As you might remember from last week, Philip Kiely and I ghost wrote each other's blogs. You can find Philip's post on my blog here but, since Philip only lets a meticulously selected circle view his writings, I have to put my post on his blog here so the unlettered masses can see it. Which works out great, actually, because I had no clue what I was going to post for today.
Hello all! It is me, Philip Kiely!
As Philip Kiely, I attend Grinnell College and am currently majoring in wealth-acquisition. I enjoy certain kinds of masculine-coded activities, such as violence, but not other forms of masculine-coded activities, such as being disinterested in clothing. My sole pursuit in life is to earn enough money to provide a suitable dowry in my upcoming marriage to Taylor Swift.
So join me, readers of strictly-concealed identities, as we journey through all your favorite sections, such as: “My Ongoing Quest to Monetize the Elderly With Computers,” “Daily Anecdotes Told Entirely in Computer Language,” “Assigning Pieces of Media Numerical Values Out of Five, Accompanied by a Snarky Summary,” and “Inside Jokes!”
[Editor’s Note: Yeah, it’s been fun doing a bad job of mocking Philip, but I can’t keep this up for an entire email. This is John Osler, one of Philip’s D&D buddies (which is roughly the substance-free/nerdy equivalent of drinking buddies), and he’s letting me guest-write this week’s post in exchange for letting him write a post on my blog.]
Music Thoughts That Sort of Merge Into Political Thoughts Halfway Through, Mostly by Accident
So I’ve been listening to a lot of Ben Folds lately, which is odd because I can’t stand 75% of my favorite songs by him. Granted, some (“Army,” “Gone,” “Zak and Sara,” “One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces,” “From Above”) manage to keep up continual momentum, but the ones that I’ve been really into these days are mostly just a sad guy speaking quietly with occasional piano accompaniment (“Mr. Peepers” and “Levi Johnston’s Blues”). But, as boring as the bulk of the song is, the chorus is so vibrant and full and well-crafted in every word that it makes up for the rest. I could just listen to the chorus on infinite repeat, I guess, but I don’t think it would have the same effect. In order to really feel it, you need the burst of music to puncture the rest of the non-music all around it.
A side-effect of listening to songs with minimal music is that I pay much more attention to the lyrics than I would if the tune just swept me along. Though I might’ve missed it if there were more instrumentation, “Mr. Peepers” isn’t exactly subtle; its thesis is pretty clearly that people quietly doing their jobs and upholding the law are a key element of our democracy that is under attack in the Trump administration. This is a point I agree with (though it probably needs a little more nuance if told in non-song form, since I think there is a place for civil disobedience), but hearing it over and over made me realize how obvious it is, and how often I’ve heard it expressed over the course of the past two years. We keep on saying the same things over and over and over again, and nothing ever changes. Maybe it goes to show how ineffective Facebook posts really are, or maybe we’re just not talking to the right people.
Several (Ultimately Ineffective) Attempts at Describing What my Tuesday 8x1 Kilometer Cross Country Workout was Like, in Which I was Jittery From my First Cup of Coffee in Over a Year and Exhausted From the Lack of Sleep That Necessitated Said Cup of Coffee
1 A soft, weightless, blurry world of constant motion in every direction, none of which I could control (least of all my own orbit around the track).
2 Like constantly being on the verge of waking up and feeling the epiphany that you actually have a physical body, so you’re always in awe of the fact that you have a right hand.
3 A harsh ringing in my arms and legs. Like, really ringing, as if their vibrations would turn into music any moment.
4 My mind fizzling every so often, like that Kurt Vonnegut story (“Harrison Bergeron”) where every person of above-average IQ has to be blasted with random noise every couple seconds so they aren’t any smarter than anyone else, except instead of noise it’s a purely psychic disruption.
5 Like being really, really carsick.
6 As if I could reach out and rub the surface of reality so that the reds of the track and the greens of the grass would blend together into a brown paste.
7 Something I wish had gone on for longer, though I would’ve quit in an instant if I’d been given the choice.
8 Pretty much an amalgamation of every story about getting high I’ve ever heard (though I wouldn’t know since I’ve never experienced it).
9 Something I should’ve told my coach about.
Starred Reviews
1 Bleak House by Charles Dickens (any given chapter individually): Spectacular! Blending rich imagery with a satirical yet moving plot and charming, fully formed characters, Dickens earns his name as the greatest Victorian novelist as he perfectly captures the spirit of the age while telling a tale that all can relate to. Five out of five stars.
2 Bleak House by Charles Dickens (the book as a whole): Come on, man! Look, I get it, you wanted to mock England’s byzantine legal structure, so you made the plot and prose intentionally convoluted and hard to follow. Brilliant idea, but maybe before starting you should’ve thought, “Hm, nearly two hundred years from now, there might be some put-upon English major who is burdened by my lengthy prose, of which he is expected to read 70 pages a day, and if the lad fails to do so will be admonished by his peers and professor during in-class discussion. And, for this folly on my part, this student may rate my work two out of five stars in his guest-column on some sort of newsletter displayed on machines powered by lightning! Perhaps this would work better as a novella.”
3 American Vandal, Season 2: Seriously brilliant. Yeah, it’s about a villain known as the “turd burglar” pulling a variety of poop-related pranks, so it doesn’t exactly sound like high class television right away. But trust me, it is. The gross out humor soon gives way to a well-paced and remarkably poignant story about how loneliness and social media feed into each other in today’s high schools. On a particularly important note, it shows the stress and pain of high school socializing in a far more accurate way than I’ve ever seen on TV. It all sounds very clichéd when you spell it out, but it feels so authentic on screen that the danger of social media seems new and real and powerful, even to someone who uses it every day. Four out of five.
4 Veggietales: While I enjoyed these cartoons a ton as a kid, they were my only exposure to certain parts of the Bible up until now. So, when I’m reading the book of Esther for my Hebrew Bible class, all I can imagine during the horrifyingly violent segments is a couple computer-animated peas carrying an asparagus off to the Island of Perpetual Tickling. Three out of five stars.
Outro (The Real Philip Speaking … or so you think)
Thanks, John, for filling in. You’re welcome back anytime, assuming you haven’t just stolen all of my readership for yourself.
RE: People who take a long email blog as a sign I have too much free time:
“Forgive me, this is a long letter. I would have written you a short letter, but I didn’t have the time.” –Mark Twain
But I realize it was a long read. This one was only half as long and I’ll be sticking to that.
The next installation will be a regularly scheduled episode written by me, Philip Kiely!
Best,
Philip Kiely
Grinnell College,
Wealth Acquisition Major, class of ‘20
Philip Kiely’s Future “Autobiography” Ghost Writer, John Osler
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