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Dan Carlson
Houston, Texas

I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of certain TV shows — for starters, "The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "The Zeppo," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April Is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day," "An Echolls Family Christmas," "Look Who's Stalking," "The Garage Door," "Charlie Gets Crippled," "Wind Sprints," and "Corner Boys" — you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings, or at any rate a heartfelt attempt to interpret them. I guess I was made to be a film critic.

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April 21, 2008

Courses My University Should Have Offered

By Dan Carlson

Understanding the Debt You Didn't Know You Signed Up For

Explaining Religion to Everyone Else

Coming to Grips With Your Poorly Chosen Major

Hanging Out With Women Who Won't Sleep With You, Ever, No Matter How Often You Hang Out or What Kind of On-Again-Off-Again Thing You Delude Yourself Into Thinking Exists: Practicum

Nailing Those Really Quick Green-Orange Jumps on the Hard Setting of "Rock Band"

Paying Your Dues: Economic Lessons in Why That Dream Job Won't Happen Until You're Too Old to Like It

Comments: 17

How to resign to the inevitable - spend class tie fixing someone else's mistakes to reflect what real work is like

BiscuitKing

this is a GENIUS post.

How To Convince Others That Your Perpetual "Single" Status on Social Networking Sites Is A Choice, Not An Inevitability

Matt

If they taught rock band in school I'd have learned something about music and keeping a beat before I was 22.

If you have a ps3 my name is kaiserkronos. I'd love to pretend to be rockstars with an interweb-celeb

Matt: Sadly, I have a 360. And when I say I, I mean it's my roommates and I shamelessly mooch.

Marrriage 101: Don't Even Think About It Until You Know 'Who' You Are

also known as, Marriage 101: Don't Marry For Love...Ever

as well as, Marriage 101: You Better Have Your Shit Together

and finally, Marriage 101: Don't Wing It

Hayden: There's also Marriage 302b: Your Friends Will All Get Engaged Before You Do and Your Grandmother Will Think You're Gay. But that's an upper-level course.

Hey Dan, What's your gamertag? Hit me up on Live. My gamertag is crazyblogger. I have Rock Band as well.

Hits way too close to home for this college student... I linked to you, though, for the benefit of all my readers.

Well put together.

hater from siloam springs

Career 201: Your second job, and why it has nothing to do with your major

Career 301: Happy or Rich? Why having both is impossible

Career 401: Understanding why your resume sucks, and why you should have bought more beers for that rich kid who's Dad runs Haliberton (includes lab)

looneymoth

brilliant post! It's so true. I could go on, and I will...

Advanced Mathematics: division between flatmates of a $5000 phone bill after the culprit has skipped the country.

Hospitality: How to live on nothing but 2-minute noodles without getting scurvy or resorting to cannabalism

Cady

Co-Workers From Hell 101: How not to be one, and how to deal with one if you find yourself suddenly trapped in the seventh circle

JP

Resignation 101: Yes, this IS all there is

Amelia

and now for graduate level...

Resignation 601: Why this graduate degree is necessary but won't actually get you a better job that pays more money

What to Do with Your Degree with a Felony on Your Record

Cody D

Good work, Dan. Definitely agree with the class on your poorly chosen major. Here's a couple more:

Networking 342: It really is WHO you know, not WHAT you know.

Finance 220: Why it's a good idea to disclose estimated student loans BEFORE you start dating so that you don't end up combining your massive debt at marriage.

How To Spot Hypocrisy By Picking Up A Mirror : lab

How To Turn Your Major into Nothing More Than a Conversation Piece

Sociology: Become an Expert By Watching Too Much TV

Clown (actually offered at Yale)

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The Lines

The Quotes

"The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising."
— Pauline Kael

"Film lovers are sick people."
— Francois Truffaut

"I hope I strike a blow for chubby bald men everywhere. I hope they rise like an army."
Paul Giamatti, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, 12/14/04

"Let others praise ancient times, I am glad I was born in these."
— Ovid

The Shelves

Dan's  book recommendations, reviews, favorite quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists

The Songs















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the wisdom

Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
— Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
— John Stuart Mill

We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
— G.K. Chesterton

We were, for the briefest of moments, something greater than the sum of our uncertain parts; we were youth itself, in all its painful glory and sharp joy.
— Me, Fall 2003

There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there's a time when things can go either way.
— Stephen King

Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town.
Ask the Dust, John Fante