February 2008
181 posts
Jerry Springer: The Opera - NYT →
The NYT seems pretty fond of the production, and I’m a Harvey Keitel fan (especially his performance in “Smoke”).
“[W]hile, on the one hand, things around us are continually moving toward the...”
– Jerome M. on the inexplicable choices our memorial apparatuses make. I have always felt my mind records the wrong data; conscious control over what to remember and what to forget would be nice, although obviously it would overwhelm us from a wetware/administrative point of view. Maybe just a manual...
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January 2008
125 posts
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Someone I don't know says "Good night" to the... →
Good night to you, too. It’s strange to see these different people’s Tumblr feeds slipping down the Dashboard; it’s another of the million or so moments in the modern world where one wonders at the difference between proximity and connection: does being on the same subway car mean you and the man across the aisle are sharing an experience? It’s funny because it reminds you...
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“Even now, when I try to remember… the darkness does not lift but becomes...”
– W.G. Sebald in Austerlitz. This ties in directly to what I wrote about yesterday, and strikes me as one of the sadder sentences I’ve read in a while: “…lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life.”
Think just of your grandparents, their lives and loves and the things...
How Much Has the Elephant Man GIven Us? →
My brilliant friend WM had a response to my earlier note, Politics: The Least Important Thing, which I wanted to reprint and address: I read your recent post “Politics: The Least Important Thing” this morning. As usual, your writing is insightful and articulate. Your encounter with the woman at the gas station and reflection about it reminded me of a recent encounter I had with a...
Eli Manning Took Cues From Mother - NYT →
Interesting article on Eli, whom I knew in high school.
MIT Offers 1,800 Classes Online for Free →
katydid reblogs wherescoachbombay:MIT offers the course materials (lecture notes, audio lectures, problem sets, exams, assignments, study materials, etc. - you basically download the course) for roughly 1,800 classes FREE online! This is an awesome way to teach yourself a subject you never got to take or already love and want to learn more about. They offer EVERYTHING from Anthropology to Physics...
too legit to quit
dihard:Remember back in ‘96 when MC Hammer declared bankruptcy with about $14M in debt? Well those days are long gone. Now he’s a tech entrepreneur! He co-founded A Large Corporation, Inc and is developing a site called DanceJam.com that will allow people to engage in virtual dance competitions. Read about it on his blog. Syd: there is money in dance. It’s not too late!
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Remembering is not the negative of forgetting....
So Milan Kundera wrote in Immortality, which remains after more than a decade my favorite novel. Kundera’s allergy to histrionics, phony sentimentality, and the falsification of memory show in his novels, which are probably the least emotive works I know which remain powerfully resonant. The dispassionate rigor with which he treats his narratives is as much a part of Kundera’s...
Politics: The Least Important Thing →
Given the size of Baton Rouge, it’s surprising how often one interacts with the homeless involuntarily. In a city with virtually no urban center and no sidewalks, there are nevertheless quite a few itinerant vagrants trekking aimlessly around, between hits or benders or tricks or shelters or whatever other experiences demarcate their days. I was pumping gas this evening, on my way home from...
Target Market
I went to see “There Will Be Blood” on Sunday, and I thought it was phenomenal. Before it started, during the irritatingly aggressive advertising that now precedes films, I saw back-to-back spots for (1) KY Lubricating Lotion, (2) Mucinex, and (3) the Marines.
“Like all artifacts designed and disseminated by missionaries, Negroponte’s XO...”
– Virginia Heffernan - NYT A mixed review. It confirms FSJ’s critique of Negroponte as an hysteric, though: he says that when children in poor countries use proprietary office software by companies like Microsoft, “that breaks my heart most.” Really? That’s what breaks his...
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“Perhaps instead of offering fat people money, which they will only spend on...”
– Times Online. I don’t imagine this columnist would succeed in the United States. He notes that “stigma is the means by which society expresses its disapproval of people who choose lifestyles which… cost the rest of society… Remove the stigma and people think such behaviour is...
Arianna Huffington on Adolescence
“As I watch my girls in their teenage years,” writes Arianna, “I’m stunned to see all the same classic fears I was burdened with: How attractive am I? Do people like me? Should I speak up? I had thought that with all the gains feminism has brought, my daughters would not have to suffer through the fears I did. Yet here is our younger generation, as uncertain, doubting and...
“No person who knows about love and passion will consider Arendt’s...”
– Arendt and Heidegger.
Just for Dad! →
Allison, Iowa — Ronnie Loughlin, 15-year-old altar boy, sits handcuffed after surrendering to police at Allison on Sept. 4th. The youth had killed one woman in a shooting spree, and kidnaped a second whom he held hostage during a 5-hour ride through South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa. “I just went berserk, I guess,” he told authorities. (1955) From the wonderful site if charlie...
Political Punch →
As much as I hate Romney, this is far, far worse. The Clinton campaign seems to have learned a strategic lesson from GW Bush’s vicious and successful efforts to lure McCain into a debasing slugfest in South Carolina so many years ago, well-documented by David Foster Wallace in “Up, Simba!” The phenomenon of the race-baiting Democrat is so Clintonian, however, and so depressing.
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A Death in the Family →
Mark Daily was killed in Iraq. He had nuanced feelings about the war but was largely influenced by Christopher Hitchens, who wrote about his death quite movingly.
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I want to sponsor a nationwide contest which would...
“He said, “You remember that thing you used to do that made me shake like...”
– A coworker explaining how her ex propositioned her recently.
“One of the environmental groups in the US just completed a very extensive and...”
– Al Gore, in his talk with Bono and Tom Friedman at the World Economic Forum. Check out this and other webcasts here. From What I Learned Today. This is interesting to me not in that it provokes some indignant avalanche of bitter thoughts about climate change but in what it says about the media and...
Visualizing the Bible →
Astounding. Scroll down to see the frequency of certain names in the Bible. The most-often mentioned person is David, followed by Benjamin.
Rap Lyrics Explained With Charts →
This is essential, particularly the Venn diagram about what ‘bitches’ are.
Romney Leads in Ill Will Among G.O.P. Candidates →
Because he’s a sleazy fraud.
“I just called their CEO, whose name escapes me, so that he could thank me. When...”
– The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. FSJ on ATT’s good earnings announcement.
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WatchZOMG. Further evidence that God is running out of characters for the populating of my world and has resorted to pitiful recycling: here is Chelsea Peretti’s ”All My Exes,” in which she, the sister of my high school teacher Jonah Peretti, discusses her relationship with Ze Frank, another of my heroes.
“Saw you early this morning with your brand new boy and your Cadillac. /...”
– From “Slim Slow Slider,” off of one of the best albums ever recorded: Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks.
