reading the internet a lot. i've read four books in the past three days though so it varies.

two of those books were really, really short. (sam pink's rontel and ben lerner's angel of yaw.)

europe central is aight but

vollmann pox in order

1-- imperial
2-- the atlas
3-- butterfly stories
4-- the ice-shirt
5-- rainbow stories
6-- argall
7-- fathers and crows
8-- the royal family
9-- kissing the mask
10- poor people

Treeship do you like to dance?

And if so what do you think is the best music to dance to

I don't dance very often because i'm not good at it. I'm very impressed by people who are good at dancing though, and admire them.

tree, is your email under your name a good way to contact you?

yeah. that is my main email account.

I liked the episode with Joel from BJM in it.

It's hard to go wrong with the gilmore girls.

treesh have you read any david foster wallace and if so what do you think of his sort of 'persona' in his nonfiction material?

Treeship, do you really watch Gilmore Girls or are people having others on?

i have a complicated relationship with david foster wallace. he is a writer i do not like to read because -- i think i mentioned this before on the tao lin thread -- his reflexive self-doubt, impulse toward intellectualization, and sad awareness of (or obsession with) the difficulty of earnest, direct communication once you reach a certain level of "knowingness," remind me of the way i think and write, but in his case this personality seems to have led him to become severely depressed. So basically, while I admire a lot of what he did I think reading him, especially the footnotes, is a chore. I haven't even made it all the way through Infinite Jest. I think I would like him more if he didn't kill himself and I didn't read (most of) the biography, but now the specter of dfw the suffering guy I relate to lurks too conspicuously behind the texts for me.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_Author

stuff like big red son -- how he knows the ins and outs of the discourse surrounding the porn industry so thoroughly that he can't really, or doesn't really, take a stance on it, and winds up being overwhelmed by the sheer number of ways he can think about this issue, this expo, etc -- are really tough for me to read, but i think they are good. he reminds me a little of kierkegaard, who advocated that picking sides -- a clear story -- is just something you have to do at a certain point, even if you can see two, five, seven sides of an issue. dfw doesn't ever really do that in his essays and that is why they are so honest but also why they are suspended in this weird, uncomfortable place of indecision. from what i have read.

crimsonhexagon, i have not seen an episode of gilmore girls for many years but i think i have seen most of them that were syndicated as my mom would watch it often when i was younger.

the reason i ask is because i identify some similar species of eartnestness vs anomie and an attempt at synoptic perspective in your posts. i am not sure that dfw does not always synthesize these multiple perspectives, certainly he does in his essays on tennis (very good) and kafka (not quite so good). maybe he does in those essays where he is confronted with something that he does not really cathect in any serious way, but contemplates it with undue seriousness anyway (cuz he is getting paid? idk why the topics were chosen in some instances). i don't think dfw's illness and suicide derived from his 'personality' in the sense of certain intellectual anxieties and consequent unfulfilments and that such ideas are fed by the morbid interest in recreating the dead person golem-like from the tissues of their writing and thirdparty anecdotes.

he also seems very american, not just the midwestern awshucksiness but his work ethic, clarity of purpose and faith in the essential truth-seeking utility of the essay form or novel form. and perhaps you are similar (if internet-discursive rather than essayistic). maybe i am more interested in the phatic nonsense, idiolect, obliquity elements of meta-ilx these days. so it is conceivable that i have mistaken a degree of strategy about the way you post whereas this is really 'just you' and the ardently expressed wish to understand yourself and the world is not some sort of 'treeship project'.

http://treo.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a6002285970c014e88cc629f970d-500wi

The Treeship Project, now appearing at the Pitchfork Festival on the Orange Stage

xp, in some sense my insistence that my online persona is "just me" is an exaggeration, as there is always a degree of calculation in how people position and present themselves in any social field, especially one like ilx, where most of the posters are quick witted, culturally savvy, and looking to make sure (however unconsciously) that they always come across as being these things. what i mean to say, i guess, is that i don't think that my ilx persona is more calculated than anyone else's and i think it tracks pretty closely to the way i am in real life. there too, the way i behave is probably a calculation: an expression of my convictions on the one hand -- i think it's important to be fair minded and i don't generally like jokes that intend to humiliate people -- and also, less flatteringly, of wanting people to like me/think i am smart/witty, etc. so while i agree that the statement "this is just what i am like end of story" is disingenuous, i also think the degree of speculation accorded to me and how i choose to present myself is something that i haven't tried to encourage by acting in some sort of theatrical manner that is completely unlike how i would act in real life.

in terms of my posts attempting a "synoptic perspective" in my posts, i think that is probably due to the fact that i am basically an academic at heart but who, for various reasons, is not in grad school and doesn't have many outlets to talk about questions concerning art and culture and like to use ilx to do that. so in order to encourage discussions i try to take seriously what people say and respond to that rather than just try to one-up them. so even when i am just posting on the more superficial, chatty threads i don't want to start zingfights, usually, because that's not the aspect of ilx i value, personally.

i hope that is an adequate response to your comments.

i value waterface's zings though. i think he is funny at least 50% of the time.

what is the appropriate amount of tension to accompany an exchange of ideas that ensures that exchange was of value and worthwhile?

it depends. i think discussions with a lot of tension can be good. i personally might tend too much toward trying to find common ground with other posters, although not usually to the extent that i allow my positions to be diluted. more on the level of rhetoric. but really, there are more advantages than drawbacks to this approach if your goal is not just to communicate your own opinion, but to figure out what other people think and why they think the way they do.

it depends. i think discussions with a lot of tension can be good. i personally might tend too much toward trying to find common ground with other posters, although not usually to the extent that i allow my positions to be diluted. more on the level of rhetoric. but really, there are more advantages than drawbacks to this approach if your goal is not just to communicate your own opinion, but to figure out what other people think and why they think the way they do.

― Treeship, Tuesday, July 23, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell".

So, this got me in trouble a lot of times. Every kid asks a lot of questions, and I was no exception. So when my teacher once complained that I just ask way too many questions my guardians never thought much of it (which is to be expected). But when writing essays at school or university, and even debating things online or in person, people would say, "What's your point?" And I would say, "My point is we simply do not know". And I've always found it so strange that people seem to get offended or upset about this. They insist on my having an opinion, on choosing sides, otherwise I'm a hack or appear like I do not know what I'm talking about. So I gladly assume the role of the ignorant.

But back to your point. I used to rather challenge all ideas and opinions, and this is sort of a social blunder that sometimes drives people away. People interpret it as divisive, so I understand where you're coming from. But I also cannot be disingenuous. As I get older, I seem to be more passive about it and just, like yourself, figure out what others' opinions are or I am more interested in the person laying out her or his worldview rather than myself getting involved. I think it is a very introverted thing to do: try to understand the world and people without actually participating in it. So I become an observer. I sometimes take the Wilde approach of trying to make a joke or make people laugh while stating a thought that has a truth-value. It hardly sparks a conversation about that particular thought, though, and I sometimes wish it would. It is interesting to see how others react. As you might guess, I was often called a contrarian or accused of "not liking anything". So one learns to be quiet a lot and just write it all down, especially as I get older

I guess both our ultimate goals are similar: to figure out what people think and why they think the way they do. It's hard to tell the difference between how each of us react on our respective ends, though, if that makes sense. I would want all communication to be fluid, for both parties to be active, and not hold anything back, because in that process, it is possible one finds one's own missteps which one thought weren't there (read, conscious of the self and how others perceive us). So I try not to hold on to an idea for the sake of the idea; or to quote Feynman again, I try not to fool myself, even though I am the easiest to fool.

You seem like a cool guy, Treeship.

aw man i was assigned this thread as required summer reading from my school this is bullshit

crimsonhexagon, i often decide to try to be satisfied with saying "i don't know" about certain things as well. i think it can become hard when you are aware of the field of a given debate but are not convinced fully of any side -- or rather, you are convinced by the arguments of multiple, mutually exclusive sides. or at least for me, this can provoke anxiety. that's why some of david foster wallace's essay are tough for me... he has an analytical mind, which is always very much involved in weighing the various sides of the issues he is discussing, but ultimately is too earnest to really get to a place where he can let go of his uncertainties, either by choosing a position or by walking away from the debate and feeling ok about his unsureness, which would really just another position, i.e. the position that we "can't know."

i'm sort of afraid that i am somehow coming across as humorless on ilx, which is weird because in real life at certain times, especially in high school, a big part of my personality was being "funny". this is becoming less important to me as i get older, or rather i find more subtle things funny now than i used to. posters on ilx who i find funny include dmac, sarahell (especially when she posts infographics), and markers. the blink 182 video is alltime imo. the thing i wrote that someone reposted in the "LOLz" thread was kind of a stupid joke imo and not funny.

this is gonna sound self-aggrandizing and blend too preciously w my current DN but i felt like i'd come home when i read ajp taylor saying (well, repeating the alleged old joke) "the historian's favorite hand is the other hand"

haha

...by walking away from the debate and feeling ok about his unsureness, which would really just another position, i.e. the position that we "can't know."

― Treeship, Tuesday, July 23, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

With regard to humour, I come close to being humourless insofar as I do a lot of jokes that are too subtle. So I guess I'm a bad comedian. At work there is one girl who laughs at every single thing I say, though. She's great! Ha! :^) But I usually have a tough crowd.

women tend to be a better audience for me too. i think they have a more refined sense of humor than most men so they can get my subtlety.

If you're ever in LA, let me know if you want to hang out, dude.

sure thing, man.

i would say the same but i live in a small out of the way town... for now at least.

crimsonhexagon pls go back to your own 'ask' thread

No problems. I missed my chance to go when my dad was working there, so I don't foresee myself visiting any time soon. New York, however, is a whole other matter! It's not uncommon for people to make the trip, no?

Hey, dylannn. How are things? My thread. Hm. What was all that about, anyway?

Whoops. Okay. I won't hijack Treeship's thread.

dylann, do you have any specific ideas for places in bangkok i should go, maybe for live music or particularly good food or something?

i read a bit of the thailand thread and saw that you've been there. i'm going to be in singapore for five days and thailand for like a week and a half in august.

shenzhen airlines is offering 700 rmb round trip to bkk from shenzhen starting this fall so i think ill spend more time there in the future.

i have a good friend that lives there but hes a shut-in so i cant really get anything from him. ill make a short list of places to go based on my own limited experience though, but give me a day or two. im typing this from the front seat of a rental car at a truckstop.

cool, thanks dylannn.

are you living in shenzen currently, or near there?

Oh hey treeship sorry I didn't acknowledge your response to my q above, it just wasn't the conversation-starter I thought it might be

im moving to guangzhou sometime soon
i should be there RIGHT NOW but i had some issues getting a working visa-- i have my visa now and im going to be in seoul for about a week or two at the start of august and in china by aug 20 at least.
shenzhen will be just down the road

treesh how would you feel if, having formed a lumber shipping company called treeship, a tract of land adopted for workers of the treeship corp was anointed thusly, later being the site of a visitation by the virgin mary, and thereafter catholic institutions worldwide became named after 'our lady of treeship'?

this already happened iirc

or maybe it was all a dream

wait, the tract of land formed a shipping company?

to answer your question, it would depend on how big of a deal "our lady of treeship" became. if it became popular to the point of inescapability, or if a parish near me named itself our lady of treeship, that might be enough to make me consider revisiting catholicism. i was raised in a politically liberal but still deeply catholic irish-american family.

there's no suggestion that you had any role in the naming of the treeship township, i'm not trying to impute any notions of megalomania at all, it would have been a corporate decision

do you think you would feel guilt about being associated with a miraculous visitation even though you played no role in it, simply that a name of your invention happened to become linked with it? what would happen if pious widows and terminally ill children treated you as if you were somehow lustrous and holy by association?

you do know that my name isn't actually treeship?

wait

sure but i think if you were going to form a lumber shipping company it would occur to you that your ilx loginid looks a lumber shipping company name, and it would seem apposite and perhaps amusing to use the same name

oh, i formed the shipping company. that wasn't clear to me.

i would probably relish the attention from pious widows but feel guilty about sick children believing i had some sort of connection to the divine.

does your catholic upbringing affect the way you experience guilt?

i think so. the experience of confession is pretty strange and pretty powerful for a child, as is the doctrine that tons of things are technically mortal sins (say... skipping church) that you can only be absolved of through divine grace. i was pretty young when i decided i wasn't a believer though... my adolescence wasn't really marked by religious thinking.

when i was in 9th grade i briefly believed that if i were holy enough and learnt enough then i could have a direct experience of god, and then i was worried that i was going crazy

how holy are u

well i have yet to have a direct experience of god so make of that what u will

i was hoping that a direct experience of god would balance out phillies fandom

Thomas Schnauz, one of the writers on the show, tweeted out a photo of Bryan Cranston, the actor who played White, wearing a Phillies jersey from an unused scene from the show’s third season.

The reason they chose not to use it? According to Schnauz, the writers “realized that would make him too unlikable.”

otm

i have a cousin who is extremely good natured, fair-minded, and intelligent. he reads like four newspapers a day. once at thanksgiving though the subject of phillies fans came up and he sort of transformed, describing them as "assholes". his wife was horrified to hear him make such broad generalizations about a group of people and they kind of had an argument.

Have you ever seen any statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary quite like this one? Our Lady of Treeship, as she is known from this unusual apparition depicted above, was seen by residents of Treeship, a small town beset by poverty in County Mayo, Ireland on August 21, 1879, outside of the Church of St. John the Baptist.

This prayer to Our Lady of Treeship (also known as Queen of Ireland) below celebrates this extraordinary event. It also touches on the hope and faith that she has inspired in the 1.5 million visitors to the shrine at Treeship each year! (Note also the echo of the Hail Mary in the last line.)

Our Lady of Treeship, Queen of Ireland, you gave hope to our people in a time of distress and comforted them in sorrow. You have inspired countless pilgrims to pray with confidence to your divine Son, remembering His promise: "Ask and you shall receive, Seek and you shall find".

Help me to remember that we are all pilgrims on the road to heaven. Fill me with love and concern for my brothers and sisters in Christ, especially those who live with me. Comfort me when I am sick or lonely or depressed. Teach me how to take part ever more reverently in the holy Mass. Pray for me now, and at the hour of my death. Amen.

Monsignor James Horan of Treeship once noted that Our Lady’s appearance there was a “symbol of hope, consolation and strength” in this distressed region of Ireland, “where unemployment, evictions and emigration were the order of the day.”

Treeship, do you agree that pop music criticism is more likely to get taken seriously when it's written by people who have, at some point in their lives, renounced or distanced themselves from pop music? do reformed indie snobs have more interesting things to say about pop music than people who have been pop fans for their entire lives? do you personally find yourself paying more attention to chartpop songs/artists when they are championed by indie-centric, ilxor-type tastemasters? and if so, do you recognize this as a flaw in yourself?

Treeship, about that last post of yours, how do you figure?

unregistered: i don't think it's a matter of people gaining credibility by "abandoning" pop music at some point and then returning to it, but i agree that as opposed to say a metal critic -- who wouldn't suffer much, i don't think, from being ignorant of music outside his genre -- a pop critic who didn't have at least some knowledge of and interest in "alternative" music -- define that how you want -- wouldn't be taken very seriously by listeners who like to think of themselves as "serious" or "discerning". in general it seems like for pop music to be critically acclaimed it has to be perceived to either 1.) succeed according to terms other than those pop is expected to be preoccupied with (it's actually challenging! it incorporates EDM elements!) or, more troublingly, 2.) conform exactly to what people decide is the "essence" of the genre ("call me maybe" is everything that is great about ephemeral summer pop hits!) either way, the perspective that is being offered is implicitly one of an outsider to pop: a skeptical, pleasantly surprised snob or a connoisseur. the implicit viewpoint is not one of an "insider", or the projected audience for the piece of music being discussed (a teenager, a reader of People magazine, idk.)

i think all of this is fine. pop music isn't made by its target audience, but by professional musicians who probably have more in common with critics than with people who only listen to pop music. i would be more likely to listen to a pop album that is getting love on ilm than one recommended to me by someone who says things like "i like music with a good beat."

basically, i think the "connoisseur" strawman in your comment who has "been listening to pop music their whole life"-- by virtue of the depth and sophistication of their knowledge of pop music -- is more of a critical insider than a pop insider. they are going to be championing the music for reasons that are different than what the majority of "real pop fans" would offer if asked to explain why they like what they like.

sufjan, what comment do you mean? the one about prejudice against phillies fans?

also, unregistered, why did you ask me that question of all people?

treesh to what extent is your character determined by your irish ancestry? do you identify as irish in anything more than a bare factual sense?

i don't really identify as irish in any important way, no. the catholic component of "irish-catholic" influenced me though, as i've described. my family were never really into being irish the way some irish-american families are. the only reason i have an extremely irish name is because i had like 30something cousins so most of the family names my mom liked were already taken.

what's your favourite mineral?

salt probably

sry, correct answer was "red lemonade"

do you think you are actively trying to disinherit your irishness because irish american culture is associated in the popular imagination with a value system antithetical to your own?

ime, the popular imagination doesn't give a rat's patoot about 'irish american culture', bcz the number of americans who share some measure of irish descent includes at least a quarter of the population and considered collectively they share little or nothing in the way of a common culture that is not also shared by americans generally.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Irish_people_of_Chinese_descent

i) 25% of a population is not too great to have an identifiable culture*
ii) the popular imagination is not founded empirically

* White Population
223,553,265
72.4% of the total U.S. population in 2010.[3]

yeah that's not right. 25% might be of irish descent but some of their ancestors came in the 19th century and some came later. also the popular imagination is not founded empirically. btw i don't give a rat's patoot.

to nakh's question, it just never seemed like a big deal to me. however, i used to date someone who was deeply into her boston irish roots and i think she was suspicious of how little i identified with being irish. can't prove this though... i forget the specifics of conversations, but i think maybe i said something once about not liking the association between irish american culture and drinking and she interpreted it as something.... what makes you ask this?

treesh are you a ginger

because GINGERS DO HAVE SOULS

i have dark hair but a few flecks of red in my beard.

have you read joyce? did you identify with him more than kafka or proust or tolstoy or whatever

oh yeah. joyce is my favorite author.

or more specifically, i love dubliners, portrait, and ulysses. i have no comment on finnegans wake, which i haven't been able to get into (not for lack of trying). it seems like it could be your kind of book though. you seem to love language for its own sake more than i do. i'm kind of a sentimental reader and the reason ulysses works for me is that i was really invested in the characters of stephen and bloom.

without seeking to reduce that to a simple ethnic affiliation, do you think that is entirely coincidental to your shared irishness?

i don't really think so, no. i think it has to do with joyce's authorial perspective, which is at once panoptic and narcissistic. his way of thinking was ideally suited to the form of the novel, i think. this did have something to do with his being irish -- cf. portrait of an artist, obvs -- and the jesuit education that submerged his humanistic consciousness in austere aristotelian (i think) theology, but that's something that has nothing to do with me.

feel the need to say here that i am not that interesting, and there are other posters whose background it would be more fruitful to investigate. still interested in hearing what unregistered has to say about my response to his question though.

welcome back to illx treeship dog

:)

do you have a cat?

do you think this is because joyce's concerns with nationality pertain too specifically to the exigencies of his time and class, the awakening of national consciousness after yeats synge, the prior century's failed attempts at irish nationhood and the consequent fixation on 'betrayals' (parnell etc), the need to recognize rome as a tyranny as powerful as london, and that none of these really have anything to do with middle class life in america in the early 21st century? and that since joyce was fixated on the paradoxical identity of being irish and bourgeois under english dominion, why should someone living in a time and place with minimal class consciousness and labile and essentially meaningless ethnic or subnational identities care about such things when they can happily avoid them?

treesh you are more interesting than you realize

it's possible that not all of that interestingness is visible to you because you are consumed with simply being treesh

harbl: i don't have a cat but i have a dog, a 2 year old golden retriever named georgie.

nakh: 1.) thanks. 2.) i think class identities -- which may be invisible, and different from the familiar marxist categories, but still play a role in structuring social reality -- are fundamentally different from "subnational" identities like irishness is for white americans in 2013, because the latter really are insignificant, not "overlooked". none of my grandparents were from ireland. but to answer your question, yeah, being irish-american for me has nothing to do with being a colonial or poscolonial subject so i don't personally relate to joyce's politial preoccupations. i understand that stuff is key to understanding the man and his work though.

also harbl, if i had a cat it would be named bartleby. you can get away with more syllables in cat names than dog names because you don't have to call them all the time.

yeah i just call my cat buddy or cat. she doesn't even know her name.

From the 'Ask Nilmar/Nakh' thread:

Is the Nilmar I Facebook friended actually you?

― Treeship, Monday, August 12, 2013 2:57 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I would like to hear more about how this panned out.

I mean, I'm assuming the answer was 'no', but who was it you Facebook friended?

I think I remember someone telling a story on ilx about how they set up a fake James Franco Facebook account and the real Tao Lin messaged then asking if they were still meeting up for lunch as planned? I would like to hear the story of how Treeship befriended the real Nilmar Honorato da Silva through a series of comic misunderstandings, if such a story exists.

Unforch that is the real nakh

Or else nakh ilx verzh is the real nilmar

lynchian switch . Swyntch.

treesh have you read 'remainder' by tom mccarthy

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/nov/20/two-paths-for-the-novel/

no but i read that article when it was first published. it argues that the opposition between "postmodern" fiction that takes liberty with both form and narrative plausibility and more conventional "realist" fiction is a false choice, right?

is remainder worth picking up?

also, semi-related, i just woke up from a dream where a hot new novel was getting lots of critical buzz but the novel was just a chocolate cake that readers were instructed to eat. it was sold in bookstores, however, which distinguished it from cakes sold in bakeries. there was a lot of discussion about whether this was "really" a novel just because the author said it was and in the course of the dream i at first passionately defended it but then was convinced to change my mind and denounced it.

treesh you should absolutely read remainder

was the author of the chocolate cake novel tao lin?

I think it was jonathan franzen even though irl i think he hates anything that could be perceived as a "stunt"

treesh what do you think of this assertion by brian eno

I’m becoming increasingly anti-sport. I think sport is encouraged by governments to channel what would be male revolutionary energy into totally pointless activities. Sport is a great technique of social control.

disclaimer: i think treesh is the best ilx nom de plume (i believe it was hoos first used the contracted form) and it is possible that i ask you more questions than i otherwise would in order to able to say 'treesh', i would probably name a cat or a housing development treesh

i don't think there's much need of "distraction" from revolutionary politics as there aren't really any major emancipatory movements in britain and america for angry young men to become involved with. certainly nothing for governments to worry about. the left is dead as two of my marxist friends are always saying. one of the great advantages of our phase of capitalism -- from the perspective of those for whom the system works best -- is that everything is so complex and intertwined it's never really clear who the enemies are. anger wouldn't be useful right now, when the parameters of the conflict are so hazy.

or at least not that kind of anger that demands immediate, cathartic release of the sort people find watching sports.

how's your workout program going?

as if a nation of rioting angry disaffected young ppl is better than a nation of tv-sports-watching-couch-zombies

not so good dylann. need to get back to asap as i am still paying for a gym membership.

describe your gym

it's amazing and i can't really afford it. there's a pool, for one, which i appreciate. personal trainer appointment is included every six weeks to tweak your program according to your progress and goals. every four months a cute nurse will take your body composition using a machine so you can get a more nuanced sense of your progress than just height and weight would provide. or at least the one i had for my initial consultation was cute. there are all kinds of fitness classes that i should take advantage of but don't because i've just been coming straight home after work and drinking beer the past few weeks.

exercise for me requires a certain mindset -- being "pumped up", or in the moment enough to be able to push through difficult patches -- which feels really unnatural for me most of the time. that's the biggest hurdle.

describe the nurse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hVZZZQAqnM

give me your thoughts on that

i find the element of masculine competition in the gym helps me. like that broscience canard about prisoners gaining muscle in spite of poor diet and poor training because of elevated testosterone due to being surrounded by men + masculine competition. i'm definitely looking at who else is lifting what, trying not to make it obvious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2rpqubbGt4

watch frank yang videos before going to gym

i find it useful to meditate on the failure & destruction of my enemies during a workout

Note to self: make enemies.

happy birthday Treeship and Hitler

sparking one up for treesh

HOLY SHIT CRUT AINT LYIN HAPPY BIRTHDAY HOMIE

breithlá sona duit a treesh

Somethin like that

The emergence of christ from the tomb
While handled no doubt with aplomb
Is less cause for noise
Than that of my boys
Adolf H & treesh from the womb

it's a banner day for christians
their fave magician's up again
but hereabouts we rather fete
one treezy (live) and adolf (late)
judge not these books tho by their covers
both vegetarian dog lovers
one's just a naif blogger patsy
the other guy's a full-on nazi
so tho the day it somewhat crosses
with catholic and stasi bosses
let's make this one about tao lin
to please our second favourite finn

happy bday smoke a fattie

now some things, if they're rotten
they leave traces (like burnt toast)
adolf with his waffen
eric harris' let-down ghost
these things aren't merely memories
they're powerful for reezy
that's why every year on this day i
thank god for weed and treezy

Thanks for the bday wishes and poems y'all.

Treeship, what is your favourite situation comedy?

The US Office, definitely. Michael Scott is a very rich, very convincing character IMO.

good answer treezy

Interesting! I like it, but I'm always a bit surprised by the extent of ppl's love for it.

treezy do you ever feel you are too earnest for this jaded world?

^

isn't the 'new sincerity' a thing now?

what's between it and the old emo

clear-eyed no romanticism can't lose?

new sincerity has BEEN a thing & we had enough convos about treezy's level of sincerity last year, ilx 2013 kinda embarrassed itself with endless earnest debate about whether t was too earnest

new earnest debate was 2013?

treezy pulled it off, as did other ILX characters.

how's tricks, tree?

xp wrt treesh it was, & to be fair it was probably only like a month last year, but all month, on every thread, and just super lame like u felt hands were being literally wrung

my question was not about treezy's level of sincerity, it was about his self-reflection about that level vis a vis our grim jaded world. it was a question for the heart.

^ilx has heart problems, though

xp fair enough just felt like old material to me

that is ilx's problem. here one speaks directly into the heart of the treeship.

hands will have been wrung all over the site since imma say 2009

^you're being generous

its my nature tbh

i've gone through a lot of corny phases in my life, j. please don't go back and read my responses to similar questions nakh asked me last year.

treesh do u have any opinions on the music of richard wagner

no, but i enjoy the music of Bathory and have assumed i could get the gist from that. which performance of which piece by wagner should i listen to on spotify?

treesh: how do you feel about the baroque movement? and rococo?

where do you put james joyce? in what category?

idk if it is available there, but anything with the tristan prelude & liebestod
if you can get this lp in particular than do it

http://www.allmusic.com/album/wagner-orchestral-music-mw0001837745

Where did Treeship go?

to the men's rights thread

Oh okay.

Thank you.

I was starting to miss him

still posts fairly regularly I think, just not quite at the rate of his peak output

<3

treesh what is the most hateful sincere opinion about any subject that you have ever encountered? (flagrantly inflammatory, hateful or discriminatory opinions excluded)

treezy tell us abt the last time you checked your privilege

nakh, this question is difficult. it's hateful when people say that suicide is a "selfish act" or that it is usually motivated by a desire to "get back" at others. i've heard this many times. related to this, i think, is any opinion based on a general assumption that people only ever have base, selfish motives for their actions. less serious than the suicide example but connected to this idea are people who think having an interest in the arts is just a way to acquire "social capital".

now can you somehow mix the two together to create the ultimate hateful sincere opinion?

isn't that that one al alvarez book

ha I have that book

treesh what is the most angry and/or aggressive you can ever remember being

I had a really bad political argument with my father while visiting him in Singapore last summer. I don't even remember what it was about but I remember arguing in a really unfair way, with personal attacks and just in general being a dick.

is your father a laissez-faire type?

Essentially. I don't want to get into it here. He's a good person.

that is very treeshian, for your most intemperate moment to be about political principles, and to hold yourself responsible in retrospect

i assumed your answer would be about hitting someone when you were 14 or something like that

in the wake of recent alt-lit rape scandals
have you ever been in a sexual situation that you now regret or feel weird about

seriously?

the answer is no, unequivocally, but i am disturbed by the ambiguous wording of the question. "regret or feel weird about" could mean a bunch of stuff, but due to the first part of your question if i said "yes" it would imply i did something morally wrong.

also, i thought we were chill dylann.

have you ever been in a sexual situation that you now regret or feel weird about

surely he was only asking from experience

we're chill

kinda fucking with you maybe. but reading about stephen tully dierks or whatever his name is and similarly behaving guys, i definitely run through my memory of sexual encounters looking for questionable behavior on my part.

treemonisha: have you noticed a palpable difference in temperament or attitude or w/e between academic types who grew up in a household that values intellectualism (e.g. parents are college professors/some other kind of academic/artist/etc) and those who grew up in largely blue collar surroundings?

this is a tough question. the sharpest academic-types i know (not all involved with universities necessarily) tend to be from some kind of "interesting" background, so weren't born into the yuppie intelligentsia. the people i am thinking of have unconventional left wing political beliefs that are rooted as much in experience as in theory. academic-types i've known whose parents were professors tend to have more predictable views. but this is such a small sample size, and there are so many exceptions, that it's hard to generalize.

what have you observed on this front?

a certain sense of boredom/blasé attitude towards a given discipline in the former group; a somewhat refreshing anti-authoritarian streak and sometimes a less attractive tendency towards aiming to impress in the latter

why do you post to ilx?

because it's the only message board that matters™

and when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless and ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity--then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions only one thing: whether you have posted to ilx, or not.

no way to verify this but i guessed kierkegaard and then i googled it and it was kierkegaard

felt excited about that victory because i had to skip quizzo tonight

last time i went the only answer i successfully contributed was "kalashnikov" and i was like :/

Treeship,

What would be your first action as mod?

It was great to see you again,

http://ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=77&threadid=100687

i sometimes pretend to be on 77 to keep posters guessing, but i'm not actually in there ;_;

oh. that is a poll i started a few weeks ago titled "unban all banned posters (at midnight on halloween)". poll closes soon.

so i would do that but i would also ban the other mods in a move that my enemies will call a coup but my allies will call a revolution from above. after that only history can say.

can one mod really ban another? what checks and balances do we have in place?

oh i don't know. are the mods unbannable? that's kind of disturbing if true.

i flagged my post for moderation so maybe we will find out

i think i will possibly be banned for doing that

under this administration, it's likely. especially after you disregarded waterface's request for discretion.

treeship do you think youre a good ilx poster?

what's your issue with me, lamp?

i dont understand you and am curious

what don't you understand?

why you post so much to ilx, what you get out of it, what youre 'about'

tbf i probably shouldve read the early part of this thread before asking

about the amount that i post, i am a compulsive procrastinator in graduate school and i think the amount of time i spend both posting to ilx and talking to people on gchat and facebook chat is dysfunctional.

but i like many of the people here and the discussions are more interesting than most other places i've found on the internet.

do you like that hozier song?

what are the next most interesting places you have found on the internet

treeship what grad program are you in?

dylannn: yes, very much. a bit self-pitying, but in the way that i can be so i relate. "take me to church" is the one you are talking about right?

nakh: i don't know. lots of things. i like that blog "the charnel house."

lamp: i'm just doing a one year masters of education program that involves certification as a high school english teacher. i've dabbled in literature grad classes but never officially enrolled in a program and ultimately decided not to pursue a phd... for now

trís ive never read anything by rawls or rorty or any of those centre ground american humanities mavens, do you think people should read their books?

rorty is awesome

contingency, irony + solidarity is worth reading

just in terms of general edification?

do people read these books apart from in universities

trying to remember what the book the person was reading in that excellent scene in the sopranos where he is sitting reading while listening to second viennese school piano music and is told by his wife that the crime he witnessed was mafia related and then they freak out

think it might have been rawls or rorty

also trís how would you feel if a very erudite and patrician socially and fiscally conservative yankee sort of poster joined ilx

question #1.) only read rorty, and only contingency, irony, and solidarity. the best part of that book is the chapter on nabokov.

question #2.) i think that sounds sweet. there's too much homogeneity of opinion here. guy like that would probably force people to question and refine their perspectives, ultimately strengthening them.

even if that poster were to have some rather difficult views about gender, race and so forth? what if they revealed themselves to have donated $15,000 to pro life campaign groups in the last year?

you tell a guy something in confidence

idk i'm w/ marcuse we shd be intolerant of intolerance imo

yeah, this person presumably would exist whether he posted to ilx or not. if he poses his views in interesting, provocative ways i think that could be useful and who knows maybe he would change his views or soften them

if he was an abusive, obtuse dick then he would just ruin threads and get banned. but you said he was erudite

yes, erudite, and haughty

from new england

what's his name

lowell

he would describe himself as a 'reluctant schopenhauerian pessimist' on ilx, though not on his twitter biography because he would have left twitter after deciding that microblogging was 'inimical to proper reflection'

what's his middle name?

How would he react to people playfully abbreviating his name to "lol"

just would not reply to any post that did not substantially engage his own arguments

he would have a low threshold for caustically insincere nihilistic irony

a lowell threshold

a 'I got friends in lowell places' dn

a 'lowellin in the deep' dn

tempted to make an "ask lowell" thread to see if he'll materialize

It will be a Field of Lols

Treeship,

What did you think if Hatfields & McCoys?

i think they both had some pretty good points.

would Lowell like pineapple on pizza?

Treeship,

Seems that you took some time off. How was your time away? Were you more productive?

Not Lamp,

i'm not supposed to be back. i made a pledge on Facebook to not read the internet (beyond Facebook PMs, emails, and things for school and work) for the rest of the calendar year. today was a relapse.

i was much more productive during the two weeks i was away though.

ah, you are still doing pretty well then.

thanks sufjan.

going to stop posting on lena dunham now. here is something to enjoy while i am gone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQFmsvPo6BQ

Rewatching Roseanne for the umpteenth time and realizing how much the Amy Sherman-penned episodes feel like proto-GG.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Lord_Byron_-_Childe_Harold%27s_Pilgimage_-_Dugdale_edition.jpg

trís have you read this

trís as a declared fan of autumn, how do you feel about that season giving way to winter

i hate it. it gets dark early and i feel less productive.

triste

estela apreesh thread^^

i was productive today, despite the cold and dark

i don't totally hate winter. very cold days can be beautiful. i go on long walks and bike rides in the cold.

it's still autumn btw

I've only just now finished memorizing Shelley "To the West Wind", how the fuck am I gonna bring that up in conversation if it's not still autumn

my favorite Gilmore Girls episode is the one where they invent the ultimate pumpkin pie cocktail

because if winter's here can spring be far behind??? xp

hmmm you raise a good point

I don't wanna sell winter short though, I just want it to still be the fall for as long as possible

... although I am already looking forward to hitting 'rock bottom' on the solstice, so

i love shelley

i love how queen mab is hosted on marxists.org

https://www.marxists.org/archive/shelley/1813/queen-mab.htm

winter can fuck off

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHUZKOh5kLc

treesh what do u think of liberation theology

― Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 20 August 2014 02:00 (5 months ago)

please don’t make us wait another five months for a response

that was from another thread and it was probably asked facetiously however five months later it looks like a viable question for trís

from what little i know about it, catholic liberation theology as practiced in latin america seems like it was progressive. i always thought it was ironic/despicable how the post vatican ii popes have distanced themselves from liberation theology for fear of possibly being seen to lend support to leftist armed insurrections when in the past they were openly supportive of fascism. queasiness with militarism was clearly not their issue with it.

hitchens' line that mother teresa wasn't a fan of the poor, but a fan of poverty, who romanticized suffering and was only interested in partial, "charitable" approaches to ameliorating the effects of inequality was harsh but otm. liberation theology is interested in political solutions to suffering and inequality, and i think that's the crucial difference between them and the equivocators in the church who of course support the "preferential option for the poor" and even the welfare state but are paranoid of "marxism."

what do you think nakh?

also pre-francis, with the european popes, there was something grotesque about the vatican telling priests how they should respond to the political situations in their own countries, especially since in each case it was clear that they were doing what they thought was best for their congregations.

the only catholic hierarch i respect is ratzinger

you're going to have to unpack that

good luck unnakhing that

there is no conceivable worth to the catholic church other than its enduring capacity to disregard people with good intentions from within and ill intentions from without

sub specie aeternitatis; resilience is a transcendent value

u get $$$ sometimes if u get confirmed

liberation theology maybe had some local practical benefits for local people but its syncretization of guileless marxism and peasant christianity is just part of south america's endless oscillation between messianism (latterly mostly secular) and entrenched power, the former needing the latter for victims to fetishize and the latter needing the former to overreach again and again

insofar as priests in latin america really did try to fight for socialism, i don't know if they were as invested in the romanticization of poverty as the mainstream church. from what i understand, that is what made the vatican uncomfortable right up through francis

lol at the wikipedia article

Gustavo Gutiérrez gave the movement its name with his book A Theology of Liberation (1971). In this book, Gutierrez combined populist ideas with the social teachings of the Catholic Church.....Gutierrez emphasized practice (or, more technically, "praxis") over doctrine.

"physical fitness is as important as intellectual fitness; so says plato and so say i." richard gilmore rip

what is intellectual fitness

Kill Me Now (19 Oct. 2000)
TV Episode - 44 min - Comedy | Drama
8.0 Your rating: -/10 Ratings: 8.0/10 from 229 users
Reviews: write review
Rory goes golfing with her grandfather and surprisingly has a good time. At Lorelai's inn, a wedding is stressing everyone out.

Director: Adam Nimoy
Writers: Amy Sherman-Palladino (created by), Joanne T. Waters

^ these are the people to ask

trivia: before they leave to go golfing, emily puts what looks like a rastafarian wool cap on rory and says "now you look like tiger woods".

i'm into season 4. show is def. getting boring. at least jess is gone.

xp in jest?

no, in jess.

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--osuNnkrD--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/iwxktiqcnwau8tzs2iab.jpg

basically, i watch the show 50% for alexis bledel's eyes. her eyes! they are transfixing.

http://p1.pichost.me/640/14/1369581.jpg

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQjulhCBqARD08BbTseAylBqzxNTxYwrA8aOxqr4JqfGLAdz9BY

my wife started watching this show when she gets ready in the morning or is doing menial stuff around the living room. I keep waiting for the gilmore girls to run out.

but the ipad is like bacchus' cup with this shit

it's definitely easy to tune in and tune out.

i watched this show a lot growing up. it was always on in syndication on abc family. today, however, i have consciously chosen to watch it.

"growing up" -- jeez, i feel old. this was on after i graduated college.

"growing up" = middle school and high school. show started when i was 11

i like how she is wearing a "baby-g" watch in the image i posted above.

paris is the effing worst

http://i.imgur.com/lThBTFA.jpg

lol, thanks!

paris is the effing worst

― Treeship, Friday, January 30, 2015 8:52 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what the? few things in life bring me as much joy as paris gellar. every time luke starts one of his pointless, humorless rants, i get angry at the thought that the screen time could have been given to paris.

https://41.media.tumblr.com/95aae0e86f2d0f3d2b2847540ee5dd35/tumblr_mt6c7nPZKH1qa3gedo1_500.jpg

yeah, in general she is a key figure of the show. i think she was being really annoying in whatever scene i was watching when i typed that though.

they can see through the window that it is raining, though

and happy birthday, Treeship! (unless that was a joke)

it's true! and thanks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGGiwAMOdsk

otm

what did u think of preparation for the next life?

do u have any phobias

second question, what do u think of this short piece by the person often purported to be 'america's greatest composer'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkaOz48cq2g

^^ watch out treesh! it's a trick question

treezy are you a fan of Francis and the Lights

that charles ives piece sounds like it would be good for the soundtrack of the steven spielberg biopic about my life: the scene when i walk into my job at the tea shop not knowing that i am about to be fired.

gr80, i am listening to some francis and the lights now. i like it. a lot of the songs sound familiar at first, but on closer listen it's really bc it is an unplaceable combination of a bunch of different stuff

did you really work in a tea shop

yeah

from february 2013 - march 2013. i was fired under mysterious circumstances, i heard different accounts from different people about what was said to the manager about me. sometimes at night i try to untangle it; it's like a logic puzzle.

trísiop

― local eire man (darraghmac), Thursday, 16 October 2014 00:35 (7 months ago)

whats the dopest tea iyo

I love tea and have opinions

does tea shop = teavana?

A Ralph's that stocks Snapple?

no it wasn't teavana. if you realllly want to know i will fb msg people the name of the place. i am terrified of the owner though, so i can't disclose it publicly.

i really liked the kukicha tea they had at this place. i also like regular black tea, like tetley or whatever.

oh no it's Madame ZuZu's

FatL sounds like a fantasy Randy Newman/Prince collaboration become real imo

dear treeship,

(since you asked me meta questions i think i’m allowed to ask meta question too)

what are some things you’ve learned from your experience so far @ ilx

(in any sense you like, about anything at all— e.g. yourself, humans, discourse, baby goats, addiction, whatever)

Sorry for the delayed response drash.

This is a big question for me. I think the main thing I learned from my experience posting to ilx is how to care less about the approval of others. I still get hung up on this, but less. I have a better understanding, like a deep down, intuitive understanding of how not all criticism is legitimate. When I first showed up ilx seemed more into rigidly enforcing discursive norms in a way I didn't understand at first.

The other thing I learned was that my internet usage is compulsive and sort of a problem, but not in a way where it's robbing me of my soul/humanity as I used to fear, but more in the way where there are other ways I would prefer to spend my free time.

Don't want to seem down on ilx. It filled an important void for me in a very difficult part of my life. I had lurked for years but only started posting after something happened that I incorrectly thought of as a catastrophe. This place was a distraction -- a rich, immersive virtual world -- and that's what I needed. Escapism gets a bad rap, but I think it can, in certain doses, be good when life becomes too oppressive. It's good to remember there's more to the world than what's in front of you... sometimes

interesting post. for me, ilx serves as a reminder that there's more to the world than what's in front of me.

oh wait. that is also what you are saying I think.

Yep. Sometimes I worry that the amount of time I spend online or reading books is pulling me away from my immediate environment, like I'm not as mindful as I could be about how I use my time and how I can improve my relationships with my friends and family -- a sort of david foster wallace "this is water" nagging concern. But books, interesting magazine and newspaper articles, music, and ilx have helped me weather so much difficult stuff and also, in a way, sometimes, to put my problems in perspective. The internet generally is allowing people to experience this frictionless form of communication that can feel unreal and, when you step back from it, scary. There are times when I think I have lost the ability to be satisfied sitting alone in a park, or being fully immersed in some sort of manual task, and that this is a major loss. But then again reality has grinds down so many people. Is it really so great and liberating? I go back and forth - I think the solution to this maybe false dilemma is, boringly, "balance"

Anyway, when I think about ilx in relation to my life it usually evokes these kinds of questions

thx for thoughtful answer, treesh; relate to much of what you say
began posting during strange, self-estranged period; served as distraction/escape but also stirred some dormant/neglected aspects of self
do see potential perils (given my own bents); yes finding ‘balance’, diff at diff times, in all things, ongoing process (which i’m not so great at tbh)

thoughts on this adolph reed quote trís?

In an article in the The Village Voice dated January 16, 1996, he said of Obama:

In Chicago, for instance, we’ve gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program — the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics, as in Haiti and wherever else the International Monetary Fund has sway. So far the black activist response hasn’t been up to the challenge. We have to do better.[6]

reed otm. the left needs to think big otherwise it is nothing. there are no local solutions to global problems, sadly.

also there is pies and thighs, a brunch place in williamsburg that i like a lot. and this place in greenwich village that i can't remember the name of but their coffee is amazing and the vibe is sort of "french." i do not like pj's pancake house in princeton even though that's a local favorite.

― Michigan seems like a dream to me now (Treeship), Wednesday, May 22, 2013 3:08 AM (2 years ago)

have you had any other amazing coffee recently

if i am being honest with myself,
i would read anything you would want to write about coffee
i am into coffee at the moment

i have a chemex now.

the secret is to not use boiling water, that scorches the grounds and makes the cup less flavorful. also, it's important to use beans that aren't especially "dark". those are burned and have a lower caffeine content. more bitter =/= "stronger" as many americans seem to think.

oh yeah, it's also important to pour slowly

https://www.stumptowncoffee.com/coffee

this coffee is really good

i'm digging this costa rica mild roast from whole foods lately. doesn't leave a bitter/sour after taste.

treezy, do you like your coffee black and "strong"

https://www.stumptowncoffee.com/products/ethiopia-mordecofe

this sounds like it could be a viable coffee for a certain ilx fan of african music who would appreciate the 'dank notes' of dope ethiopian cofee

is it a stunner any time of day though

and preferably given in tandem with the heart of a slaughtered bull

tbh i 100% understand the "you knoooowww.... beans are not supposed to be roasted dark" argument as its been baristasplained to me plenty of times

but i've been drinking dark roasts my whole life and i like the way they taste

i don't go to coffee for "brightness" or "floral notes," coffee is a dark thick blanket which i wrap myself in

my pal who has worked in coffee forever and runs his own coffee business is cool w/dark beans and thinks they get a bad rap. I'm down with them, it just depends on flavor. I like light roasts but give me a smooth medium dark to dark with a "chocolate" or "toffee" flavor profile over a "floral" light roast any day.

gr80 this company you may be aware of, this coffee maybe not but I've been drinking it daily of late.

http://www.philzcoffee.com/coffee-medium-blends-tesora

feel like i've drank way more "bad/shitty" dark roasts than light ones

this is the fuckin bomb day or night https://www.stumptowncoffee.com/products/ethiopia-mordecofe

tho this is "dark roast" but doesn't taste like it at all

http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/product/coffee/el-diablo-dark-roast

:-)

i am not a light roast partisan btw, i just avoid the super dark ones, which seem to lack complexity, imo, and sometimes even call out for half and half

full disclosure: when i first started drinking coffee regularly i would always spring for the dark roasts because they seemed more serious, and i thought of myself as a serious person and a serious coffee drinker. the switch to medium and even light roasts took some convincing

dear ilx, what do you think about this song from 2010

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHeVBcMC1Pw

full disclosure: when i first started drinking coffee regularly i would always spring for the dark roasts because they seemed more serious, and i thought of myself as a serious person and a serious coffee drinker. the switch to medium and even light roasts took some convincing

― starkiller based god (Treeship), Thursday, February 4, 2016 1:47 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

word

yo where'd u go

oh, i deactivated facebook because i wasn't spending my time usefully. (i posted on fb about it before i did it). obviously my plan for more efficiency isn't paying dividends yet bc i am still on ilx.... but anyway, this is temporary. you have my email address though! i will still use, like, g chat and stuff.

so rude! :p

Can April in truth be so cruel
in light of the annual renewal
Of th'mouthpiece of Franco
And listener of AnCo
Whose insights we all find so kewl?

Lol thank you

what u think abt this trís

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8SYGFsKubU

it seems like it's influenced by grimes, at least visually, so i want to like it, but it's garbage

how would you go about promoting GIRLI for a stateside lp release and ten date tour of liberal arts campuses in the northeast and upper midwest?

if treeship fails to answer that qn, would accept an answer by the following ilx posters

djmartian, darraghmac, Geir Hongro, r|t|c, stephen garza

http://i.imgur.com/xAS3l.gifhttps://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ne9q7_oFwHw/maxresdefault.jpg

does this metaphorically convey your feelings rn

that was the word

white sanctimony against a background of royal purple? seems too british to apply to treesh

https://hallsofkarma.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/danishmeme.jpg

I understand. Denmark has clung to its royal family, too.

how would you go about promoting GIRLI for a stateside lp release and ten date tour of liberal arts campuses in the northeast and upper midwest?

― nakhchivan, Tuesday, 10 May 2016 01:58 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if treeship fails to answer that qn, would accept an answer by the following ilx posters

djmartian, darraghmac, Geir Hongro, r|t|c, stephen garza

― nakhchivan, Tuesday, 10 May 2016 02:05 Bookmark

wicker man's granddaughter m8

http://i.imgur.com/acpyT1Y.png

lol i was unaware of her cv

http://i.imgur.com/eoL6bFi.jpg

Holocaust Memorial Day in Camden - Keeping the Memory Alive

treesh have you ever answered the qn 'describe your "look" for today in four words or fewer' with 'grimes at holocaust memorial'?

No. I stick to pretty neutral outfits - lots of plain t shirts or casual button downs -- but this is mostly out of cowardice.

If I felt I coud pull off "cyber fairy" well enough not to offend people at a solemn memorial i'd do it.

like tinker bell?

No, like grimes duh. This is her current bio from her tumblr.

surrealist yuppie, urban faery,
warrior poet,
herbivore,
art angel

i try to block all things grimes

hey, treesh! have you got any plans on what you're going to do with this thing?

sorry. just declared a deadline. i will set up the poll in june

Was this poll ever set up? I can't find it. I'm three seasons deep into this and my maternal instinct is still absent. My favourite episode so far is when they throw eggs at Jess's car because everyone is horrible.

Just take this poll: POLL: 2016 ILX Poetry Competition Voting, and interpret the results metaphorically to apply to the Gilmore Girls.

ILX short film comp

Los Blue Jeans: i just remembered the name of a diner/brunch place i wanted to recommend before but forgot the name of. Sullivan street bistro in greenwich village. Amazing coffee and french fries. Really comfortable couchlike seating.

― Treeship, Wednesday, 12 June 2013 22:56 (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

didnt find this place great but it was maybe early in the day for it

I love it because it's so low key for the neighborhood. Perfect spot to chat away a lazy hangover.

When did you go?

It's sort of like the Manhattan version of Cafe Ghia only the decor is slightly tackier (faux parisian) which i like

idk three years ago or so. mostly ate in apartment tho we did splash out at bar americain one evening which was fine as food goes but exactly right for 'dining in new york'

faux parisian is not strange to dublin nor anywhere really and idkiukt but its actually a pretty big aesthetic in paris tbh

idk do they say faux tho they probably have a term for it

i don't like this

i don't like this at all

Treeship doesn’t post here anymore but I can relay a message to him if you want

Treeship 2: Judgment Day

Stench of Brodie off it

hi treesh

hope yr doing well

fellow time anthropologist

treeship sorry for being rude on the conservative opinions thread

I appreciate that, brimstead, but I didn’t think you said anything out of line. I knew what I was getting into when I posted to the uncool conservative opinions thread.

As a side note while this thread is active, I want to say that I love when this thread is bumped instead of the real gilmore girls thread for general gilmore girls discussion

have your professional ambitions changed since that first answer four years ago

they did and then they changed back and now i recently started a full time writing-ish job in new york

treesh have you considered emigrating to europe?

i always ask him that

iirc england has been ruled out but scotland hasn't

no. i've studied abroad in europe and vacationed there and i love it, but i doubt very much i will ever live outside the tri-state area.

it seems like it would be a stressful process to emigrate and once there i would be too far away from my friends and family.

however, i do increasingly find living in america stressful and upsetting as i imagine many other americans here do

keep it in mind as a back up. you'd like it here

which country are you in again, ogmor? sorry that i don't recall

ogmor is in The North

like manchester?

exactly like Manchester, but I picture you more in Ireland, Holland, Spain, Scandinavia or Germany - somewhere a little more... European

I'm in the North as well. Every country has a North tbh

i live in north brooklyn

That makes the transition to a North somewhere in Europe so much easier

is Bildt (or whatever the fascist government renamed it) The North in mentality as well as geography? iirc yes

Oh absolutely!

(+1 for fash gov remark)

btw treeship should move to florence imo

or vienna!

northerness is a state of mind prone to being romanticisation.

I recall a dave queen review of a travis album in which he quite convincingly divided europe into a spirit-drinking north, a beer-drinking middle, and a wine-drinking south. this also lets my drinking habits stand as testament to my cosmopolitan ways

eh you know what I meant

Can highly recommend Thinking Northern, a collection of essays about Britain's North. It covers a range of topics like identity, dialects, conceptions of 'Northerness', Salford, The Fall etc. Oh, and a bonus essay titled "Northern Racism: A Pilot Study of Racism in Sunderland"!

LJ knows how this is somewhat a main topic of mine. I'm still glad I got to live in t0dm0rd3n for a while, for compare/contrast. There are universal Northern similarities, of that I'm sure.

(the North being grim probably the most compelling similarity of all)

Fun fact: my ancestry is North as well (north Cyprus/Yorkshire) but both sides relocated (thanks to Turkish invasion/job opportunities down South) just in time for my parents to happen - I wonder what Northern echoes persist

That's a muddled timeline actually - my Cypriot grandparents set up in London and had my mum long before they moved back to Kyrenia and got displaced. Job opportunities all around then

Anyway as this is Ask Treeship I guess the big man had best tell us if he has any Michigan ancestry or whatever

treesh have you considered emigrating to Canada?

Charlton Athletic is SE London no? You rebel!

Did your gp flee Cyprus because of the invasion? That's rough. xp

our west is afaict our north

our actual north is another thing entirely obv

your actual north entirely different thing, but grim it is

its that northerly thing of beautiful but orrible alright

My grandparents fled Kyrenia and set up in Limassol. They'd only moved back to Kyrenia a couple of years earlier, from Camden

(north London, the least North of all norths)

flightiness in the family nest pas

you leave my family nest alone

i suppose a n'ornithologist wouldve been expected to spot that one

:)

treeship do you bring us any tidings from the great outside world

Yes.

I saw the Whitney Biennial and found much of it overwhelming, but some of it excellent. And I found the discussion around it alienating as every commentator, critical and laudatory, seemed to take it for granted that most important thing about a work of art is its politics.

I’m glad they forced Kanders off the board but it seems like kind of a hollow victory. He is still manufacturing chemical weapons, he just isn’t allowed to be on the board of the Whitney. Is the point of critical art just to purify the museum?

how is the cooking, treechef?

Sorry—first comment, meant to write underwhelming not overwhelming.

Oh cooking is going well! At home I’m doing veganism. Pasta salads, open faced sandwiches, some spring rolls, it’s the best.

My personal life is actually good *knock on wood*

excellent! Glad you are keeping with it.

so vegan spring rolls. Have to imagine you have a great tofu marinade or an amazing dipping sauce?

Tamari and peanut butter. And i put little slices of tofu in the rolls.

oh nice. v simple. will try with the folks that don't do fish sauce.

Treeship, after a lengthy absence you suddenly re-registered just before the impeachment/whistleblower news broke. Actualities you are actively engaging in discussion in on this borad. Are you the whistleblower?

Yeah but don’t tell anyone. Trump might send his killers after me

Your secret's safe with me, buddy

is it happy bday tríseóig

Happy birthday treeship!

thank you!

Happy birthday man!

may your happiness burgeon like a yeasty mass in a warmish place

happy birthday dear treeship, kindly keep on truckin for all our sakes