I love this guy.

Guy's name is Michael Hainey, Deputy Editor of GQ.

First saw him on the Sart, and I just love how mischievous he seems, even when he's not grinning. Pure cartoon character. Looks like he'd have good stories. Oh and he reminds me of Alan Ruck circa Spin City. +a billion points for the hair

photos c/o Sart and GQ.

Vienna

The bridge between Handelskai and Neue Donau stations. Cold and dusky. Just a touch of fog.

A long barge cuts a swath perfectly across the middle of the Danube.

That's why.

uhhh...Mr. The Plague?*

All I want to do is dick around, read and make notes on poetry. Play with my notebooks and get some, you know, semi original thought down, move forward somehow creatively for myself. But I'm stuck with this 16 page behemoth of an essay that was due a week ago. I'm getting docked some serious fucking marks. Which is why it's 4:30 in the morning.

This prof is really getting to me. He knows my name, he knows my name and he won't call on me by it, despite the fact that he calls on everyone else by their names. Mabye I'm imagining it but I can sort of feel contempt? So part of me really wants to impress the shit out of him, and the other part thinks it's a lost cause, and I really just want to...piss him off. I want to get in his face and be like "I know you think I'm a fucking idiot, and I just want to PISS YOU OFF." But I don't say anything, and I go to class, and I let him think that I'm dumb. Or something.

And it's stalling the rest of my life right now. I mean...other than this bronchiolitic plague. (bronchiolitic is a perfectly cromulent word). So I have this other essay due Friday that I haven't even started yet, but I will, and then I have this other 4 page thing due on Monday, and I work all weekend, in a building that makes me sick (or so I hypothesize). On the 18th I get to fly away, so I hope I get better before then. But guess what? I have class until 2 that day, and in class I get this take home test, that I have to hand in on the 20th. I think I'm in Bratislava that day. Oh and I haven't read like....half the books for that course (Nabokov). But I have been taking ridiculous amounts of notes and I love the prof, and the books are short, and amazing. So I'm sure I can catch up between Monday and Friday.

If this plague relents.

*it's a Hackers reference

questions

So I'm reading this article on Boing Boing where Richard Dawkins is talking about universities employing people who believe in Young Earth Creationism as scientists and geologists, etc. And at first I was feeling sort of as if he were being a bit harsh (as he is wont to do), but then I suddenly thought:

If you don't believe in a universe that is fourteen billion years old, why are you an astronomer?

Granted, it might be to find evidence of God, or to disprove that the universe is that old, etc.

But then why are you publishing research studies that conform to the concept a 14 billion year old universe? Pretending to everyone that you believe it? How can you live a lie?

I'm sincerely curious.