June 2010
21 posts
1 tag
2 tags
“She carried a straight-edge razor in her sock, and while some merely walked to...”
– (NYT)
Your answer to the question “what are you doing right now?” should be “reading this extraordinary profile of Storme DeLarverie.” (Does not apply if you read it already! I just realized it was published yesterday, but I forgot to look at the internet yesterday.)
3 tags
Week in review
Spent the solstice on a boat with a bunch of people. ON A BOAT.
Found out my debit card was “compromised” and someone had tried to buy strange computer software with it; when I went to my bank to deactivate the account and get a new card, the assistant manager got angry at me, because of my horribly offensive hyphenated last name.
Had a birthday.
Got stopped by a New Hampshire...
The real issue I have with this poster
…is not the horror movie lighting but the stark truth that “get to X friends” is now a permanent part of the lexicon. It’s an interesting transformation of logic: “X friends” stops being a number (that you, personally, have got) and becomes a destination (that exists somewhere over there).
It reminds me of the way the business world talks about promotions....
2 tags
2 tags
Update re: heights
Shortly after writing this I climbed a 3,196-foot mountain.
The view from the top was awesome.
5 tags
“[Marie] Stella’s guitarchitecture is built on the steady two-by-four’s of power...”
–
Yes, guitarchitecture is really a word. I wasn’t sure either.
(via mariestella)
Drumcor: how the drums complement the room.
4 tags
Metaphor of the day
There’s a man who walks through my neighborhood with a giant snake wrapped around his neck. I passed him last weekend and imagined an ophiophobe who’d coaxed herself into leaving the house by saying “It’s all right, you don’t live in the jungle, you can go outside, there are no snakes in the city,” only to find her worst nightmare rounding the corner. What do...
The silent green dot
Me: HEY
Me: Are you there? Or is your computer just on?
Me: And how weird would it be if your computer started REPLYING, on its own
Me: That would be an excellent short film, like a sci-fi thing: gchat horror
Me: Although now that I think about it most gchat horror involves humans
Me: Ok, never mind
Me: Good night!
...
Leslie (?): Hi
Leslie (?): Are you still there?
1 tag
RIYL
This reminds me of a project I started a few years ago. It involved compiling a database of women and woman-fronted bands who have been compared to Sleater-Kinney and/or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in record reviews, concert reviews, captions, interviews or profiles. I abandoned the effort out of sheer laziness, and I can’t find the .xls file now, but I remember I had at least forty names on there...
2 tags
Annotated copy
When I was a Young man and Never Been Kissed well I got myself to thinking over all that I missed. so I got myself a girl and I gave her a kiss and O! Lord I Kissed Her Again. (inside back cover)
I don’t want to do this. (page opposite)
Inscriptions in pencil found in a used copy of The Maine Woods (Apollo edition, 1966, purchased by me in Brooklyn in 2006).
NB: There is a name written...
2 tags
a grammar: True or False Quiz →
writing about music : dancing about architecture
singing about life : belching about sociology
talking about feelings : drinking about cellphones
reading about politics : cooking about theology
laughing about your mistakes : emigrating about your haircut
being hopeful about the future :…
If you know me in non-internet contexts, I’ve probably told you...
3 tags
4 tags
2 years 2 late
It’s true, this review was published two years ago. I missed it then and found it now via a convoluted string of googling that would be nigh impossible to explain, so let’s skip straight to the pullquote:
The popular history of a humdrum object—that faddish genre in which the most boring items on your dining-room table (salt, cod, potatoes, bananas, chocolate) are revealed to be...
5 tags
One of the many infuriating things about SATC 2
Their wealthy Middle Eastern hosts could arrange four Maybachs but only two camels?
5 tags
"Mostly named Jonathan"
Very sad. I only discovered David Markson last year, on the recommendation of a friend, and I wish I’d started sooner. Put aside whatever prejudices you may hold against nonlinear narrative; it’s worth it.
Best part of this Bookslut interview with Markson, regarding recent (that is, ca. 2005) fiction:
They all seem like they shouldn’t have driver’s licenses, even. You...
6 tags
How I miss this godforsaken canal, sometimes →
I canoed the Gowanus shortly before I left New York for good, or whatever, two summers ago. Some water splashed on my leg and it burned a little. At the Union Street bridge pedestrians gawked and a man leaned over to ask me what I was doing.
Also marvelous: “James Stillwaggon, whose ancestors were tugboat captains.”
5 tags
Bread and circuses
I listen to an insane amount of conservative talk radio, I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned that, but it’s true: I started tuning in because I wanted to understand the broad spectrum of political debate in America, and then I did it because I wanted to harvest joke fodder for work, and, well, after a while anything can become habit. The shouting heads are easier to tolerate on...
1 tag
Response to my hyphenated last name OR response to...
See if you can guess!
“What did you say it is? What is that?”
“Who did that to you?”
“What happened?”
“I just don’t see how parents could do that to their own child.”
“What are you going to do in the future? Do you think you’ll ever get married?”
“Where does it fit alphabetically?”
“I’m just...
6 tags
“If you’re going to have marijuana in your bra and drug paraphernalia in your...”
– (BDN)
You could rearrange all the nouns in this sentence without changing its meaning. Well played!
