Through Three Layers Of Glass #2. Bath Abbey Churchyard, Bath, Somerset
Quote Out of Context
[The] judge said his sado-masochistic party had nothing to do with Nazis and was a private matter. Now he is fighting in 21 other countries to clean the internet of images of his flailed buttocks and has most recently taken the battle to Strasbourg, where he is fighting for the privacy of others.
(via)
Looking at houses in Marfa
I thought
“I wish I had six thousand dollars, I could hire each Clusterflocker to make or do something for me.”
Then I thought;
“Oh I bet I could do it for three grand.”
photo out of context
(via marginal revolution)
Amy said
I wonder what Roger Ebert would say if I sent him a tweet that said, “Roger, I bet you’re a freak in bed — am I right?”
Adam Gopnik on the Internet Mind
One of the things that John Brockman’s collection on the Internet and the mind illustrates is that when people struggle to describe the state that the Internet puts them in they arrive at a remarkably familiar picture of disassociation and fragmentation…
…The odd thing is that this complaint, though deeply felt by our contemporary Better-Nevers, is identical to Baudelaire’s perception about modern Paris in 1855, or Walter Benjamin’s about Berlin in 1930, or Marshall McLuhan’s in the face of three-channel television (and Canadian television, at that) in 1965.
– Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker via Ryan Bigge.
from the comments
Just to add to the drama of that moment. We were truly in the “hinterlands of Yemen” in a jeep. We stopped to refresh ourselves. Across the valley from where we were parked, perhaps a mile or more, was this village. When the villagers saw us they streamed out and up the valley toward us. Spying our youngest son, blond head glowing in the sun, an old lady snatched him from my arms, turned and around and carried him off, down into the valley and up the other side, until we saw his gleaming blondness disappear into the depths of the village. Our hearts were in our throats as we saw him vanish. We waited a half hour, and then the stream of people returned, Derek in the old woman’s arms at the front of the procession, returning him to us–yes, indeed, smiling. A never-to-be-forgotten moment.
I said
See, if I do an Amy said with that, people will think I put my butt on your face.
Image Out of Context
(via)
Voltaire & Rousseau
A secondhand bookshop in Glasgow’s Otago Lane, stuffed FULL of books (and a cat)
it’s kinda like finding out Darth Vader was Luke’s father
Except in this case it was good that spawned evil (very sort of, not really).
best obit ever?
During his life he excelled at mediocrity. He loved to hear and tell jokes, especially short ones due to his limited attention span. He had a life long love affair with bacon, butter, cigars and bourbon. You always knew what Fred was thinking much to the dismay of his friend and family…
3426 Dutton Drive
Atlas Shrugged Trailer
(via marginal revolution)
from the spam
If a train departing Philadelphia, moving at seventy-five mph and moving to the north hits a mime, is there adequate information to correctly answer the question: is there a minimum velocity required to kill a mime?
Yemen
I was the oldest of three — a middle sister, a younger brother. We stopped on the road to the Red Sea beneath a village in the mountains. The villagers streamed down to us, curious, friendly. When they saw my brother, they lifted him from my mother’s arms, his yellow head bobbing, the line of villagers a curve against the slope, and passed and carried him through the village until he was returned to us, smiling.
from the comments
I like Bass’s thoughts here too, particularly his comment about a commitment to quality that some make and some don’t–and that it’s important to make it whether anybody else thinks so or not. When it comes to money, though–and of having to make a living–I have to say that my heart goes out to the many people out there who desperately want to make that commitment to quality, but then must turn and look at a hungry child or a car that might break down at any moment, and are pressed by obligations to take the quicker path. This commitment Bass speaks of is heroic in nature, but it is seen by many as a luxury–much coveted but a luxury nonetheless. America’s love of art, for instance, is a love of “successful art,” which means that all of the struggle is rendered generally invisible until a person reaches the point of being asked about such things–and thus it’s always the heroic version that gets told.
from the spam
If it were not for the squirrels which had taken command over my mental faculties I would totally agree with you, but they won’t allow me the chance.
stamps of disapproval
Twelve stamps by Heather K. Phillips, via Swissmiss.
from the moderated comments
What is really missing: Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard is one of the most translated and read authors of our time, be it his fiction or non-fictions books. Contrary to the New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright, L. Ron Hubbard never even tried to make a living out of bias and rumors but is known for straight and honest communication with his readers and left it up to them to make up their own mind. As he said, “I have led an adventurous life and it would possibly be entertaining to read, but I doubt such a work would shed any background light on my researches and would not clarify my intentions or why I developed Dianetics and Scientology… . My intentions in life did not include making a story of myself. I only wanted to know man and understand him. I did not really care if he did not understand me, so long as he understood himself. I was the lesser part of my project. Some say this is unfortunate, but I do not find it so. I did not live to be understood, but to understand.” How right he was when he wrote this in 1966.
fyi
Pixelmator is hosting the Daring Fireball RSS feed this week, and is offering a transitional price of $29 for its image editing software. If you are looking for a Photoshop alternative, you could do worse.
quote out of context
Writing is design.
Casting the Egyptian Movie
Hypothetically speaking, if Hollywood makes a movie about the events in Egypt, what would that movie look like?
To do our part, we’ve taken the liberty of lining up the perfect cast of who should star in the sure-to-be award-winning film “420 Hours.”
While we’d love to shoot for authenticity, for this to film play big in the West it’ll probably have to be a Hollywood blockbuster where everyone speaks English with a vaguely British accent. So let’s operate on that premise. Assuming the producers find the perfect screenwriter/director combination — we’re thinking urban specialist Fernando Meirelles, City of God director, at the helm and Syriana/Traffic writer Stephen Gaghan on the script — the film will only be successful if the leading actor has the dramatic chops to pull it off.
So who’s got the gravitas to star as Hosni Mubarak? There’s only one option: Ian McShane.
It’s both funny and depressing because Hollywood probably has this in the works already.
Be my valentine
Flowers wilt. Chocolates melt. Roaches are forever.
