For Deron
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A likable out of date time eon is the award of a well-spent youth.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.
From the comments
We’re all made better by those who choose to love us.
Errol Morris’s favorite books
For me, the perfect work of art has to have three basic ingredients — sick, sad, and funny — in equal measure.
What deeper or more satisfying relationship can you imagine than one with a dead dog?
Bierce had a simple idea: Life is a grotesque dream, interrupted by death.
It’s Christianity without the hope.
I dare anyone to read it without an immediate and overwhelming desire to open up your veins in the tub.
I have found that self-fulfilling prophecies are the only kind of prophecy that is really reliable.
Maiming’s what I prefer. Psychologically.
In a pre-election missive to Gordon Brown on his Cameron strategy, the (sadly) fictional Malcolm Tucker simultaneously addresses American health care, the $25 meth baby, and the membership of clusterflock:
In the final week we’ve got to promote in the public imagination the role of the odd, the pimply, and the cerebral. The people who are going to take away your child and exchange it for a voucher, give you a slot-operated hospital bed and get you to swipe your credit card as you’re heaved on the air ambulance. And other actually very brilliant ideas.
Ask Swearengen
Dear Al,
My boss just fired me because I said some stupid things about him in a magazine. Was I over the line?
General Disarray
—
General,
Over time, your quickness with a cocky rejoinder must have gotten you many punches in the face. You want a donkey’s attention, you bring a fucking pole down between his ears. Enjoy retirement.
Al
Ask Swearengen
Dear Al,
Although I don’t usually like to keep secrets, I recently ordered a bicycle in anticipation of moving to a house in the city. While I obviously wouldn’t try to hide my bicycle from my partner, I did neglect to tell her about the purchase at the time. I wanted to have the bike so that there would be something tangible associated with the expenditure. Alas, the vendor–who had promised discretion–mailed a postcard to our current home thanking me for the purchase. While the discovery was coincidental, I feel remorse over withholding what was a happy moment for me. What should I do?
Pussywhipped in Parsippany
—
Dear P’Whipped,
Oh, a turn of events. Your partner calls it a coincidence. So, what with this coincidence and turn of events starin’ me in the fuckin’ face and five other fuckin’ things I’m supposed to be payin’ attention to, I still make you a sensible proposal and you answer by insulting me in my own joint. Fuck off.
Al
Ask Swearengen
This is a revival of sorts (but without tents or snakes). On another blog several years ago, I introduced an advice column called “Ask Swearengen”, in which the proprietor of Deadwood’s first saloon, the Gem, dispensed advice on matters of life and love. At risk of introducing a glut of advice columns to the ‘flock, I surmise from people’s “7 favorite” answers that Al’s help might be just what Doc Cochran ordered.
Dear Al,
This oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico really troubles me. I find myself staying up late at night, unable to turn off CNN. When I sleep, I dream of oily dolphin carcasses washing up in Biloxi. I don’t trust BP to fix this, but I don’t know who else can stop it. How should I handle my despair?
- All Lubed Up and Nowhere to Go
—
Dear “Lubed”,
Pain or damage don’t end the world. Or despair or fucking beatings. The world ends when you’re dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man… and give some back.
Al
My New Motto
by way of Deron to Sheila to Cindy to me:
“Just pitch me in the pussy dump.”
from the comments
The bug will eat you when the bug eats.
Gertrude’s Ghost
A long complicated sentence should force itself upon you, make you know yourself knowing it and the comma, well at the most a comma is a poor period that it lets you stop and take a breath but if you want to take a breath you ought to know yourself that you want to take a breath.
– Gertrude Stein, qtd. here.
Quote Out of Context
I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.
from the comments
To rely on the usefulness of fear is to affirm the efficacy of tyranny.
Long Horn Meat
why aphorisms are cynical
A good single sentence saying can’t require background evidencing or further explanation. It must be instantly recognizable as true. It also needs to be news to the listener. Most single sentences that people can immediately verify as true they already believe. What’s left? One big answer is things that people don’t believe or think about much for lack of wanting to, despite evidence. Drawing attention to these is called cynicism.
(via marginal revolution)
badge of honor
When I was growing up, in Ann Arbor, Mich., there was a little debate: Should school officials try to prevent black students from using the N-word? I don’t believe the issue was ever settled. And this brings up the question of whether “teabagger” could be kind of a conservative N-word: to be used in the family, but radioactive outside the family.
Overheard
“And then things took a 360 for the worse.”
My new motto.
All that we See is Vision,
from Generated Organs gone as soon as come, Permanent in The Imagination, Consider’d as Nothing by the Natural Man.
(William Blake. From the text accompanying his engraving of the Laocoön. Circa 1826-1827.)
The old saying is
“If you don’t like the weather in Texas, wait fifteen minutes.”
My saying is, “If you don’t like the weather in Texas, you’re a lot smarter than I thought you were.”
Exposure, Robert Fripp’s
marvelous 1979 release, features a number of spoken snippets from J.G. Bennett, my favorite of which is, “If you know you have an unpleasant nature and dislike people, this is no obstacle to work.”
“Boogie On”
I got home too late last night
I was being too groovy
I went and did a terrible thing
I forgot to boogie
–Ten Years After
Victor Hugo on trickle-down
“We live in a somber society. How to get ahead, succeed–that is the lesson that trickles down, drop by drop, from the overriding corruption on high.”
“Succeed: That’s the whole idea. Prosperity presupposes Capability. Win the lottery and you are a clever man. The winner is revered. Be born with a silver spoon in your mouth, that’s all that counts. Be lucky and the rest will fall into place. Be fortunate, and you’ll be thought great.”
“They mistake the constellations of the cosmic void for the stars made by ducks’ feet in the soft mud of the bog.”
(p. 45: Les Miserables, trans. by Julie Rose, 2008)
George Eliot
“Truly,” said Mr Lyon, smiling, “the uncertainty of things is a text rather too wide and obvious for fruitful application; and to discourse of it is, as one may say, to bottle up the air and make a present of it to those who are already standing out of doors.”
–Felix Holt, the Radical (p. 380, H.M. Caldwell edition)
Breathe Dead Hippo
You can’t breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence. (Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad.)
Three Political Aphorisms
When the ruthless win, there is no good they are holding in reserve.
People who don’t know their friends when things go bad will never care to know you.
Republicans don’t want taxes raised–because they don’t need that in order to get their hands on all of your savings.
