January 2012
40 posts
“So, here’s a story from A to Z
You wanna get with me, you gotta listen...”
– Sylvia Plath. (via crumpeteatingwoofter)
“Some people will go to be tonight proud to have merely reduced their daily...”
– Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape (via qts)
“I study marine invertebrates.”
– Cindy Crowley, Public Health minor
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Beirut, ‘The Akara’
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“…the university is perceived to be a site for the contestation as well as...”
– Louis A. Montrose, from “Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of Culture”
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“Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled –
to cast aside...”
– from “The Ponds” by Mary Oliver.
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The Rhythm of the Night on Indie Shuffle →
My roommate and son and super friend Peter just had his remix of ‘Rhythm of the Night’ posted. Check it out and fly down for its premiere party next saturday at 7136 Cohn St.
“Look here Vita — throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on...”
– Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Vita Sackville-West (via brainpickings)
5 tags
“Nay then, farewell:
I have touched the highest point of all my greatness,
And...”
– Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII 3.2.270-75
After finishing a book I usually try to find some quote that I thought was a sock-knocker, but Henry VIII (Sorry, Shakespeare/Fletcher) made this difficult. But, hey, what an exit from our Cardinal, who was portrayed almost immediately as a giant penis.
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“Modern party-dance is simply writhing to suggestive music. It is ridiculous,...”
– David Foster Wallace, from The Broom of the System. (via thismansaballoon)
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Splitting Wood in Fairfield, CT
The whole affair is straightforward: no
blubbering, no concern for the alternative vectors,
no parents. We look at each other and fall
forward and back, not quite dancing, not quite
an argument. Too long I’ve been carrying myself
carefully but this is it: the triumph of mistakes,
arms and legs all graceless all in and leverage,
leverage as our new prayer, baby, the lower frequencies
sung...
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“You step delicately
into the wild world
and your real prize will be
the...”
– Michael Ondaatje, To a Sad Daughter, 1984
Spent a few hours tonight at a lecture on coloniality and social justice in Latin America, followed by a rousing reception of BBQ and cole slaw. Stopped by Cindy’s place and the conversation kind of turned to school. Everyone seems to be taking Organic Chem II this semester, and I wish I could give them hugs tight enough to help learn MNR, which sounds as fun as pant-lessly riding a...
4 tags
Benjamin Moser, acclaimed biographer of Clarice... →
“One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other...”
– James Joyce - The Dead (via skump)
“The central question driving literary aesthetics in the age of the iPad is no...”
– ‘Why Write Novels at All?’ - NYTimes.com (via seetheglossary)
Another juicy bit: “This is where “The Marriage Plot”’s titular enjambment of literature and love — those two beleaguered institutions — is so clarifying. Think about it: I can love you because I want to feel less alone, or I can...
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“How sad it all really seemed. How she despised the barren people in that...”
– Clarice Lispector, from “Daydreams of a Drunk Woman” in Family Ties
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Buena Vista Social Club, “Chan Chan”
6 tags
Courses I'm Making Up, Vol. I
ENLS 4010:01: Business in American Literature
In a recent address to now-renowned Occupy Wall Street protestors, Noam Chomsky claimed American business must be “overcome” for American society to be set along “a more healthy course.” Has ‘business’ as a concept and praxis always been at odds with the health of American society and democracy? How have business...
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“What was so wrong in believing in all that? What happened to the good sense I...”
– Philip Roth, from Portnoy’s Complaint
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Shit It Took Years To Learn, Vol. I
For people to know what you’re thinking you have to tell them what you’re thinking.
“The sender of a message can never fully know his recipient’s mental code book…....”
– James Gleick, The Information (via austinkleon)
4 tags
“Yes, this family portrait
is a little dusty.
The father’s face...”
– Carlos Drummond de Andrade, ‘Family Portrait’ (trans. Elizabeth Bishop)
“Forgiveness allows you to heal virtually any psychological, emotional, and...”
– Neale Walsch (via nirvikalpa)
5 tags
“I’d like to be the sort of person who can enjoy things at the time, instead of having to go back in my head and enjoy them.”
-David Foster Wallace
3 tags
December 2011
71 posts
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6 tags
“man engram for a guy with a james joyce tattoo your musical choices are...”
– Nicole, on hearing The Weeknd’s “Wicked Games” and Jamie Woon’s remix of “Video Games” from my Christmas 2k11 mixtape.
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I’ve enjoyed Portlandia for the past day but in the third episode where Aimee Mann finds the Sarah McLachlan piñata I choked on my beef tenderloin.
“Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish...”
– David Foster Wallace, Consider the lobster (via popozudas)
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“Love is not about power.”
– Gloria Steinham
Long live:
Civil rights; J.C. Chandor; Welsh corgis; sweaters; thrift stores; lakes; Charles Mills; Totoro; museums; sonnets; west Canada; sausage balls; mimosas; All Things Considered; bikram; tattoos.
Down with:
Capitalism; MFA programs; power steering; Highway 78; free chips and salsa; impatience; Disney channel; soul patches; NTCs; golf; cream sauces; slow violence; pleats.
W. W. Norton: Harper Lee: Christmas To Me →
wwnorton:
Several years ago, I was living in New York and working for an airline, so I never got home to Alabama for Christmas—if, indeed, I got the day off. To a displaced Southerner, Christmas in New York can be rather a melancholy occasion, not because the scene is strange to one far from home, but…