quote out of context
Success in any case requires the adjuvancy of a superior woman. THIS IS THE LAW! A harlot or low woman is useless for all such lofty and holy purposes, and just so is a bad, impure, passion-driven apology for a man. The woman shall not be one who accepts rewards for compliance; nor a virgin; or under eighteen years of age; or another’s wife; yet must be one who hath known man and who has been and still is capable of intense mental, volitional and affectional energy, combined with perfect sexive and orgasmal ability; for it requires a double crisis to succeed…
from the comments
A guess: the photograph was taken by Princess Marianne Fürstin zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn and the boy is her eldest son, Alexander.
it’s hard to imagine a more useful object lesson
Quotes from an article in the New Yorker about director Paul Haggis’s relationship with Scientology:
“Scientology works 100 percent of the time when it is properly applied to a person who sincerely desires to improve his life.”
“The first thing I noticed that I did, that others didn’t, is the Contact,” Alissa told me, referring to a procedure the church calls Contact Assist. “If you hurt yourself, the first thing I and other Scientology kids do is go quiet.”
According to documents obtained by WikiLeaks, the activist group run by Julian Assange, the final exercise is: “Go out to a park, train station or other busy area. Practice placing an intention into individuals until you can successfully and easily place an intention into or on a Being and/or a body.”
The incentive to believe was high.
I, too, was once a king.
I am transfixed with this picture like I have never been before. (via)
Pencil Vs. Camera
the truth about prog rock
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain incredible technical virtuosity, and lose his own soul?”
Saul Bass: On Making Money vs Quality Work
via Brain Pickings
The Human Camera
from the spam
Ever poop and lay skinny turds down at the bottom of the bowl like tightly packed sardines? It’s amazing and I send photos to friends.
Yemen
Yemen is punctuated with volcanoes. They are as much a part of my memory as anything. The problem is, I no longer remember how many we climbed, or how often. They have become one volcano for me, one trip, a series of images stitched together to form a single memory.
We started out on foot, a gang of parents, friends, mostly teachers from the school where my parents taught, their children, other friends.
The slow ascent, traversing back and forth, a scramble over rocks, stopping to help or push a foot. At the top, an Ottoman cistern carved into the rock, an inverted spiral, not unlike an upside down version of the Guggenheim.
The genius of the cistern was you walked to the level of the water. No matter where the water was, it was accessible. Inside the crater were a handful of grottoes, little arched piles of stone, that covered thermal ventilation holes. A person could sit inside one and be warmed, I guess, kind of like a steam bath.
Along the outer, upper slope, a village, who knows how many hundreds of years old, the interiors of the buildings girded with thick exposed timber, sat abandoned. At the top, looking out over miles of arid desert, the edges of mountains in the distance sharply drawn, not a single tree could be seen.
Frank Gehry in New York — 8 Spruce Street
The building is particularly mesmerizing from the Brooklyn waterfront, where it’s possible to make out one of the deep setbacks that give the building its reassuringly old-fashioned feel. In daylight the furrowed surfaces of the facades look as if they’ve been etched by rivulets of water, an effect that is all the more dramatic next to the clunky 1980s glass towers just to the south. Closer up, from City Hall Park, the same ripples look softer, like crumpled fabric.
Snow burdened semi passes under overpass
It’s the little things.
A clock that eats flies, and insect eating robots
(via Zoe Pollock at the daily dish)
Poop Tracker
On the one hand, this only works in the UK, Ireland, South Africa, and Poland. On the other, it lets you track your poop.
(via marginal revolution)
Scottish Highlander Pipers
The University of Iowa, between 1936 and 1941.
quote out of context
I’m drawn to the metaphor of Climax Ecology as a framework for understanding how sexually explicit photographic imagery exists in society because for me it offers a better explanation—both of my own experience making and distributing my films and, of what I observe more broadly—than theories rooted in guesses about what men or women do or don’t like, or guesses about what does or doesn’t go on in bedchambers across America, or in accusations of prudery or licentiousness, and most of all, in the suspicion that there is something ineffable about sexual love that the camera simply cannot capture. I’ve documented death with humanity and compassion; surely the same thing is possible with carnal love.
Three Chairs In A Hotel. Pachia Ammos (Παχειά Άμμος) Crete.
Hawksley Workman – Chemical
The comic book nerds duckrabbit.
If you know who made this, please link it in the comments. Image by Olly Moss (thanks, SC!)
Remembering Scott
Some of you will remember stories I’ve told about my friend Scott, who died of AIDS in 1988. I so wish y’all could have known him. Here’s an excerpt from an email from a friend, recounting an episode not long before Scott’s death:
I drive Scott to spend the evening at S’s house. She set out a typically weird assortment of stuff she had in the house: cranberries, foie gras, Doritos with El Fenix hot sauce, clamato juice, vodka, more vodka, mixed nuts, chocolate covered pretzels. It was June, maybe. The “Christmas tree” — a bunch of sticks painted white with lights and ornaments–was proudly displayed in the living room. Stacks of mail and stuff falling off dusty tables. A mix of fine inherited antiques mixed with junk. We started talking about our families–my grandparents, S’s grandmother, Scott’s grandparents. Scott always loved the story about how his grandmother defended him when his grandfather said “Hell Scott, boys don’t sew!” and his grandmother said “SHUT UP CHARLIE YOU IGNORANT FOOL–DESIGNERS DO!” We laughed and drank and drank. There were undertones of his saying goodbye to S. He was quiet on the drive home. Mostly drunk. Finally after about an hour he says, “You know, if you live to be 80 like my grandparents, I’ll just be some guy you knew 50 years earlier You might not remember me at all.” I said — Is that what you’ve been thinking about? Why you’ve been so quiet all this time? He said “Fuck No. I’ve been trying to figure out the math.”
Hockern is German for Competitive Sitting
This is a spoof, right?
tweet of the day
your destination, and beyond
Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal will serve as the gateway to a boutique hotel:
The lobby to a “boutique” hotel would seem to be an appropriate use for the old terminal, with its super-mod interior spaces. It’s got ready-made check-in counters and great spaces for lounges, bars, and restaurants with food by April Bloomfield. But whomever is chosen as architect to remake the space and build the adjacent new building will have some serious challenges, and those of us who are fans of the terminal, and believe in preservation, are going to need to be on our guard.
and God is The Red Balloon
Thoughts on cognitive evolution, a psychological theory of God, and Le Ballon Rouge:
If it weren’t for our theory of mind, we couldn’t follow the premise of the movie, let alone enjoy Lamorisse’s particular oeuvre of magical realism. When the balloon hovers outside Pascal’s flat after his grandmother tries to get rid of it, we perceive a charismatic personality that “wants” to be with the boy and is “trying” to leverage itself against the window panes; it “sees” Pascal and “knows” he’s inside. Our theory of mind is so effortlessly applied under such conditions that it’s impossible to see the scene any other way. In fact, part of what makes the movie so effective is that the young boy in the lead role genuinely believed that the balloon was alive. “The Red Balloon was my friend,” recalled a much older Pascal Lamorisse in a 2007 interview. “When you were filming it, did you really feel that way?” asked the reporter. “Yes, yes, he was a real character with a spirit of his own.”
Excerpted from Jesse Bering’s The Belief Instinct.
this kindly makes my head explode
Frank Mankiewicz once told me (I hope I’m remembering this right) that back around 1948 or 1950, he (Frank) and his fellow members of the Beverly Hills Democratic Committee considered drafting Ronald Reagan as their local congressional candidate. They decided against the idea because they thought Reagan was too liberal to win. How different history might have turned out if they had not made that monumental blunder. Reagan probably would still have become President, but he’d have been “our” President, if you get my drift. We’d probably have gotten single-payer!
