| 'Two Caravans' by Marina Lewycka |
[Jan. 7th, 2010|11:58 pm] |
Yola was in a foul mood. She had discovered that morning, don't ask how, that the Slovak women who shared their hotel room had no pubic hair. How could this be permitted? Presumably they were not born this way -- well, presumably they were, but acquired it in the natural course of things, and had taken unnatural steps to remove it. There are many bad things that can be said about communism, but one thing is certain, in communist times women did not abuse their pubic hair in this way -- a practice which is unnatural, unsightly, undignified and, without being too specific, potentially dangerous. |
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| Watch Out! Here Come The Chickens! |
[Jan. 7th, 2010|06:49 pm] |
I'm new to this community, but you seem like my kind of folks! :-)
This is my first (but hopefully not last) post here!
I don't get to use the word schadenfreude anywhere near enough, because I just don't usually get my kicks out of someone else's misfortune, but I can genuinely say that this bit of news made me giggle like a schoolgirl! It really couldn't happen to a more deserving guy than John McCain's BFF!
I believe this is what farmers would call a case of chickens coming home to roost! |
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| the windhover; gerard manley hopkins |
[Jan. 7th, 2010|01:44 pm] |
I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing! |
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| I just learned about this game... |
[Jan. 7th, 2010|11:57 am] |
...and thought one of you bar owners might wanna run with it - it amused the bejeebus outta me:
A Spelling Bee, in which one drinks, spells, and continues drinking until spelling becomes impossible! Winner gets a bar tab.
Any takers? |
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| Renters insurance |
[Jan. 7th, 2010|11:37 am] |
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Any recommendations for cheap renters insurance in NOLA? I have AAA, but I checked their website and it says they don't cover New Orleans (they cover Slidell and Baton Rouge, but skip over New Orleans). There's the other providers like Progressive, but I've never gotten renters insurance before so I don't know if there might be some awesome deal that I've never heard about. So if you've got renters insurance and you like your provider, please let me know. |
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| Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler |
[Jan. 7th, 2010|12:01 pm] |
...The ultimate truth is penultimately always a falsehood. He who will be proved right in the end appears to be wrong and harmful before it.
But who will be proved right? It will only be known later. Meanwhile he is bound to act on credit and to sell his soul to the devil, in the hope of history's absolution. |
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| Natural selection in practice is always amusing to observe. |
[Jan. 7th, 2010|02:58 am] |
♥ The Darwin Awards, named in honor of Charles Darwin, salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it - thereby ensuring that the next generation is descended from one less idiot. We applaud the heroic self-sacrifice of these noble men and women, who gave their all to improve the human race.
Of necessity, this Award is usually bestowed posthumously.
♥ In order to qualify for a Darwin Award a person must remove himself from the gene pool via an "astounding misapplication of judgement." Three liters of sherry up the butt can only be described as astounding.
♥ This is a true Darwin Award trifecta: two people die, while in the act of procreation, due to an astonishingly poor decision. Bottom line: If you put yourself in a precarious "position" at the edge of a pointy roof, you may well find yourself coming and going at the same time.
♥ The Darwin Awards provide ample evidence that huimans have no problem shuffling off this mortal coil as a result of plain old bad decisions. But adding mind-addling drugs to the decision-making process further impairs judgment and increases risk-taking behavior, setting the stage for some amusingly lethal acts of stupidity. From jumping into a bear cage while drunk (page 223) to partaking in alcohol enemas (page 4) acute inebriation has been the impetus behind many Darwin Awards.
♥ In a world full of wonders man invented boredom. So work time becomes playtime. If you work in an office, you reproduce your naughty bits on the copy machine. If you work for an arc welding company? A plastic bucket, welding materials, and a single spark can combine for a playdate with a bang.
♥ Any story that begins, "Well I was building a pipe bomb," can never end well.
♥ FAQ: How can I avoid a Darwin Award?
Take a few personal pledges:
"I will keep pointy metal objects away from electrical wires."
"I will not suck bees into a vacuum cleaner."
"I will not disable the safety."
"No rooftop romantic interludes for me!"
Beware of the following ideas:
"Instead of following standard procedure..."
"Attempting to impress the lady..."
"So he could save himself time..."
"They tested the ice by jumping up and down."
"A case of beer went into the planning."
"He is still convinced that the toadstool is harmless."
"He refused to let anyone call an ambulance."
"He thought he could outsmart the police."
"The diver had kissed hundreds of sharks."
"He deceived the radiation control supervisor."
"It's a nice snake. Nothing can happen."
Heed good advice:
"Never surf on a flooded street."
"We urge people not to drive with a burning grill in the vehicle."
"The stupidity of cutting through power cables should be obvious."
"Tossing random chemicals down the drain is not wise."
"Only an idiot would jump into the bear cage."
~~The Darwin Awards: Next Evolution, Chlorinating the Gene Pool by Wendy Northcutt. |
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| Knowing versus caring |
[Jan. 6th, 2010|09:29 pm] |
In reference to a conversation I was just having:
"No one can read two thousand books. In the four hundred years I have lived, I've not read more than a half dozen. And in any case, it is not the reading that matters, but the rereading. Printing, which is now forbidden, was one of the worst evils of mankind, for it tended to multiply unnecessary texts to a dizzying degree."
And in reference to pretty much my view of power:
"Elections were called, wars were declared, taxes were levied, fortunes were confiscated, arrests were ordered, and attempts were made at imposing censorship--but no one on the planet paid any attention."
--Jorge Luis Borges, "A Weary Man's Utopia" |
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| . |
[Jan. 7th, 2010|11:55 am] |
“Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.”
“I hate them for it,” cried Hallward. “An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.”
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray |
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| Good to know my enjoyment of Kurosawa's samurai flicks isn't just superficial |
[Jan. 6th, 2010|07:42 pm] |
"A stranger enters a god-forsaken town locked in conflict between two factions, where both sides are equally bad and repugnant, and the audience welcomes the swathe of destruction that the hero creates as he exacts justice. There is something inherently appealing about this scenario. It speaks to a desire latent within all of us: that some agency will come and clean up the mess we have made of our society."
--Justin Howe, "Yojimbo", Directory of World Cinema: Japan
Free digital copy of this book available at http://worldcinemadirectory.org/ . It's decent, I'm disappointed to already know quite a bit about these movies from my own viewing of them and reading into Donald Richie and Tom Mes, but for anyone interested in Japanese cinema in general and not already familiar with it, it's a good place to start. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 6th, 2010|06:31 pm] |
My heart is weak and unreliable. I try to burden it as little as possible. If something is going to have an impact, I direct it elsewhere. My gut, for example, or my lungs. When I pass a mirror and catch a glimpse of myself, or I’m at the bus stop and some kids come up behind me and say, “Who smells shit?”—small daily humiliations that are par for the course—these I take, generally speaking, in my liver. The pancreas I reserve for being struck by all that’s been lost. It’s true that there’s so much, and the organ is so small. But. You would be surprised how much it can take. When I wake up and my fingers are stiff, almost certainly I was dreaming of my childhood. All the times I have suddenly remembered that my parents are dead (even now it still surprises me to exist in the world while those who made me have ceased to exist): my knees. To everything a season; to every time I’ve woken only to make the mistake of believing for a moment that someone is sleeping beside me: a hemorrhoid. Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all.
- The Last Words on Earth, Nicole Krauss
(ie the short story upon which The History of Love is based) |
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| Our Favorite Person |
[Jan. 6th, 2010|01:30 pm] |
Our favorite writer/producer/director Josh Schwartz has a twitter now. Got any complaints or compliments?
Knock yourselves out. http://twitter.com/JoshSchwartz76
He just tweeted this little gem for all of us who miss The O.C.:
Fun reliving OC memories. Just know -Capt Oats and Princess Sparkle always near by
SIGH. |
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| seth cohen picspam |
[Jan. 6th, 2010|02:36 pm] |
"old man!"Seth to Sandy: " Hey maybe I don't feel like shucking these OK, maybe you should to go and shuck them yourself, old man." // comments are appreciated<3 ( locked tomorrow) |
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| Thoreau |
[Jan. 5th, 2010|08:50 pm] |
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“Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance … till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake.” |
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| 110; |
[Jan. 5th, 2010|11:34 pm] |
[ 93 - textless] + [ 17 - written]   the oc batchPS: entry locked to only friends tomorrow |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 6th, 2010|02:57 am] |
Help me please! I need the book of Niklas Luhmann "The Autopoiesis of Social Systems" in Niklas Luhmann. Essays on Self-Reference. Maybe somebody know where I can download it.
Thank you!
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 5th, 2010|04:38 pm] |
♥ Blind dates and setups of all kinds are completely useless, I long ago decided. Most intelligent men and women like to go forth into the world and stalk their own prey, choose their own mirrors of dysfunction, and repeat their own patterns of abusive relationships, without the well-meaning but futile efforts of friends.
♥ ...He looks away, his other hand quickly swiping at his eye. Was that a tear?
I fight the urge to gather him in my arms and cradle his head against my breasts. And rip off his clothes.
♥ ..As my bedside candles illuminate a page in the precious first edition I hold in my hands, I understand, as I have long understood through my own insatiable appetite for reading and rereadings of Jane Austen's six novels, why children want the same stories read to them a thousand times. There is comfort in the familiarity of it all, in the knowledge that all will turn out well, that Elizabeth and Darcy will end up together in Pemberley, that Anne Eliot will pierce Captain Wentworth's soul, and that Mr. Elton will be stuck with his caro sposa for the rest of his life. It is so unlike the unpredictability and unfairness of real-life endings and the half-life stasis I inhabit.
♥ We walk on for another minute while I contemplate the prudishness of a society that can hardly admit to the means by which the human species reproduces itself, let alone that those same humans actually participate in the process.
♥ The candlelight casts a flattering glow on everyone in the room, from the servants and old gentlemen in their powdered wigs and the young men with their hair au naturel, to the women, octogenarians and rosy-cheeked teenagers alike, clad in the uniform empire waistlines and long gloves, necks glittering with diamonds, gold, and pearls. This is the perfect light for a woman forced to appear in public without makeup.
Even the smell of the body odor has lost its usual overpowering quality tonight, heavily laced as it is with the mingled scents of soaps, perfumes, and the wax of a thousand melting candles. I can almost understand for a second, even in all my twenty-first-century fastidiousness, that one could come to like the scent of a ballroom. Is that Jane's sensibility, I wonder, that's responding to this particular mélange of scents? Or am I, my real self, responding to something else? Certainly I don't need a nineteenth-century frame of reference to pick up the erotic charge underlying the formality of the curtseys, bows, and nods of this elaborately stylized mating ritual.
~~Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler. |
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