February 2010
115 posts
You Heard it Here First
If the USA defeats Canada today, and then the US soccer team wins the World Cup, the US as a nation will finally have a full surrogate for its worser forms of nationalism. The result will bring world peace and harmony.
Go USA!
“There’s saving literature, and there’s saving it by scrapping the stuff that...”
– Sarah Ball has a really nice takedown of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and all those other awful Austen-pillagers. (via newsweek)
Sorry: I had one more thing to say about this new trend in publishing.
The postmodern notion of pastiche came of age in the early 1960s, nearly fifty years ago.
...
“There’s saving literature, and there’s saving it by scrapping the stuff that...”
– Sarah Ball has a really nice takedown of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and all those other awful Austen-pillagers. (via newsweek)
I know, I know. Snobby. But it’s true.
“Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade...”
– Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (via astroinquiry) (via crashinglybeautiful)
Robert Reich: The Enthusiasm Gap →
I had dinner the other night with a Democratic pollster who told me Dems are heading toward next fall’s mid-term elections with a serious enthusiasm gap: The Republican base is fired up. The Dem base is packing up. The Dem base is lethargic because congressional Democrats continue to…
“That’s one thing about science fiction: writers in the genres are less uptight...”
– Ursula K. LeGuin (via thebronzemedal)
The Romantic and Romantic-inspired cult of originality survived self-defined “postmodern” movements intact. And even in this brave new world of freedom-desiring information and mashes and pastiche, we’re still ready to slur any work with the...
“If time is objective the physicist must have discovered that fact, if there is...”
– Hans Reichenbach: The Direction of Time (via fuckyeahphilosophy)
"I like hearing Kelly Slater talk about ebb and...
Scott: The local news here did the same except they had mma fighters and pro surfers give their insite on the matter.
Me: That's awesome!
Me: Since TV news typically is too dumb to watch, I'd rather they just hired mma fighters and surfers to do all the reporting.
Scott: I was thinking the exact same. i like hearing kelly slater talk about ebb and flow.
Me: But why not hire Slater to cover healthcare reform or Senate debates?
Me: He could talk about ebb and flow just the same.
Scott: I know.
Scott: I swear i think they could do it all. if its going to be inaccurate anyway there might as well be an extreme component to it.
Me: Precisely. They could also do movie reviews. Rob Machado at the Movies. I'd watch.
(Note: this is what happens when San Diegans offer text commentary on the news.)
The Report on the Hawaiian Tsunami from my Little...
Me: What did it look from your quarters?
Scott: Nothing whatsoever! the water got a little murky and a little reef got exposed but thats it. I can see a couple surfers in the water also
(He also said that on the local news surfers and mixed martial arts fighters were doing color commentary on the 'tsunami situation')
Essentials
My little brother lives right on the coast in Honolulu. I told him the tsunami will hit in about 2 hours. He just left his apartment to go find his skateboard.
Great.
5 tags
Fantods Then and Now
As I mentioned a while ago, I’ve been reading, under the unintended influence of Mills’ mom, Huckleberry Finn. Because I haven’t read the book since I was twelve, my memory has been playing strange games with my imagination, sometimes giving passages the force of unearned epiphany, sometimes drowning nostalgia in the cold water of actuality.
This morning, I came across an...
"Demain, dès l'aube...", Victor Hugo
Demain, dès l’aube, à l’heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m’attends. J’irai par la forêt, j’irai par la montagne. Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps. Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées, Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit, Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées, Triste, et le jour pour...
nikink: Perché stai al mondo? →
Non lo so, il più delle volte non lo so. Me lo chiedo, me lo chiedono, mica facile. Quando non lo sai, è perché le risposte sono troppe. C’è delle volte, invece, che lo so, me ne accorgo. È quando imparo una cosa nuova. In genere la leggo. Una parola nuova. Oppure la penso, una parola vecchia, e…
2 tags
“I’m sure critics have their purpose, and they’re supposed to do what they do,...”
– Duke Ellington
I kind of agree. Not that I think it’s not a critic’s place to advocate other paths, but that this sort of advocacy takes up a disproportional amount of book-, art-, movie-, theater-, and music-chat.
All sorts of art can be all sorts of complicated, and I always...
“In genere, il jazz è sempre stato simile al tipo d’uomo con cui non vorreste far...”
– Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (via paz83) (via batchiara)
“By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.”
le dimensioni del mio caos: Philiph Roth & Libero →
Dall’intervista di Paola Zanuttini a Philip Roth, numero de Il Venerdì in edicola:
Per caso, è insoddisfatto anche da Barack Obama? Da un’intervista a un quotidiano italiano, Libero, risulta che lo trova persino antipatico, oltre che inconcludente e assopito nei meccanismi del potere. “Ma io non…
Oh, it's the age is it?
Just this afternoon, I posted a comment in response to the millennial/Gen-X discussion that’s been circulating these past few days. I regret that comment. Because what the hell do I know about any of these repositories for demographic drivel? Pretty much nothing. I understand statistics with the sophistication of a drunk lemur (I’ve heard only 12% of drunk lemurs exhibit signs of...
Killer Whale Kills Trainer at Sea World →
I know, Mills. I know.
“If you walk into a shebeen in South Africa, or whatever version of a bar they...”
– Treme and The Wire creator David Simon [via] (via peterwknox) (via petersantiago)
MILLENIALS! →
peterfeld:
ferrrn:
understand ‘em while they’re hot!
All right, now I’ve figured it all out. Millennials are the Adorable Generation. (That they don’t know how to spell “millennial” makes them all the more so.)
The change in Gawker voice that Hamilton Nolan writes about - in response to the Meredith Bryan NYO piece - represents the transition from the cynical Gen X’er voice to the adorable...
“It’s possibly the greatest American novel of the past 25 years. It is unique....”
– Aleksandar Hemon on Blood Meridian (and four other books) (via ewilcox)
It’s one of my favorite books of all time. And I read it through as quickly as you can while still allowing time for (disturbed) sleep and work. But I’ll still say it’s a book I was barely able to finish.
Dear Mandarins of Tumblr
First of all, because I haven’t said it before: thank you. Tumblr is more responsible for hours spent edifyingly and pleasurably away from work than any other site on the web.
I have a humble request though. I like your new Beta ‘Recommend Tuesday’ option. But the categories you require us to place our recommended Tumblrs force us into compromising decisions. Many of the best...
3 tags
Two Birds with One Scalpel
I just found out that it was fairly common in ancient Rome for undertakers to moonlight as torturers, especially during economic downturns. You know: one tool belt for two jobs.
I hope we’re less condemned to repeat this little bit of history than other bits.
(This photo is of a gladiator’s torture block recently discovered in Chester.)
New Favorite Typo
ewilcox:
“In my onion, citizens of the United States should attend to what ando how is the federal tax money spent.”
1. What?
2. I am extremely taken by the phrase “in my onion.” This may enter my daily speech patterns.
3. But it’s still not as good as the time a student turned in a paper on The Great Gatsby with every instance of “Fitzgerald” auto-corrected to “Fingered.”
Those are all...
