Quote out of context
I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language.
Seoul Land
I was reminded of this recently. I believe it was my third or fourth post ever on clusterflock. It’s still fantastic.
I Love LA
I mean it, man.
This from my LA friend Tiger:
Hello Kitty Goth Party Friday night. Fight Night party last night!
Walking along Buchanan Street
Into the sun
logic
The other day I got another $32,000 medical bill. So I did the only logical thing a person could do. I bought a used M3 on ebay.
Who is paying taxes?
5% Of U.S. Taxpayers Account For 60.6% Of All Tax Revenue in 2009.
Moments, by Will Hoffman
via Luke
all marriage illegal in Texas
“This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.”
a thousand faces, 2
from the moderated comments
Depend on the rabbit’s foot if you will, but remember it didn’t work for the rabbit.
Dear Clusterflock
What length of time was the longest you had a tab up on your browser, before eventually closing it? How long do tabs typically live on your browser from first opening? Do you ever shut down your computer? How often? Do you ever hesitate before installing software updates, because of that dread of having to restart your computer, even though you know that Firefox will save your tabs? How many of the tabs you open, do you actually read? And when you finally get around to reading some old tabs, do you read them with interest and an active mind, or through gritted teeth, some kind of task to be dispatched, like de-moulding a neglected cupboard?
(An internet-therapy initiative.)
Instructions on how to climb a staircase
An Absurdable.
(Via my classmates Carolina & Asli)
The gritty
This is not my favorite setting to talk in. I think it would be much more rewarding for all of us if we could sit around and have a little taste and, in a very informal way, get down to the “nitty.” Then maybe later on, we could get down to the “gritty.” That’s the only way to talk about things, about life, about people. I don’t know who devised in the institutions of learning that we should have straight-back chairs, or have architecture that is very rigid and very formal. Whoever devised this system (and I suspect it’s mostly western Europeans) had no great compassion for the art of learning. You can’t learn anything under these conditions. They’re not conducive to learning. The greatest institutions I’ve attended have been somebody’s house, or sometimes in a kitchen, when a few people get around the table and start yakking. Sometimes it’s being out at the corner on some street. Sometimes it’s been in a bar. These are the kinds of atmospheres that people normally sit around and exchange ideas in.
—Charles White, lecture at Columbia University, February 10, 1975
(From the book I’m editing.)
I immediately thought of this.
No Comment about the Cat Food
I stop at the janky little supermarket to pick up a couple of things on my way home from work.
The kid at the checkout pushes my high-fiber lite bread across the scanner and says,
“Whoa, that bread is really soft!”
I smile and wish he would not talk about my food.
Kim Chinquee
On November 30, Kim Chinquee — writer, teacher and co-editor with Doug Martin of the upcoming Online Writing: the Best of the First Ten Years — will become editor for fiction and creative nonfiction at elimae. (I will continue editing poetry, literary essays and reviews, and interviews.) I am preparing the December issue right now, and Kim’s hand will first be seen in the January 2010 issue. I am quite pleased to begin this new partnership.
The Persecution of Sarah Palin
Brilliant review of Going Rogue by Thomas Frank:
It is her mastery of the lament that explained former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s appeal last year, and now her knack for self-pity is on full display in her book, “Going Rogue.” This is the memoir as prolonged, keening wail, larded with petty vindictiveness. With an impressive attention to detail, Ms. Palin settles every score, answers every criticism; locates a scapegoat for every foul-up, and fastens an insult on every critic, down to the last obscure Palin-doubter back in Alaska.
From Ms. Palin’s masterwork, we learn that the personal really is the political. Every encounter with a critic seems to be a skirmish in the culture wars, from the Alaska debate moderator who didn’t play fair once to the “wealthy, effete young chap” who ran against her for governor but who, in one of the quickest transitions from anti-snob to snob in all of literature, is also said to have served as “our limo driver at [her husband] Todd’s cousin’s wedding.”
Pocket calendar / sketchbook 2010 by Peter Biľak
Limited edition of the pocket-size, no-nonsense Typotheque calendar and sketchbook. Main features are: week overview on a double page, year overview, 12 different pre-printed grids in the sketchbook. International holidays (multi-religious), design events and other days of interest are indicated on the index page, as well as on day overviews. Vinyl cover offers extra protection, and the book is specially bound to ensure that it lies flat when opened.
Squirrel Massage
Deadwood
Aaron had been on us a long time to watch the HBO series Deadwood. We finally got the stars aligned and are an episode away from the end of the first season. Holy crap! If you haven’t already set yourself down to watch it, I couldn’t recommend it more. The actors, characters, and storyline approximate the intensity of high drama and alternately bring a smile to your heart and simultaneously break it.
Arcade
A digital salon created by Stanford for literature and the humanities:
Under our three rubrics—Conversations, Transactions, and Publications—we offer an array of blogs, journals that seek to redefine their genre, forums for the exchange of ideas and observations, videocasts and podcasts, and other features for scholars, students, and the public. Our international, multilingual community is committed to redrawing, and sometimes erasing, the lines between contributors and readers.
All of our features are intended to be the best of their kind: curated but participatory, technologically rich in the service of intellectual exchange, and open to multiple modalities. Arcade belongs to the Open Access movement in scholarly publishing.
For example, Alec Hanley Bemis’ Brief thoughts about length:
I floated this by another acquaintance recently, a slightly younger individual with a background similar to my own. Why aren’t kids these days aspiring to create literature? Will music claim them all?
“I’ve seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by organic farming,” he said.
The swearword worse than fuck
Jon Ronson pulls a classic Calvin’s father* on his son:
My eight-year-old son, Joel, comes into my office to ask if there’s a worse swearword than fuck. “No,” I say.
There’s a silence. “You’re lying,” he says.
“There’s none worse than fuck,” I say.
Joel narrows his eyes. “I know you’re lying,” he says. He leaves the room.
baby coelacanth
“As far as we know, it was the first ever video image of a living juvenile coelacanth, which is still shrouded in mystery,” said Masamitsu Iwata, a researcher at Aquamarine Fukushima in Iwaki, northeast of Tokyo.
It is believed that their eggs hatch inside the female and the young fish are fully formed at the time of birth.
The Towers of Trebizond
We set off presently up the road that climbed up into the hills, but the camel took camel paths and scampered up them at a great pace, roaring, and aunt Dot thought it might be in love, though out of season. When we stopped for lunch, Halide, who has done quite a lot of work among mental cases, looked at the camel closely, and into its eyes, and watched the way its mouth worked while it chewed, and said, “Has it had mental trouble before? For I think that it now has.”
Raccoon in a predicament.
This little guy got himself into a big metal garbage bin and couldn’t get out. Ordinarily these bins are full of humans’ detritus, and the raccoons glut themselves on beer and pizza, then waddle back up over the mounds of garbage and back to the woods.
But this fool was just scrabbling and scrabbling against the container’s metal walls.
I fetched a deck chair from behind a neighbor’s place and set it down in the container to serve as a kind of step-stool.
It worked.
Mel Blanc on Letterman
(via kung fu grippe)
