Kickin' it with Chris Balint

Sat in the fruit-tree and vineyard garden at a table drinking coffee watching the Perseid meteor shower after a punk rock show. Mosquitos feasted.

We had the kind of conversation one would expect between two passionate and intelligent diametrically opposed theorists/social critics/aesthetic-self-constructors. My heartfelt and cynical avowal of post-postmodernist intentional-emotivistic power-oriented desert-of-the-real social-constructivism contrasted nicely with his passionate idealistic conspiracy-theorist mystical memetics/emergentism good-energy municipally-mobile good boy styles. He said that he wanted to be offended and challenged. I said he didn't really want that. He said that my most particular skill is a grasp of rhetoric. I claimed to have an instinct to philosophy. We compared our respective information addictions and traded forgettable insights into the human condition.

Noteworthy aside: over the course of the day, I got into two full-speed bicycle accidents. In the latter, I t-boned Chris' bike as he turned in front of me. The former, I crashed into a curb and tumbled into a lawn while attempting to ride no-hands style.