Ready for an eargasm? Quote about loneliness and the weather

"I am not certain how I should endure loneliness and bad weather together."
John Keats

Ready for an eargasm? If so, watch this:

Why should things be easy to understand?

I wish I was the author of this title, but unfortunately I'm quoting Thomas Pynchon there. The question "Why should things be easy to understand?" might appear to be useless, and maybe it is indeed a useless question, but still it is legitimate question. Why should things be easy to understand? Is there a reason? If we would understand everything, wouldn't many people commit suicide out of boredom? I would, or at least I might consider.

I don't think one should see the 'things' as an absolute number of things, and we unravel them one by one, and that we have unraveled them all, some day. The more we know, the more nuances we can maken, the more new problems arise, which we have to solve, but if we solve these, more problems and nuances are discovered, so it is never ending. (Is this paragraph kitsch?)

I thought I might have to give an example to clarify the last paragraph, but I won't. Nevermind about that paragraph anyway. Nevermind about this whole blogpost anyway. (And I'm not even drunk!)

My life
.. is still not very interesting.

- #1 4.30AM fall asleep
- #2 11AM Wake up
- #3 11.10AM Read/eat/drink coffee or wine with friends and talk about books read
- Go back to #1

Do people want to know anything about my personal life? + Pynchon quotes

I was sitting in my room, watching outside, to the water (kind of very small lake in the middle of the city) that I can see in a small corner of my view. Though I was just back from some party (ergo I was drunk and stoned) (I won't tell you about the party, because I fear the boreness of party stories) I think I had quite a coherent idea about social media like Twitter (which I -I confess- use too), especially using these media by iPhone or something alike.

This might be the seed of the first post for the intellectual platform that I earlier called 'literature blog' - I think intellectual platform is a much better way to call it. As soon as the intellectual platform has a name and is launched, I will tell you, so you can read the theory and think it over, contribute to it, etc.

If anyone is interested in my personal life, which I highly doubt, I can't tell you very much, I'm afraid. Do you want to hear that my day looks like: fall asleep at 4.30AM, get up at 1PM, take a shower, jerk off every now and then, read, and chill out with friends? If you do, I can tell you all about my days, my fascinating intriges in social life, my relations with people that are never made explicit (but DO exist), and more..

Some nice quotes of Thomas Pynchon


- Why should things be easy to understand?


- Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed.




- Here's your quote: "Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!"

Starting literature blog - anyone wants to join?

No videos, no excuses for boring party stories, no quotes this time.

I am planning to start a new blog, about mainly literature, but other fields like history, politics and philosophy are welcome as well. Besides there's space for interesting (personal) anecdotes and columns. 

First I wanted to do it alone, but I thought: that's a lot of work, update a blog regularly, on my own. So I thought: why not ask more people to join? The blog will become broader, it's less work to update regularly with more people.. So here is the question:

Are you:

- Someone with general intellectual interest and till a certain level erudite

And:

- Do you have time to write kind of regular (make 1 -not too long- post per week or 2 weeks)

And:

- Are you able to write interesting pieces about literature, history, or whatever?

What to do if you're interested?

- You can send me an e-mail: thomasorlando@live.nl

- You can react to this blogpost

- You can react on Twitter

It was boring, and some great quotes, and beautiful piano music

I'm afraid I didn't succeed in writing a NOT-boring story about a party. It was kind of boring, though it felt like I had a life full of happenings. I think that isn't really the case. I am something between a very serious intellectual and a rockstarish hippie, but more an intellectual than a hippie. My apologies for the boring post.

To make it up, some great quotes, which inspire to live:

Play! Invent the world! Invent Reality! 
- Vladimir Nabokov

Everything is connected
- Thomas Pynchon

Never trust people that say they're normal
F. Scott Fitzgerald


And then there is this great piece of music, piano music. Don't cry, enjoy, or whatever, cry if you want to, it's worth it. Take a five minute break in this (way too) busy life, take a breath. Listen, enjoy.

An attempt to a not-boring party story

Many people tell stories about parties. I never go to parties on purpose, it's more that it just happens to me somehow. When people tell me stories about parties I'm kind of bored. Most of the times I don't know the people that were there, I am not interested in what happened there, I know the story is always better than it actually was. To be short: I don't like stories about parties.

I announced I was going to a party last Friday. What I said as well was that I might tell you all about it later. The minute after I'd written that, I regretted, because now I was obliged to tell you a boring party story, which I'm going to do now.

To make it very short: I went to The Hague (Dutch city) with two friends, A. en I. (won't tell you the names, but A. is a guy, I. a girl). A. knew some people that were in a band. They played that night, and we went there, watched them play, and after that we went to a bar with the band (victory, we were out with actually cool people). 

We drank something, talked, and went home. But at 4AM there were no trains home, so we had to wait like 1.5 hours in the empty hall of Central Station. A. was very drunk, and he fell asleep at the station. I. and I woke him up. He did open his eyes, but he wasn't really awake. He grabbed his bag, walked to an empty train, of which the lights were turned off. He tried to open the door, but he failed. He turned around, completely ignoring I. and me, and walked away. It was very confusing.

Still there? Good.

Then after some minutes he came back. I. bought a bottle of water from a soda machine, and 'feeded' it to A., like to a baby. The eyes of A. were half-opened and continually threatened to close. When the train finally arrived, I. and A. found out they forgot their keys. They went with me to my place, a student flat. A. slept in my bed, I. said she wasn't going to sleep at all, and I slept in the communal kitchen at a couch.

After one hour sleeping I woke up, finding A. in my bed, I. fell asleep in a chair in my room. I. was instantly awake when I entered the room. A. was in coma, at that moment I thought for days. It turned out that he woke up a few hours later.

They went home. That was the boring party story. I confess, I'm guilty.

Lovely guitar video + (hippie) film tip

Tonight I'm going to some dubious party at a friend's place. 90 percent of the people coming are drug addicts, the other 10 percent is alcoholic. I hope I'm neither of those, though I might be close to alcoholic. Anyway, I might tell you what is was like.

Yesterday I watched a movie, quite well-known I assume: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, based on Hunter S. Thompson's book of the same name. Johnny Depp plays the main character in the movie. Now I'm going to read Hunter S. Thompson's book.

Then there is this great, great guitar clip. Listen, enjoy.

Jezus christ, I'm very moody

So since yesterday I don't have to work anymore. I can sleep as long as I want, I can do whatever I want. Perfect, you'd say. Read a lot, drink a lot, smoke a lot, what more do you need?

Well, if that's what you thought, it were (WERE!) my thoughts till tonight. My parents called me. They hadn't seen me for a while. That was right, I admitted. They asked me when I was going to see them. I said I didn't know. They said we agreed to see each other this weekend. I said we didn't, and that I had other plans. Well, then the flow of vicious words.

"If I didn't like them, I could just tell them right away", or another good one was: "If you prefer to see your friends instead of seeing us, go see your friends". And much more of these terryfying sentences. Isn't it awful? So I said I would cancel the appointment with my friend, and see them, but they ruined my weekend already. Christ, in what world do they live?

List of 3 awesome hippie movies + 3 awesome hippie books

Okay, so it's weeked. That means smoke, drink, read and sex, solo or with others, what difference does it make. Sorry if you didn't want to this.

I'm not really much of a movie fan. Most of the times I think it's a waste of time to watch movies. But last weeks I got more and more interested in hippie culture. The thing that contributed most to this interest (that develops to an obsession, as usual, for me, I get obsessed with a lot of things quite quickly) is reading Inherent Vice of Thomas Pynchon. It's a story about some Private Investigator, Larry 'Doc' Sportello, who is really in the hippie scene, and he's always stoned, and he's very laid back.

So now I'm half-interested half-obsessed with hippies (and implicit to that: with the 60's), I asked a kind of hippie friend to give me some tips about what to read that's alike Inherent Vice. He didn't know books, but he did know some movies. Namely:

- The Dreamers (2003)
- Steal This Movie! (2000)
- Humboldt County (2008)

So if you look for hippie movies, watch these.

If you look for hippie books, read this:

- Inherent Vice (2009), by Thomas Pynchon
- Vineland (don't know and too lazy to look it up), Thomas Pynchon
- Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (same), Tom Wolfe

Have fun

Daily struggle of a delicious life

My life was delicious until the summer of 2010. I'm glad to tell you that it will be awesome and great and delicious again in a week.

From the summer of 2010 on I had to work, which meant and means getting up early, getting home late, two things that do not fit to me at all.

I was being asked to work for Reader's Digest, for a summer. Sure, I thought, great for my Curriculum Vitae.. or something, whatever.. So I took the job. What you have to know is that this 'friend' asked me to take the job. I can't say his name, because he might ever read this blog (not that I care about him reading that I find him a jerk, which I think he is, but I want to e-mail this to him in person, just to be sure). This 'friend' is now my boss. I knew him because we'd lived at the same corridor in a student flat, for a year or so.

I hadn't met R. for weeks, when I went to the office of Reader's Digest to speak to him, to 'appy for the job'. R. told me I already had the job, but he had to act like I didn't, because of his superiors. So I went to the office, and met him there. First thing he told me was that I had to behave as I didn't know him, never met him, and that I  had to pretend that I was just some random guy applying for a (he didn't tell me, but I tell you - LOUSY) job. I did, I got the job, and my nightmare began.

More next time. See ya, cheers.