Friday, March 19, 2010

Links, Time, and Ferris Bueller

My job and some extracurricular activities (notably, a second job I worked on at home for a few days) completely consumed me this week and by the time I finally came up for air, the week was over. My blog: postless. The last five days seemed to zoom by at light speed. Why? I guess you'd say it's because I've been very busy and, as always seems to happen, when one is occupied or busy in some way---time flies. The opposite phenomenon is the watched pot that never boils. During those last few minutes of work or class when you're staring at the clock, time seems to take its time. If you stop and take the time to focus on something, time will seemingly slow down or, in rare instances, stand still. In the "Oxen of the Sun" chapter of Ulysses, the carousing drunken medical students notice Bloom (pg 416) staring deeply at the label on a beer bottle, totally hypnotized and in another dimension, and Joyce (speaking through his characters) says:
Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods. 
Ferris Bueller said "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it" and as I get more and more involved with my job and let the days breeze by I realize the importance of that statement. It's very similar to what I described in the last paragraph of my introductory baseball post, where the timeless nature of a live baseball game often promotes reflection and consideration of where I am in life. Thankfully, baseball season (and spring!) is upon us.

Anyways, I'm back and I have some links. St Patrick's Day brought Joyce back into the news a bit and there's been some fun and excitement in hockey and interesting baseball stuff. I'm still figuring out how to unite and display such a weird conglomeration of topics so I'll break 'em up here.

Baseball
- Bill James' interviews usually suck because he comes across as cold and not wanting to be bothered. This one's cool but he makes some weird assertions.
- Major League Baseball's grouchy old get-off-my-lawn attitude when it comes to the internet media boom is annoying
- Torii Hunter, who has the same birthday as me, said some silly things recently and got lambasted for it but here's a slightly more sober view.
- Nice piece from Josh Wilker on the film "Sugar" and the lives of Dominican baseball players.
- Why people hate Yankee fans. I've gotta learn how to make my blog look that pretty.
- Another beautiful blog that makes me jealous. On the recent news about Texas Rangers' manager Ron Washington.
Hockey
I could've sworn there were a bunch more hockey things I wanted to link to but...this is what happens when you don't heed the words of Ferris Bueller.

Joyce
- A  short interview with a scholar who won a battle with the Joyce estate after they tried to block her from using any of his writings in her new biography of Lucia Joyce, his schizophrenic daughter. The interview is nothing in depth really but it brings up a couple interesting things: the Joyce estate and Joyce's daughter Lucia. The Estate of James Joyce or rather, Mr. Stephen Joyce, the writer's sole living descendant, has caused alot of trouble for scholars over the last few years, withholding and even destroying some of his work and being extremely stingy with giving a stamp of approval on anything while asking for lots of dough in royalties when they do approve stuff. The interview I linked to is with the author of a biography of James Joyce's daughter, Lucia, who was considered to have schizophrenia and spent the last 30 years of her life in a mental institution. Here's some more info about the sad story. It's been said that she inherited her father's genius but, whereas he was able to channel it into his writings, she had no sufficient outlet and was overcome by it.

- I really don't like this guy's article at all but the headline is nice: "The Best Book Ever Written is Irish"


Random
- My ladyfriend showed me a pretty cool documentary on this weird experiment and now it's gaining more attention with a television show. The chilling part: "The Milgram experiment showed that people will submit to authority no matter what its form: military, political, medical, a boss — or now a television host." Check it out.

No comments:

Post a Comment