February 2012
36 posts
we pitched a tent at night: briefly introduce... →
mkimarnold:
My friends come over and we open a bottle of wine, but barely, among the three of us, make it through. I perch on the coffee table to sit close enough to them, both on the small couch by the window, to whisper when need be. There is no one else in the house, at the beginning, but there are some…
Jing time →
jingweinews:
Some little things.
Here’s a new Letters illustration for the NY Times, about nuclear power plants being a necessary source of electricity. I always cringe when I see words like “nuclear” and “healthcare” in an assignment, but this one worked out rather well.
Really fun one for …
My home could be less crowded
ivebeenreadinglately:
Of course, the real reader has no need to surround himself with books, W. says. The real reader lends them to others with no thought of them being returned. What need has he for a library of books? He prefers to be alone with only the most essential works, like Beckett with his Dante, in his room at the old folks’ home. Beckett with his Dante, and cricket on the TV.
From...
It's true.
No man reads the same aphorism twice.
The Damion Searls-Mitt Romney connection
In the spirit of Searls and “; or the Whale,” I have decided to produce my own edition of the Detroit News endorsement which includes only those passages that the Romney campaign decided to omit from its email. Call me a schlemiel.
—Dylan Byers, Politico
crested crane
arloogg:
national bird of Uganda
we pitched a tent at night: we keep each other... →
mkimarnold:
In the morning, it is just the boy and me and I wake to his silhouette, standing in the middle of the bed. A tuft of his hair sticks straight up. We are both very still, listen to the trucks speeding by on the highway, the unmistakable sound of the weight of them, hurtling past in the dark.
jeffonelonelyguy:
415-622-XXXX
I used to believe when i was a kid that i have been a cat in a past life. Then again, i thought dead roseplants had hidden power in them, and that i could jump out of my body and fly!
dental mental health
arloogg:
outreach at Chahafi requires sitting in the dental exam chairs while evaluating patients. no floss or toothpaste samples here, only bottles of lidocaine.
No. 119
Eventually everyone just called the place Chambers Street. We all knew it was No. 119. Keys were given away and lost. Things fell into the floorboard holes. Drugs got stolen. Tenants came and went and their artifacts accumulated—a framed drawing, a piggy bank, a bong. Someone brought home a puppy. Someone put on a nitrous-oxide puppet show. Someone dropped the air-conditioning unit out the back...
searching for zebras: itangazo! →
arloogg:
announcement re: mzungo shrinks from america visiting their local clinics. similar announcements were reportedly made on the radio. turnouts varied, though as many as 80 could show up during a 4 hour span.
Mzungo means something like ‘traveler’. i was surprised to be called mzungo since i…
Range life
CM: As an example of the second category, We Others offers something unusual: new work along with work that’s been previously published. Why did you choose to do this? How did you think about writing or selecting new work to accompany the earlier stories?
SM: The idea for a collection of new and selected stories wasn’t mine. It was my editor’s. The idea was presented as a kind of honor — aging...
"Dweller on the Threshold"
Van Morrison song or H.P. Lovecraft novella?
“No one watches a movie in a vacuum. You don’t check your real-world baggage at...”
– J. Hoberman. (via zachbaron)
Sniglets
I spent a lot of time at Abbey Road Books waiting for movies to start, and on one occasion made a special trip for an event: a book signing featuring Rich Hall of Not Necessarily the News and Sniglets fame. I believe this was in the summer of 1986. I was a fan of the show and especially of Sniglets, a segment that highlighted “any word that doesn’t appear in the dictionary, but should.” Per the...
WatchMore on Barry Duncan, master palindromist.
The Believer Logger: Barry Duncan on Super Bowl... →
believermag:
Barry Duncan, master palindromist (profiled in our September 2011 issue), writes in:
“When I woke up on Monday morning, January 23, I learned that the New York Giants would oppose the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI, giving the Patriots an opportunity to avenge their Super…
January 2012
22 posts
Porridge
General Liddament pondered this assertion for some seconds in resentful silence. He seemed to be considering porridge in all its aspects, bad as well as good. At last he came out with an unequivocal moral judgment.
“There ought to be porridge,” he said.
—Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time
Turn the page
One more book, he had told himself, then I’ll stop. One more folio, just one more. One more page, then I’ll go up and rest and get a bite to eat.But there was always another page after that one, and another after that, and another book waiting underneath the pile. I’ll just take a quick peek to see what this one is about, he’d think, and before he knew he would be halfway...
And then we take it higher
“In the early 20th century, East 86th Street was known as the German Broadway, 1st Avenue the Czech Broadway, and 2nd Avenue the Hungarian Broadway (aka Goulash Avenue).” —Manhattan User’s Guide
Letter of the seer
“[Patti] Smith was the president of a fan club that had just one member but a hundred idols: Rimbaud, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, Jackson Pollock, Isabelle Eberhardt, Brian Jones, Georgia O’Keeffe, William Burroughs, Renée Falconetti (Joan of Arc in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 movie), not to mention Johnny Carson.” —Luc Sante, “The Mother Courage of Rock,” New...
