from the comments
When I was living at home, I never once heard my parents use any swear word — or “crude language” as they called it. Oddly, this practice may have had something to do with my early sense of the secret power of words. Once when my sister was about eleven or twelve, and I was two years younger, I heard her say “shit.” Out of habit I said “Don’t say that,” and she said “Why not? Nothing happens.” I realized she was right and we both laughed, then spilled out a string of bad words that would have made a sailor blush. What a freeing moment that was. I realized that the language of transgression apparently went unnoticed by the cosmos — no earthquakes, no sudden clouds moving to cover the sun.
clusterhive
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
This Earworm Has Been in My Head for Days…
Liveblogging Paula Deen
This is one of the best things I’ve ever read and recent conversations ’round here indicate interest.
7:02 Paula introduces one of her sons. For two years I convinced my mom that Paula’s sons are gay.
7:03 Oh holy shit this woman is making DEEP FRIED STUFFIN’ ON A STICK. She reminds us, “Everything we’re doing today, y’all, is fried.” It’s some weird sausage stuffing—I am a fatty but this sounds like too much. OH NO saltines in the stuffing? Sorry, Paula, only yankees do that.
7:05 “Oh son, you can go ahead and put your sausage over here. Put your sausage right here, son.”
headline of the day
Lion-meat hamburgers spark outrage
“We can do away with the dull preliminaries”
Just because.
A memory is only as real as the last time you remembered it
Although our memories always feel true, they’re extremely vulnerable to errant suggestions, clever manipulations and the old fashioned needs of storytelling. (The mind, it turns out, cares more about crafting a good narrative than staying close to the truth.)
. . .
[W]e like to think of our memories as being immutable impressions, somehow separate from the act of remembering them. But they aren’t. A memory is only as real as the last time you remembered it. The more you remember something, the less accurate the memory becomes.
—”Memory Is Fiction,” Jonah Lehrer, The Frontal Cortex, June 4, 2010
Via @jorunn
Should I wait in line?
I’m debating whether I should wait in line for an iPhone4 in the morning. Apparently, they’re going to have a “first come, first served” line at my local Apple store. They open at 7am.
Completely unrelated, it looks like the phone might suck.
From: Cory M
calm before the sunspot storm
Sunspots ebb and flow in cycles of 11 years:
But for the past two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged in nearly 100 years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise. “This is solar behavior we haven’t seen in living memory,” says David Hathaway, a physicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
With potential implications for the electrical grid and global warming.
the 38th homemade reactor
Mark Suppes is a Web developer for the fashion house Gucci, but in his off-hours, he tinkers with his homemade nuclear-fusion reactor in a Brooklyn warehouse, unknown to his neighbors. In a video interview with BBC News’ Matthew Danzico, Suppes cheerfully shows the reporter how his reactor works, warning him to step back as the machine activates and emits a small amount of radiation. The reporter is heard laughing nervously in the background, telling Suppes to be careful.
Wimbledon liveblog
From the Guardian (order reversed for easier reading):
7.20pm: And so this match goes on and on, on and on. Somewhere along the way, the players have mislaid their names. The man who was once Mahut is now a string-bag of offal. The man who was Isner is a parched piece of cow-hide. The surviving members of the audience don’t seem to care who wins. They just cheer and applaud whoever looks likely to make a breakthrough and bring this nightmare to a close. Invariably they are disappointed.
The offal looks fresher, possesses a piercing backhand and still throws itself about the court on occasion. But the cow-hide can serve and has the advantage of going ahead by one game and forcing the offal to catch-up. This the offal is only too happy to do. It hits a backhand down the line and then follows that up with an ace, and the score now stands at 45 games apiece.
7.30pm: Let it end, let it end, it’s 46-all. It was funny when it was 16-all and it was creepy when it was 26-all. But this is pure purgatory and there is still no end in sight. John Isner has just struck his 90th ace. Nicolas Mahut, poor, enfeebled Nicolas Mahut, has only hit 72. Maybe we should just decide it on the number of aces struck? Give the game to Isner and then we can all crawl into our graves.
7.45pm: What happens if we steal their rackets? If we steal their rackets, the zombies can no longer hit their aces and thump their backhands and keep us all prisoner on Court 18. I’m shocked that this is only occurring to me now. Will nobody run onto the court and steal their rackets? Are they all too scared of the zombies’ clutching claws and gore-stained teeth? Steal their rackets and we can all go home. Who’s with me? Steal their rackets and then run for the tube.
It’s 48-48. What further incentive do you need?
8pm: Don’t look now but I think the cow-hide has officially expired. John Isner stands at the baseline. He is facing the right way but he is no longer moving and the string-bag of offal peppers him with aces left and right to bring the score to 50-50. But Cow Hide is still facing the right way and that says something. And he is still vertical, and that says something too. What it says, unfortunately, is that the match is not quite over yet.
8.05pm: In the stands, a woman is laughing. She laughs long and hard and her laugh is the sort of ghastly yodel you normally hear in antique horror movies about Victorian insane asylums. “Wa-la-ha-la-wah,” she goes. “Wa-la-ha-la-ha-la!” Will nobody drag her out? Call in the goons in white coats. Get this woman to a lobotomy!
Mahut is serving to make it 51-51. Wouldn’t you know it, he does. He makes it to 51-51, finishing up with an ace.
Via @seanaes
I want her to look like she’s enveloped in a swirl of uncontrollable laughter
Dear Clusterflock,
Can we keep the hostility below a blood relation level? I actually like you people.
What’s considered acceptable language in your family?
Empires of the Deep
China’s attempt to out-Hollywood Hollywood:
This mash-up of “Avatar,” “Gladiator” and “Pirates of the Caribbean,” all thrown together in a Chinese hot pot, is the vision of a film-obsessed real estate magnate, Jon Jiang, who says his life mission now is to make movies, video games and theme parks. It is also the boldest effort yet by businessmen here to establish China as a global moviemaking powerhouse, one that can create big-budget English-language spectacles to rival those of Hollywood.
Nancy A. Newberry, Mum
As soon as I saw this image I knew it was Texas.
From the woman who selected Newberry’s images for the Hey Hot Shot Contenders series:
For eighteen brief months at one of the most impressionable of impressionable ages, I lived in North Texas. I moved there with my family when I was 13, and spent most of junior high school there. Fraught as that age is with confusion, insecurity and boundless wonder, longing and mystery, I remember quite vividly the pretty, preening girls of my Dallas/Ft. Worth suburb, and wanting and trying very much to fit in.
From Newberry’s artist’s statement:
MUM is centered around a gift-giving ritual virtually unknown outside of Texas, the Homecoming Mum. Exchanged between friends the Mum is an elaborate corsage decorated to indicate the wearer’s interests, social standing, and allegiances to loved ones. Homecoming mums are proudly worn for all activities on Homecoming Friday, and then immortalized as trophies on bedroom walls all over Texas. Each year the collection grows with a more elaborate Mum, marking progress and personal history. As both adornment and insignia, the Mum offers its wearer the opportunity to promote self-image, while identifying their status as an integral member of their particular community. At a time when many American high schoolers seem actively disengaged from the world around them, the Homecoming Mum constitutes a unique act of cultural immersion, and specific brand of folk art.
Update: Barry’s Weekly Picture 165.
a catalogue of fear, 13
The first time I thought the stuff that hit my hand was blood.
a thousand faces, 7
A Trip Down Memory Lane
I think today is a good day to bring this one out of the closet.
Goal!
U.S. goal in the 92nd minute!
Do You Care Now?
In today’s underwhelming news, Google voice is now open to everyone.
This is what passes for news these days
Cover of The Hills Have Eyes (Unrated Edition)
Paula Deen, the chef and talk show host, offered an endorsement of sorts for first lady Michelle Obama on Wednesday.
“She is such a good eater,” Deen told the Boston Globe.
This is what Anthony Bourdain wrote about the “chef”:
I’m reluctant to bash what seems to be a nice old lady. Even if her supporting cast is beginning to look like the Hills Have Eyes–and her food a True Buffet of Horrors. A recent Hawaii show was indistinguishable from an early John Waters film. And the food on a par with the last scene of Pink Flamingos. But I’d like to see her mad. Like her look-alike, Divine in the classic, “Female Trouble.“ Paula Deen on a Baltimore Killing Spree would be something to see. Let her get Rachael (Ray) in a headlock–and it’s all over.
Nothing to add.
Hello Dali
One of the hazards of travel across time zones is getting the morning alarms right. Today I rose at what I thought was 5:45 MDT, which would have been 7:45 EDT. Alas, it was 5:45 EDT. Upon arriving to the office at 6:30, I was surprised to find an empty parking lot. Still believing it to be 8:30, I entered a darkened building. It felt like a zombie movie–there was no one at all inside. Very creepy.
Ever done that?
UPDATE: Question answered (sort of):
Andrew Simone via Twitter: So, I just realized that my flight is not tomorrow but Thursday which is to say that unemployment has warped my mind.
I don’t think I have what it takes to raise a child in a world where these exist
after hours of rage, this made me laugh
It is also worth noting that firebug makes it feel like cheating.
The Annals of Denial
Indeed, let’s “call a spade a spade” regarding homosexuality.
By the way, that’s a lovely ascot.
(via)
