January 2010
95 posts
“His speech boiled down to, ‘F*** me? No, no, no, my friend, f*** YOU.”
– Jon Stewart on the discussion of political obstacles in the State of the Union address
“PS - This is what the alphabet would look like if Q and R were removed.”
– Mitch Hedberg
“It is humorous and kindly of you, Your Grace, to allow me to remain absorbed in...”
– Hapworth 16, 1924
“I’ve never known sickness—or sorrow, or disaster, for that matter—not to unfold,...”
– Seymour: An Introduction
Seymour: An Introduction (excerpt)
(cover of New Yorker in which Seymour debuted) Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It’s never been anything but your religion. Never. I’m a little over-excited now. Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be...
Axecop →
Created & written by Malachai Nicolle (age 5); art by Ethan Nicolle (age 29). (temporary site mirror)
[The Onion] Bunch Of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger
CORNISH, NH—In this big dramatic production that didn’t do anyone any good (and was pretty embarrassing, really, if you think about it), thousands upon thousands of phonies across the country mourned the death of author J.D. Salinger, who was 91 years old for crying out loud. “He had a real impact on the literary world and on millions of readers,” said hot-shot English professor...
Comments from BBC News' Have Your Say: JD Salinger
Readers respond: Did you read The Catcher in the Rye? What impact did it have on you? What are your memories of the author? “Franny and Zooey” is my bible. I received this book in 1989 when I was 18 years old and it changed me and I started to understand a lot about my big family and religion and I knew then how much I love my brother. I just saw the German movie “On the other side” tonight and...
Jerome David Salinger (1919-2010)
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
One night some twenty years ago, during a siege of mumps in our enormous family, my youngest sister, Franny, was moved, crib and all, into the ostensibly germ-free room I shared with my eldest brother,...
“The State of The Union has been boring since the second season. I dunno why NBC...”
– comment I approved. (via peterfeld)
“due to the rising price of movie tickets, more North Americans saw Phantom...”
– EW PopWatch (via sissy)
Frantic Steve Jobs Stays Up All Night Designing...
(The Onion) CUPERTINO, CA—Claiming that he completely forgot about the much-hyped electronic device until the last minute, a frantic Steve Jobs reportedly stayed up all night Tuesday in a desperate effort to design Apple’s new tablet computer. “Come on, Steve, just think—think, dammit—you’re running out of time,” the exhausted CEO said as he glued nine separate iPhones to...
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Cloud
A blue stain creeps across the deep pile of the evergreens. From inside the forest it seems like an interior matter, something wholly to do with trees, a color passed from one to another, a requirement to which they submit unflinchingly like soldiers or brave people getting older. Then the sun comes back and it’s totally over. — Kay Ryan (in the February 2010 issue of Poetry)
“Massive Earthquake Reveals Entire Island Civilization Called ‘Haiti’”
– The Onion. Researchers also came to the “startling” conclusion that Haiti’s inhabitants must have at some point in their history been exposed to the English language, as many seemed capable of uttering such phrases as “Help us,” and “Please don’t abandon us...
“Jupiter is more massive than all the other solar system planets combined, plus...”
– Dr. Bruce Betts, Twitter: RandomSpaceFact
Akinator: Unbeatable 20 Questions Game →
I tried Cool Spot, the 7UP dot character; Akinator guessed it in 10 questions.
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Trouble
That is what the Odyssey means. Love can leave you nowhere in New Mexico raising peacocks for the rest of your life. The seriously happy heart is a problem. Not the easy excitement, but summer in the Mediterranean mixed with the rain and bitter cold of February on the Riviera, everything on fire in the violent winds. The pregnant heart is driven to hopes that are the wrong size for this world. ...
Maybe Very Happy
After she died he was seized by a great curiosity about what it was like for her. Not that he doubted how much she loved him. But he knw there must have been some things she had not liked. So he went to her closest friend and asked what she complained of. “It’s all right,” he had to keep saying, “I really won’t mind.” Until the friend finally gave in....
[The Onion] God's Wrath According To Pat Robertson
[tumbled mostly so I could offer my alternate title: “Pat Answers”]
700 Club founder Pat Robertson stated that the earthquake in Haiti, which may have killed 100,000 people, was God’s punishment for a deal Haitian slaves made with the devil 200 years ago to get out from under French rule. Here are some other tragedies and Robertson’s explanations for them:
Eruption of...
“Friendship Between Caterpillar, Horse Exploited For Cheap Children’s Book”
–
The Onion. “The author takes their friendship for granted and entirely misses the greater point: that Clomper, in many ways puritanical and dogmatic, and Chomper, the moral hedonist, were able to forge such a tender, lasting bond at all,” McFarlane continued. “To reduce their...
“‘How Bad For The Environment Can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle...”
– The Onion. “According to the inner monologue of millions upon millions of citizens, while not necessarily ideal, throwing away one empty bottle probably wouldn’t make that much of a difference, and could even be forgiven, considering how long they had been carrying it around with them,...
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Flat Hedgehogs
For Isaiah Berlin When the hedgehogs here at night see a car and its fierce lights coming at them, they do the one big thing they know. — Jack Gilbert
“On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area...”
– “The Underlying Tragedy,” David Brooks, The New York Times
The most useless machine ever →
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Less Being More
It started when he was a young man and went to Italy. He climbed mountains, wanting to be a poet. But was troubled by what Dorothy Wordsworth wrote in her journal about William having worn himself out searching all day to find a simile for nightingale. It seemed a long way from the tug of passion. He ended up staying in pensioni where the old women would take up the children in the middle of...
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Not Getting Closer
Walking in the dark streets of Seoul under the almost full moon. Lost for the last two hours. Finishing a loaf of bread and worried about the curfew. I have not spoken for three days and I am thinking, “Why not just settle for love? Why not just settle for love instead?” — Jack Gilbert
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Happening Apart From What's Happening Around It
There is a vividness to eleven years of love because it is over. A clarity of Greece now because I live in Manhattan or New England. If what is happening is part of what’s going on around what’s occurring, it is impossible to know what is truly happening. If love is part of the passion, part of the fine food or the villa on the Mediterranean, it is not clear what the love is. When I...
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The Abandoned Valley
Can you understand being alone so long you would go out in the middle of the night and put a bucket into the well so you could feel something down there tug at the other end of the rope? — Jack Gilbert
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Truth
The glare of the Greek sun on our stone house is not so white as the pale moonlight on it. — Jack Gilbert