from the comments
I feel like Orwell sometimes, but ever since I was required to read Melville’s “Benito Cereno” ten times in a row through the lens of a different critical perspective each time, I generally have a greater sense of appreciation for it now. If anything, I think Orwell’s statement exposes that the act of criticism can be intellectually taxing. Criticism is the art of really applying yourself to a work in an attempt to mine it for more value than might be readily apparent. Trying and failing to find that value isn’t necessarily rationalizing an opinion–it can also mean that you have seriously engaged with the text and found, not that it has little to offer, but that it was not what you were looking for.
overheard just now
“Dat Beverly Hills Chihauhau–I love dat movie.”
quote out of context
It was like gargling with aluminum foil, aspirin and pine needles.
literary criticism is fraudulent
I often have the feeling that even at the best of times literary criticism is fraudulent, since… every literary judgement consists in trumping up a set of rules to justify an instinctive preference. One’s real reaction to a book, when one has a reaction at all, is usually “I like this book” or “I don’t like it,” and what follows is a rationalisation.
— George Orwell, “Writers and Leviathan” (from an interesting reflection at The Bygone Bureau on film criticism.)
New Arcade Fire Tracks
Arcade Fire – The End
Arcade Fire – Used to Wait
via Consequence of Sound
Jeopardize my Crossword. (For kids!)
How’s about a new series where I give you a crossword puzzle word or phrase answer and you come up with possible clues? It might be fun to classify your clue using NYT crossword standards; i.e. a Monday clue or a Sunday clue, etc.
Today’s puzzle answer is:
commencement
-Ronya
If the ocean were made of Kool-Aid…
… would you drink it?
(Concomitantly, would you care more about the oil spill? Why or why not?)
scrap paper fiction, 4
Justice on the Farris wheel [sic]
Found this whilst searching for something else related to human-canine relations. The man on the left is my father.
Courts Moved to Fairgrounds
The Farris wheel and the carnival moved out August 28 making way for the General Sessions and Circuit Courts of Carroll County to relocate to the Fairgrounds. Criminal court is being held in the Exhibit Building at the Fairgrounds while the second floor courtrooms at the Carroll County Courthouse are being renovated. Court will be held at the Fairgrounds up to seven months as the $1 million renovation is in process. The court clerks’ offices will remain open on the first floor of the courthouse.
Pictured is General Sessions Judge Larry Logan hearing a criminal case as defense attorney Michael Ainley pleads his client’s case.
Damn shame about that “Farris wheel”. For more on the courthouse, this letter from my late Uncle Ray may prove illuminating.
Confederate crotch rocket
Only two remain:
oh.
…libel per se refers to a statement that is defamatory on its face; libel per quod covers statements that are defamatory only in context, and requires proof of actual monetary damages.
a catalogue of fear, 5
The tapping began after the babysitter changed her shirt. I looked and didn’t look. They went from window to window, climbing on the roof. It was obvious we were surrounded. The noises came from everywhere. You could see one climbing up a ladder. Another banging at the door. This went on an hour, my parents were gone. I thought of making a stand at the porch, brandishing a chair. Nothing I could imagine would save us, and I was the oldest boy there.
Jane Unrue, Life of a Star
Friend of clusterflock, Jane Unrue, sent me a copy of her latest book a couple weeks before this year’s clusterflock get-together. I wanted to thank her publicly and recommend the book as well. For those who love Diane Williams, Gertrude Stein, Kim Chinquee, and Samuel Beckett, Unrue’s fiction will make you feel right at home.
From a great review by Gary Lutz in The Believer:
“I wish I had a better story for you,” confides the unnamed narrator a third of the way into Jane Unrue’s new miniaturist novel, though there’s hardly cause for so modest a claim. With just over one hundred pages, some of them hosting no more than a wee phrase or the clarion burst of a sentence, and most of them giving out well shy of the bottom margins, the novel, though slender, is emotionally thorough, dense but not crammed, and unnoisily original in the bloodbeat and quiver of its prose.
from the moderated comments
fuc my life i woke today to see the dea in my house on a weed beef wit me and becouse its fedral i know im fuct 3 to 5 for sure the funny thing is i was just thinking how lifes turned around for me wife finished school and it was my chance to go im in school now but i kinda feel like whats the point befor january i’l probley be in fed prison my kids are the worst part becouse they dont no why im not gonna be around but theres no way around it if i didnt do it we would have lost our home at least with my wife done with school her and the kids can stay there so fuc it im glad i did it fuuuuuuuck weed laws!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dear Clusterflock,
What is a woman thinking when she decides to wear 6 inch heels grocery shopping at 9 am on a Monday morning?
— Walt
*Vegetables tag added because she was in the produce section when I spotted her.
Vuvuzela usage instructions
I thought of Sheila when I saw this:
– Walt
Dear clusterflock
Lost and stubborn.
from the comments
There’s an old saying, scratch a southerner, find a mystic. No matter what the person’s upbringing, we were surrounded by belief in miracles from infancy. At least people in little towns. Even if you grow up to not believe all that yourself or to modify it. Maybe the transition leaves an empty space in the mind where all those miracles used to reside. And you’re left wondering, well, what if?
New Team Names for the Southern Conference
Florida Tar Balls
Mississippi Slicks
Alabama Berms
Texas Riser Insertion Tube Tools
Georgia Cement Plugs
Louisiana Junk Shots
We’ve already heard that one
(via @BPGlobalPR)
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and the Cairo Gang
Friend of clusterflock, M Sarki, brought this to attention in the suggested links. The first song is beautiful.
spam name
Zachariah Hanks.
from the comments
I think I have told this story here before (I think I have said everything twice by now), but when I was about ten I went on a hike with a church youth group–Pioneer Boys–that included a tour of a nearby Jimmy Dean Sausage processing plant. It was on a weekend and the plant was not running, so an employee gave us the corporate tour, showing all of us little boys and two Bible-toting youth ministers the process of killing and parting out hogs. We, of course (the boys), begged for the actual startup of the whole line–or at least the part involving the electric stun gun, the pneumatic blast to the skull, and the dragging hook mechanism. The whole thing was a religious experience, of course, since it was the church showing us these things. We then all went to an area of bottom land beside the plant, near a fouled creek, where we built many campfires in order to kick burning logs into the water. The youth ministers secluded themselves for prayer most of the time we were there, coming out only once to prevent us from chopping down a large tree with hatchets.
Drill, baby… what…?
Presumably spoken without irony:
Despite the intense speculation on some blogs, the former Republican vice presidential candidate told Fox News she has not had breast implants and attributed such chatter to “bored, idle bloggers and reporters with nothing else to talk about.”
“I think some of those folks too need to perhaps grab a shovel, go down to the gulf, volunteer to help, clean up and save a well or something,” Palin added.
dear clusterflock
What kind of pillow?
Update: And how many?
