Overheard in Wichita
“What with these meds I’m on, to have an orgasm takes an act of Congress.”
Well, yes. Yes it does. Much of the time.
Actual sentences from actual students
nth in a series . . .
“. . . and a small battery-powered carousal.”
Apparently, Obama is not just our new bicycle
Knowing this place’s audience, I know you’ll click through, but do be sure to read the testimonials (a word whose etymology takes on an extra special resonance in this context).
(via)
The Architect’s Brother: Photographs by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison
Selections from an exhibit now at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.
Pollenation
Flying Lesson
These aren’t digitally-manipulated images. From the exhibit guide:
[T]he ParkeHarrisons printed their photographs from large paper negatives made by cutting and pasting a variety of images together. The underlying mechanics of this technique–including the seams between individual images–are carefully painted out in the negative. A photographic print is then made, which is often painted with a layer of varnish or beeswax. This genuinely original technique, combined with their elaborate process of set construction, crosses many creative boundaries. The result is a fascinating hybrid of sculpture, performance, painting and photography.
More below, and some links
Read more
A brief adventure in New World iconography
Frieze depicting the Virgin of Guadalupe’s appearance to Juan Diego, over the east entrance to the old basilica dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico City. 1531-1709. Image taken October 2008 by the Mrs. Click to enlarge.
Last month, as part of my sabbatical work, the Mrs. and I took a brief trip to Mexico City to see and take some pictures of colonial era paintings and architecture. One of our visits was to the old basilica, in part to see this and another frieze and, in part, so the Mrs. could see the retablos pilgrims have left in honor of miracles they attributed to the Virgin’s intercession on their behalf. (This was the Mrs.’ first trip to Mexico City, so we did a fair amount of sightseeing as well . . . shhhhh! Don’t tell nobody).
Anyway. On the day we took this picture, I was more interested in the European-style hat on the ground directly below Juan Diego and the maguey plant in the lower-right corner. (Pulque, a fermented drink made from the juice of the maguey, was drunk by the Indians on her feast day, December 12.) But as the Mrs. and I played around with cropping the image she had taken and we enlarged it, I really noticed for the first time the small animal to the left of the maguey plant.
We thought (at first) that it was a squirrel. However, . . . Read more
From Russia, With Love
“Misses Palin”
Ponder that title for a bit. James Joyce would have applauded.
(link)
Barack Obama as fantasy football partner
Rick Reilly just had to know:
“Now, you’re the expert,” he began. “And I’ll gladly be the junior partner in this, but I really think we should take Drew Brees. He could have a big week. Oakland’s secondary is a wreck.”
Ohhhh, so that’s how it’s going to be. “Well, I like Carson Palmer,” I said. “He’s due for a big week, plus he plays in Ohio and I figure that’s a state you need, so …”
He looked at me like I’d stuck my elbow in his soup. “Man, this is more important than politics!” he insisted. “This is football!”
This is a man who could potentially audit me forever. We paid $7.3M for Brees.
He wanted Clinton Portis. I wanted Adrian Peterson. We took Portis ($6.6M). He wanted Brandon Marshall. I wanted Bernard Berrian. We took Marshall ($5.7M).
Doesn’t work well with others. Check.
Have to admit, though, he knows his stuff. Turns out, he played a little. He was a tight end in ninth grade until a coach told him to “trample” an opponent’s back. He gave up football for hoops. In 2004, when Mike Ditka considered running against him for Senate, Obama—remembering how Ditka let William Perry score a Super Bowl TD instead of Walter Payton—said that “anybody who would give the ball to Refrigerator Perry instead of Sweetness doesn’t have very good judgment.” Ditka didn’t run. “Too bad,” Obama says. “We were hoping he would.”
Likes to bait Hall of Famers. Check.
Read the whole thing. It’s all in fun, but beneath the fun it’s the same guy we’ve seen in the campaign.
(link)
A new reason I’ll miss David Foster Wallace
Here are the concluding paragraphs from his short talk, “Some Remarks on Kafka’s Funniness From Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed,” in Consider the Lobster and Other Essays:
What Kafka’s stories have . . . is a grotesque, gorgeous, and thoroughly modern complexity, an ambivalence that becomes the multivalent Both/And logic of the, quote, “unconscious,” which I personally think is just a fancy word for soul. Kafka’s humor–not only not neurotic but anti-neurotic, heroically sane, is, finally, a religious humor, but religious in the manner of Kierkegaard and Rilke and the Psalms, a harrowing spirituality against which even Ms. [Flannery] O’Connor’s bloody grace seems a little bit easy, the souls at stake pre-made.
And it is this, I think, that makes Kafka’s wit inaccessible to children whom our culture has trained to see jokes as entertainment and entertainment as reassurance. It’s not that students don’t “get” Kafka’s humor but that we’ve taught them to see humor as something you get–the same way we’ve taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. It’s hard to put into words, up at the blackboard, believe me. You can tell [students] that maybe it’s good they don’t “get” Kafka. You can ask them to imagine his stories as all about a kind of door. To envision us approaching and pounding on this door, increasingly hard, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it; we don’t know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and ramming and kicking. That, finally, the door opens . . . and it opens outward–we’ve been inside what we wanted all along. Das ist komish. (64-65)
Great moments in archaeological deduction
“We know they were there because they were remarkably messy.”
–Thomas Gilbert, University of Copenhagen
Dear clusterflock
I come seeking advice and counsel . . .
I’m in the market for an in-town bicycle. Because I’ll be on sabbatical this coming fall, I’ll be giving it a try as my fair-weather transportation till winter sets in for real in November; if it goes well, I’ll be using it as commuter transport in the spring. Home to work is 11 miles one way. The streets on my route aren’t in the best of shape.
$200 is my upper limit. Sturdiness is paramount. What bikes should I look at/stay away from?
Dear Clusterflock
(As per this) Have you ever made an unfortunate choice for a first-date movie?
I’ll start: In high school, I took a young lady to see Ordinary People. That was the last date, too . . .
“Owning” vs. “licensing;” or, will e-bookworms gnaw our entrails?
Over at Crooked Timber, John Holbo has a post on some questions Kindle raises regarding “ownership.” First, he quotes from Kindle’s owner’s agreement:
You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content. In addition, you may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, bypass, modify, defeat or circumvent security features that protect the Digital Content.
And then . . .
I am annoyed to think that I might pay almost full price for a book that I don’t technically own. I’m just ‘licensing’.
Sheila earns the ’Flock a hat-tip . . .
. . . and from Andrew Sullivan, no less!
Kudos, Ms. Ryan. And watch out, Clusterflock servers, wherever you are.
Did Unitarianism become too dogmatic for someone?
Dudeism.com: The Church of the Latter-Day Dude
(via Winston of Nobody Asked . . .)
Squid pro quo
Briefly Quoted. “Do you think she could talk sexy so I can pinch my squid? … Obama has cute ears.”
— An unidentified rogue caller on a media conference call with campaign staffers for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday, talking dirty before the moderator cut him off.
from Roll Call, via The Plank (Note: the comments are worth the read; this post’s title is lifted from one of them; also, look for williamyard’s contributions)
Y’all
Crooks and Liars–yes, that Crooks and Liars–actually linked to a post of mine today. Here you go.
I’m more stunned than anything else.
Detroit Octane (Ba)racks the house
“Barack Obama-sistible”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPLtotzqH0M[/youtube]
And . . . because you KNOW you want to know . . .
“The Making of ‘Barack Obama-sistible’”:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2-sRGIk5SE[/youtube]
I think the primary season has officially jumped the shark.
“Area codes”
* “Ludacris heavily favors the East Coast to the West, save for Seattle, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Las Vegas.”
* “Ludacris travels frequently along the Boswash corridor.”
* “There is a ‘ho belt‘ phenomenon nearly synonymous with the ‘Bible Belt’.”
* “Ludacris has hoes in the entire state of Maryland.”
* “Ludacris has a disproportionate ho-zone in rural Nebraska. He might favor white women as much as he does black women, or perhaps, girls who farm.”
* “Ludacris’s ideal ‘ho-highway’ would be I-95.”
* “Ludacris has hoes in the Midway and Wake Islands. Only scientists are allowed to inhabit the Midway Islands, and only military personnel may inhabit the Wake Islands. Draw your own conclusion.”
(That last one sounds like a parody of an entry on Chuck Norris Facts)
(Via Strange Maps, by way of Matthew Yglesias)
in which a flocker imitates Rosanne Rosannadanna
Remember this?
Well . . .
(But surely, Sheila et al., we can continue perpetuating the “Swedish Imperialists!” meme.)
They yclep us doormats . . .
Two Danish academics, Klaus Kjöller of the University of Copenhagen and Tröls Mylenberg of the University of Southern Denmark, conducted a thorough analysis of the names used in the IKEA catalog. They concluded that the Swedish names are reserved for the “better” products, and that even Norwegian names manage to make it into the bed department. But the “lesser” products bear Danish names like “Roskilde” and “Köge.”…Upholstered furniture, bookcases and multimedia consoles, for example, are named after small Swedish cities, while Norwegian towns serve as the namesakes of beds, dressers and hallway furniture. Names of Finnish origin grace the company’s chairs and dining tables. As it turns out, nothing is random at IKEA. “Doormats and runners, as well as inexpensive wall-to-wall carpeting are third-class, if not seventh-class, items when it comes to home furnishings,” Kjöller is quoted as saying in Nyhedsavisen, a Danish free paper. The stuff that goes on the floor, Kjöller said, is about as low as it gets. He accused the home furnishings company of “Swedish imperialism.”
(from Org Theory, via Law and Letters)
Um . . .
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9NUPLaoUdo[/youtube]
Isle of Lucy
“And over here, sir, is the lovely, secluded Vitameatavegamin Cove.”
(Go here for context.)
“Be nice”
Thanks to Andrew’s Fry & Laurie post below, I browsed around a bit and found . . .
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=XdRfhARwGoI[/youtube]
Neill Cumpston reviews Grindhouse
Some of you may remember Cumpston’s spot-on critique of The Return of the King. So who do you want reviewing Tarantino and Rodriguez? Pauline Kael?
That’s what I thought.
First 300 and now this? I think the summer of 2007 just went, “Hey, let me take you to a free taquito buffet” and you eat all these taquitos and then the summer goes, “Here comes a foot to your stomach”, but you go, “It’s full of taquitos” but it’s too late – there’s a boot in your stomach only the boot is really a motorcycle and you puke up a bikini girl who blows you and then kills your boss with a hammer.
That’s what GRINDHOUSE is. It’s a taquito buffet that you puke up after getting hit with a motorcycle, and it turns into a bikini chick that blows you and kills your boss with a hammer.
Rodriguez and Tarantino probably don’t read this site, but someone should tell them they can use that last paragraph as a quick blurb.
(link)
Trailer for Rififi (1955)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv-JWH8S6Z4[/youtube]
A remake of this film, starring Al Pacino in the title role, is now in production.
More here
