CEO birthday

I like jj’s dreampop interpretations of crappy top 40 r&b/hiphop songs. Kind of wish a beat dropped somewhere in there though.

Sweater weather

Here is Puppy getting her sweatered belly petted by Niki.

Really wanting something

From The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand:

“Katie, why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world–to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want. As I wanted to marry you. Not as I want to sleep with some woman or get drunk or get my name in the papers. Those things–they’re not even desires–they’re things people do to escape from desires–because it’s such a big responsibility, really to want something.”

Harder than doing what we want is knowing what we want, I think

Shanghai World Expo 2010 exteriors

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Immortality

From Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski:

“This,” he says finally, pointing to the prisoner, “is the Shah’s murderer.”
The peasants gape at the assassin in horror and admiration. Because he’s killed someone great, he also seems somehow great. His crime has elevated him to a higher realm of existence. The peasants cannot decide between glowering indignantly and falling to their knees.

The Shah did not understand that even though you can destroy a man, destroying him does not make him cease to exist. On the contrary, he begins to exist all the more. These are paradoxes no tyrant can deal with. The scythe swings, and at once the grass starts to grow back. Cut again and the grass grows faster than ever. A very comforting law of nature.