Bill Callahan
dear clusterflock
What animal looks the most humiliated when wet?
Beneath the Rows
Alone. (With a nod to Micah P. Hinson.)
A night in the cornfield, seized before all is laid waste.
Hey!
I just realized that today is September 30. It’s Deron and Amy’s tenth wedding anniversary.
Happy, happy day, you lovelies, you.
quote out of context
Swagger transforms unfresh men into legends of confidence.
Oh my god, there’s something different about you and I’m really liking it
headline of the day, II
Judge hands out condoms hidden in acorns
I feel the need to point out the judge is from Intercourse, Pa.
Panels I Like
Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom
Jacqueline Holland reviews Frazen’s latest novel:
Truly, Franzen is at his brilliant best when creating immensely real characters whose lives and needs feel in many ways more urgent than those of the flesh-and-blood people around us. Unfortunately, Franzen at his worst is Franzen trying to figure out what the heck to do with those incredible characters once he’s made them. For all the promise ofFreedom, and all its embryonic intimations of profundity, the plot is unfortunately riddled with problems that seriously weaken the novel as a whole.
I’ve not touched any of Frazen’s novels, so I can’t speak to the accuracy or rightness of the review, but it does make me think all the hubbub about him is just that.
See, it really works!
The Amazon review of The Secret upon which the video is based.
FedEx Regulations
prohibit the transportation of urine in an uncapped receptacle.
This is WHAT NOT TO DO.
quote out of context
The horrible screams that you hear at the end of the movie were made by the experimenters, who were startled to see the dog attack the AIBO.
potentially habitable planet found
The paper reports the discovery of two new planets around the nearby red dwarf star Gliese 581. This brings the total number of known planets around this star to six, the most yet discovered in a planetary system other than our own solar system. Like our solar system, the planets around Gliese 581 have nearly circular orbits.
The most interesting of the two new planets is Gliese 581g, with a mass three to four times that of the Earth and an orbital period of just under 37 days. Its mass indicates that it is probably a rocky planet with a definite surface and that it has enough gravity to hold on to an atmosphere, according to Vogt.
Gliese 581, located 20 light years away from Earth in the constellation Libra, has a somewhat checkered history of habitable-planet claims. Two previously detected planets in the system lie at the edges of the habitable zone, one on the hot side (planet c) and one on the cold side (planet d). While some astronomers still think planet d may be habitable if it has a thick atmosphere with a strong greenhouse effect to warm it up, others are skeptical. The newly discovered planet g, however, lies right in the middle of the habitable zone.
(via marginal revolution)
headline of the day
Bloomberg says he wants hooker teacher yanked from classroom
Texas diversity
Hospital cafeteria. Table with 2 women–one Thai, one African American. Talking all kinds of bad about a co-worker.
Thai: She Mexican, right?
African American: Yeah, she’s from Brazil. She always speaking Spanish.
A 16-bit arithmetic logic unit (ALU) in Minecraft
That is to say, a working computer built inside a video game. (via techdirt via @onesmallfire)
true focals
Each TruFocal lens is actually a set of two lenses: an outer lens, and an inner lens made of a flat glass plate attached to a flexible membrane that contains a clear, silicone-based liquid. A manual slider on the bridge of the eyeglasses adjusts the focus by changing the shape of the membrane. The outer lens can be custom made to correct other vision problems besides presbyopia, including nearsightedness and astigmatism.
Once the TruFocal lenses are adjusted, the entire field of vision is in focus, unlike bifocals and progressive lenses, which keep only a limited area in sharp focus. So a user can adjust the glasses to focus only on the book he’s reading, then look up and readjust them to focus solely on the TV across the room.
from the comments
Listening to Rock of Ages at work I remembered this post. It’s getting to be fall in Minnesota, which means pulling out the corduroy, the boots and The Band. This is my favorite time of year. Like clockwork I remember that I live in an autumnal time warp set in a metaphorical 1974. Everything I love most is brown and soft and smells of fallen leaves. Wish I had a bourbon right now.
quote out of context
[Clenbuterol] is a substance that does not help performance, and this (tiny) quantity is completely insignificant to improve physical improvement.
from the comments
To extend the metaphor: I feel like I’ve spent a lot of the last half decade trying to throw ropes to friends stuck in keepers. Rafting is fun, but not worth getting endlessly worked in a hole. Surfing holes just for the hell of it . . . well that’s something else entirely.
Also: I spent a little time watching videos of people taking some rough swims in rapids. This one captures the experience about as well as any of them and has the feel of a scene or two from Wes Anderson’s Steve Zissou film. It’s not a keeper, but those people don’t often make it out alive without a dramatic rescue.
Mister Bogeyman
I am full to the brim with Mister Bogeyman
He’s running all around in me today
He’s cutting my life into shredded plans
to cook up for his morning brunch buffet
This is a Metaphor for Something
from the spam
A likable out of date time eon is the award of a well-spent youth. Instead of its bringing dejected and low prospects of rot, it would hand out us hopes of unwavering adolescence in a recovered world.
Reporting on the Media
Ben Smith, the blogger-in-residence at Politico, describes the behemoth of a story Fox News — and to a lesser degree the modern media in general — has become:
The challenge to reporters is to cover Fox — and, at times, MSNBC, and a range of print and online publications, and to a lesser degree every media outlet — as the political actors they often are. That’s what I try to do here, and why my coverage often blends into media reporting. Fox is the 800 pound gorilla of campaigning media outlets, and the balance of its goals — various internal players have competing commercial, political, ratings, and lobbying aims — may be the best story in contemporary politics and media. I’m not sure expressions of “outrage” at the hijacking of what was, for a time, a more neutral form are all that useful. After all, neutral journalism is a historical blip. But certainly, reporters don’t have to take Fox at its word on its own “balance” any more than we have to take a politician at his word.
In case it hasn’t yet sunk in for you: Fox News employs four of the GOP’s leading contenders for the 2012 Presidential nomination.
Obama, Interviewed
Jann Wenner did his song & dance routine with our Commander-in-Chief. Aside from the politics, they discussed the President’s musical preferences:
Here’s what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you’d expect he would be. He wouldn’t come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn’t want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn’t show up to that. He came in and played “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage — I’m sitting right in the front row — comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it — then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That’s how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don’t want him to be all cheesin’ and grinnin’ with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise.
The interview will be featured in October’s issue of Rolling Stone.
