Aug 2007, 178 entries

Buster M. @ Tom and Jerry's / 288
288 Elizabeth St
New York, NY 10012

Buster M. @ Arturo's ! Jazz and pizza!
106 W Houston
New York, NY 10012

Buster M. @ Tiffany & Co.
Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Buster M. @ Plum Pomidor ! Hello!
4009 Broadway
New York, NY 10032

Buster M. @ Candle Cafe
1307 Third Ave
New York, NY 10021

Buster M. @ Bloomingdales ! Shopping depression... saved by KA and a lucky find. :/
1000 3rd Ave
New York, NY 10022

Buster M. @ UniQlo Soho ! I like the spinning mannequins
546 Broadway
New York, NY 10012

I'm not going to write today or think about writing.  I'm going to walk up and down every street in Soho, look in every store, and absorb a little bit of the outside instead of being all internal.  Any favorite clothes stores for boys?  Any great cafes for a snack or a drink?  Hit me New York.  Text me with missions.  I'm going to turn on Twitter too (add me).

Buster M. @ Blue Ribbon Sushi Manhattan ! How far away are you harry and alice?
119 Sullivan St
New York, NY 10012

I started the book yesterday, it was sort of a philosophical book.  Today I turned that into notes and started a fictional book with a bitter self-help evangelist as the protagonist.  Who knows, maybe tomorrow it will be a screenplay.  I have these ideas, and this desire, but they have no cohesion, no manifestation.  Just a circling restlessness.  Even endless coffee and lots of wikipediaing around the history of hedonism, epicurianism, eudaimonism, altruistic hedonism, cyrenaicism, psychological hedonism, utilitarianism, individualism/egoism, collectivism, Freud's life instinct, hedonistic utilitarianism, ethical hedonism, consequentialism, act vs. rule utilitarianism, two-level utilitarianism (archangels and proles), average vs total utilitarianism, felicific calculus (hedonic calculus) was enough to give me good momentum.  I'm curious to see if this comes together or falls apart.

Hedonic Calculus, invented by Jeremy Bentham in the early 19th century, is pretty interesting in itself though.  He wanted to basically create a MATH for pleasure and pain.  Here are the seven variables:

1. The intensity of the pleasure or pain.
2. The duration of the pleasure or pain
3. The certainty or uncertainty of the pleasure or pain.
4. The remoteness of any pleasure or pain. (Propinquity)
5. The chances of the same effects being repeated. (Fecundity)
6. The chances of the same effects not being repeated. (Purity)
7. The number of people who will be affected by any pleasure or pain arising as a result of the action(s) in question.

Weird.  It never seemed to go anywhere, but it's sort of like an antique piece of thought, and if I bought things at garage sales and kept them in my garage until I myself had a garage sale, I would buy this and put it in my garage.  If I had a garage.

Here's the new premise of Enjoymentland: the pursuit of enjoyment trumps all other pursuits.  But who's enjoyment?  I can't compete with all this philosophy I've been reading.   And anyway, as Ingo said about something else, that's sort of boring.  Which is why it turned into a fictional story.

I think tomorrow it's going to go back to being a book on etiquette.  We definitely need more etiquette books in our modern lives.  Or maybe this is just an excuse to piddle around on the internet for my entire vacation.

It was fun seeing David at his lovely Soho offices today though. 

The pursuit of wealth, the pursuit of success, the pursuit of love, the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of security, the pursuit of fame, the pursuit of power, the pursuit of community, the pursuit of peace, the pursuit of truth, the pursuit of experience, the pursuit of luxury and ease.  The pursuit of lunch.

What kinds of things are "rewards in themselves"?
It's an interesting idea, and strangely stumping for me this morning as I sit back at Aroma and catch up on some more work.  Something that is a reward detached from the method of earning it.  Vacations are rewards, in general, for the work you did to earn it.  Dessert is a reward for dinner.  A raise is a reward for good work.  Champagne often celebrates something.  But kittens?  Are they rewards in themselves?  What about works of art?  There is no story built into how you earned a kitten necessarily.  And, honestly, everyone deserves a kitten... you don't have to earn it.  Are rewards in themselves the majority, or the minority, of rewards out there?

I mostly just like the phrase.  Something being in itself is very interesting to me.  It also rings true.  Everything must be a reward in itself, because nothing can really connect two things together in order for one to give the other purpose. 

Buster M. @ Pinkberry - Chelsea ! Waiting in line because everyone else was!
170 8th Avenue
New York, NY 10011

Buster M. @ Quantum Leap ! Vegan yumminess
88 W. Third St
New York, NY 10012

Found a freezing cafe with wifi, outlets, big mugs of coffee, and lots of space on W Houston and Greene St called Aroma Espresso Bar.  I've been here 4 hours and am getting hungry.  I wrote the first 400 words of Enjoymentland, did all my bills, caught up on 180 emails, favorited and tagged photos from dB and Misha's awesome wedding and brunch (see Rick's and Kellianne's), updated the software on my iPhone, am installing Installer.app right now to see what that's all about, did some volunteer guerrilla iPhone marketing that happens whenever I'm sitting in public, read a chapter of my new favorite book Adverbs, that I borrowed from silverfae9, and people-watched. 

I have two more hours here.  We were going to go to the gym (I'm feeling a slight bit unhealthy lately with all this good-eaten... need to lose a couple pounds), but left essential gym items at home accidentally (or subconsciously?).

Damn it, the Installer.app thing made me do a recover which erased all my data from it, and I've got no contacts on this laptop to sync with.  STUPID.  I should've known better than to install this while on vacation.  Oh well!  Apologies for not having you in my phonebook anymore!  :(

Now I wanna eat something. 

What do you think about this statement?  Nothing is worth doing unless it's enjoyable.  And, by "enjoyable", I mean enjoyable in at least one of these six ways:

1. Ego: it strengthens your ego/sense of self, your identity
   
2. Sensual: it feels/tastes/sounds/smells/looks good
3. Healthful: it's somehow healthy, edifying, or supports your ability to physically survive
4. Social: it is somehow a shared experience
5. Potential: it saves or stores up money/resources/energy for the future
6. Intrinsic: it is enjoyable in itself, appreciated for what it is

Things that don't meet one of these criteria, I'm exploring the possibility, might not be worth doing.  And this isn't to say that none of us are doing them... for example, going through tough times in the hopes of one day having them pay off.  But I think there's something to the idea of not going after these future riches that make us miserable now.  I think this thinking might be left over from the days of trying to store up riches in heaven.  Or, stockpile money away in some 401K that you might be better off spending now.  It's a controversial statement that I think most people will disagree with at first glance actually. 

I'm still thinking about it, and don't know if I have the guts to go after this new hedonism.  Is it too cocky?

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