Thursday, July 27, 2006

Summer in the City

burst

Taken last Friday outside of a condominium complex a few blocks from my apartment.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

I didn't say it was nice! But everybody does it!

schadenfreude - Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.

I've been thinking about schadenfreude a lot lately. It started with seeing the musical Avenue Q, which has a song about it. After that, it just kept popping up. In articles. In conversations with friends. I noticed it last night when watching The Colbert Report, even though it wasn't mentioned by name. I felt it hit home this morning when the wind blew my umbrella making it hard to handle and causing me to spill coffee all over my hand. A girl walking down the street laughed at me as coffee burned my hand.

As much as we may not want to admit it, I think all of us have experienced this from time to time, myself included. All day today I have been thinking about situations where I have derived pleasure from the misfortune of others, and in each of those cases it occurred when I heard something negative about someone I went to school with. Someone I didn't like. I also noticed that in each case it was often something that wasn't major, such as someone gaining weight and not being the beauty they were. Or it was something that I thought they deserved given their actions. Whenever I have heard about something horrible that happened to someone, even someone I didn't like, I didn't take pleasure in that. Illness, death, etc. Nope, I don't take pleasure in that.

Why do we do this? I'm probably it has something to do with some sort of psychological reaction to inflate our own sense of self-worth, kind of like the schoolyard bully who feels like a big shot because he or she picked on someone else, except in this case we aren't performing an action against this person. It's in our heads.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Draw Two

Draw Two

A group of us was playing Uno at a friend's home. Tim had to draw two. Hehehe!

My proposal defense is scheduled. I think I will start on the presentation this weekend.

Veto. Bad.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Who'd of thunk it?

This is a children's music album I would actually be willing to buy.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Still a busy bee

I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but I really have been busy lately, and when I do have some time to relax, that's exactly what I do. Such as yesterday, when I chilled out and watched The Aristocrats.

I was in Baltimore last weekend for a conference. I did manage to get out of the hotel a bit, and guess what, I took some pictures.

Edgar Allan Poe's grave
Edgar Allan Poe's grave

Lighthouse
Lighthouse

Washington Monument
Washington Monument