Too Late, Trotsky

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy John Hurt needs to be in all the...

Thu, 31 May 2012 22:07:26 -0400

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

John Hurt needs to be in all the things.

No, I mean mixers.

Wed, 30 May 2012 16:55:43 -0400

Customer (continuing the 20 minute verbal barrage that is her life story): I use this stuff to dilute perfume oils.
Me: Mmmhmm.
Customer: I don't drink. What do people use 190 proof grain alcohol for?
Me: Usually to get drunk.
Customer: Oh. What do they put it in?
Me: I can't speak for everyone, but I'd say their mouths.
Customer: So they drink it straight!?
Me: Unless they're sitting down. Then they're usually bent about 90 degrees.
Customer: Oh.

Ice Cream Sandwich

Mon, 28 May 2012 21:17:14 -0400

Me: Is that an ice cream sandwich?
Dad: Yeah.
Me: Can I have one?
Dad: (blindly throws sandwich over shoulder)

Front porch drinkin’.

Wed, 23 May 2012 15:10:37 -0400

Front porch drinkin’.

"A writer writes to a great extent to be read (let’s admire those who say they don’t, but..."

Wed, 23 May 2012 00:27:04 -0400

“A writer writes to a great extent to be read (let’s admire those who say they don’t, but not believe them). Yet more and more…he writes in order to obtain that final consecration which consists of not being read. In fact, from the moment he can provide the material for a feature article in the popular press, there is every possibility that he will be known to a fairly large number of people who will never read his works because they will be content to know his name and to read what other people write about him. From that point on he will be known (and forgotten) not for what he is, but according to the image a hurried journalist has given of him. To make a name in literature, therefore, it is no longer indispensable to write books. It is enough to be thought of as having written one which the evening papers will have mentioned and which one can fall back on for the rest of one’s life.
There is no doubt that such a reputation, great or small, will be undeserved. But what can be done about it?”

- - Albert Camus, describing how modern literary marketing works over 60 years ago.

From the essay “The Enigma”

You people don’t feed me enough, damn it. I’m just...

Tue, 22 May 2012 20:51:32 -0400

You people don’t feed me enough, damn it. I’m just going to sit here and eat my bowl.

"Cell phones, for me, were two tin cans and a piece of string. If we wanted to go wireless, we cut..."

Fri, 11 May 2012 11:03:10 -0400

“Cell phones, for me, were two tin cans and a piece of string. If we wanted to go wireless, we cut the string.”

- Customer

"For what gives value to travel is fear. It breaks down a kind of inner structure we have…Far..."

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:09:54 -0400

“For what gives value to travel is fear. It breaks down a kind of inner structure we have…Far from our own people, our own language, stripped of all our props, deprived of our masks (one doesn’t know the fare on the streetcars, or anything else), we are completely on the surface of ourselves. But also, soul-sick, we restore to every being and every object its miraculous value.”

- Albert Camus
from “Love of Life” collected in The Wrong Side and the Right Side

"Yes, everything is simple. It’s men who complicate things."

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:01:00 -0400

“Yes, everything is simple. It’s men who complicate things.”

- Albert Camus
from the essay “Between Yes and No” collected in The Wrong Side and the Right Side

My Solution to the New Onslaught of Problems Presented by North Carolina's Amendment One

Tue, 08 May 2012 23:34:00 -0400

Using tools developed by previous generations (i.e. loudly shouting, holding up witty signs), New England will begin a series of passive-aggressive sarcastic attacks on the rest of the nation until Fox News declares it “The War of Northern Aggression,” to which we reply, “more like The War of North-Eastern Annoyance with Everyone Else, I Mean, Really Guys.“

And then after we argue for a while we will all have tacos using fresh vegetables from the First Lady’s garden and work our shit out.

Guttenberg Libel

Tue, 08 May 2012 18:18:18 -0400

Dad: I was watching Craig Ferguson last night, and there was this guy on. Like, one of those guys who you've seen in every movie but you don't know what he's in when you see him. I want to say Steve Guttenberg, but there's no way it was Steve Guttenberg. I couldn't tell you what his name was.
Me: Judge Reinhold?
Dad: Not Judge Reinhold.
Me: But you just said you didn't know who it was.
Dad: Yeah, but I know it wasn't Judge Reinhold.
Me: Let me look it up.
Dad: He was like, a buddy to Steve Guttenberg in a bunch of movies.
Me: ... It was Steve Guttenberg.
Dad: Really!?
Me: Yeah.
Dad: Wow, it doesn't look like him.
Me: No shit.

To be fair, there was no way my dad was going to confuse Guttenberg with Tom Selleck (his perpetual man-crush and the reason he has a mustache) OR Ted Danson.

The percent of people who come into the store...

Tue, 08 May 2012 13:23:21 -0400

and hand me a credit card with their signature on the magnetic strip instead of in the marked signature box is equally proportionate to the faith I’ve lost in humanity.

(Hint: It’s extraordinarily high.)

Bribery

Fri, 04 May 2012 21:47:59 -0400

Me: Dad, thanks for never giving me crazy expensive things for getting good grades. I'm glad you and mom didn't let me get spoiled like these jerks.
Dad: Well, if we had come to that, we might have crossed that bridge.
Me: What?
Dad: If you had gotten good grades, we might have thought about it.
Me: Thanks, Dad.

Yankee Stadium.

Wed, 02 May 2012 21:48:56 -0400

Yankee Stadium.

"What do we spectators give baseball besides the price of a seat and the respect implicit in paying..."

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:06:39 -0400

“What do we spectators give baseball besides the price of a seat and the respect implicit in paying attention? Baseball’s best practitioners give in return the gift of virtues made vivid. This gift is a thing of beauty and joy forever, or at least until the next game, which is much the same thing as forever because the seasons stretch into forever. Yes, I know, I know. Even the continents drift. Nothing lasts. But baseball does renew itself constantly as youth comes knocking at the door, and in renewal it becomes better.”

- George Will
from “Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball”

Children's Summer Reading List

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 01:35:53 -0400

I’ve been reading a lot lately, which isn’t particularly something that’s odd for me. It’s really just that in the last eight years I haven’t been able to read for pleasure.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t love what I was assigned to read for classes, it just means that I actually have a chance to choose what I want to read without needing to analyze the text for themes and symbols and all that literary jazz. It doesn’t mean I don’t unconsciously see these things when I’m reading (because I totally do ALL THE TIME), it just means that I don’t have to force myself to discuss them later. I can read a book, sit for a moment and remark upon the author’s ability to work themes and symbols into the complexity of the plot and then, once that’s passed, I move the fuck on and open a new book.

No exam. No essay. Just enjoyment.

I was thinking back to high school, when the one time I had to read for pleasure was the summer. Our school district, to encourage kids to read during the summer, had these ridiculous “reading lists,” from which each student had to read at least two books, and then return fresh-faced in the fall with either an essay about the book you read, or ready to engage in discussion with your classmates, most of whom probably didn’t read anything except July’s edition of Cosmopolitan or the mission objectives from Call of Duty.

I remember our “required reading” classics, like Homer’s The Odyssey (which I read again for my college seminar) and Orwell’s 1984, which has a permanent place on my “hey, let’s re-read something” shelf.

But then I also remember reading things off the “choice list” which just absolutely sucked (To put things in perspective, the district’s current “choice list” includes Twilight, which almost made me vomit into my tea). I hated every single one of these books that I read. I don’t think I realized I was destined to immerse myself in literary studies at the time, but god, I remember just fucking hating some of the books.

I’ll admit that I chose poorly. And by that I mean I spent all summer reading what I wanted to read, and the week before school started I saw that nothing I had read matched up with the list so I ran to the library and picked up one of the two books left on the rack. I’m not kidding when I say that this happened for four years in a row.

I remember this one book, Boyproof, which I was just not into at all. The plot was about a teenage girl into sci-fi films who fashioned herself a Milla Jovovich in The Fifth Element wannabe who didn’t want to deal with the drama of a high school relationship (hence the title) but then ends up falling for some popular kid or something. I didn’t finish the book. For my “project,” I handed in a mix-tape of Avril Lavigne and Ryan Adams songs. What I read on my own over the summer was Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which, after I read it, changed a lot about how I thought about literature and the modern world. Boyproof? Not so much.

I guess this is encouragement for the younger generations. Or maybe I’m just having an acid flashback and all of this is pointless. All I’m saying is that those who want to read will read, and those who don’t want to read will never know the joy of finding a book that really does change you.

5/50. As much as I loved this book, I don’t think...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:30:10 -0400

5/50.

As much as I loved this book, I don’t think I’ve ever hated characters in a novel more (except maybe Daisy Buchanan) than I hated Enid Lambert and her eldest son, Gary.

"This world is a place of business…It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It..."

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 03:45:04 -0400

“This world is a place of business…It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work.”

- Henry David Thoreau
from “Life Without Principle”

"Even Vice President Biden seems to be aware of the show’s, uh, references to him. (“He’s on my..."

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:06:34 -0400

“Even Vice President Biden seems to be aware of the show’s, uh, references to him. (“He’s on my celebrity sex list,” Leslie previously confessed. “He is my celebrity sex list.”)“The Vice President encourages all citizens to get involved in public service,” Biden’s press secretary, Kendra Barkoff, said in an e-mail when asked to comment on Knope’s crush. “We here in his office have followed Ms. Knope’s career with interest and wish her well on her upcoming election.””

- X (via tenyouusness)

Can we just let Joe Biden be Vice President forever?

Heh. From the Meriden Record-Journal, Friday, April 27, 2012.

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:22:24 -0400

Heh.

From the Meriden Record-Journal, Friday, April 27, 2012.