from the moderated comments
WRONG, i’m female and anime FREAK.
quote out of context
He has come to the most dreadful conclusion a literary man can come to, the conclusion that the ordinary view is the right one.
nobody understands debt
This has been passed around for a few days, but here is Krugman on the American deficit:
Deficit-worriers portray a future in which we’re impoverished by the need to pay back money we’ve been borrowing. They see America as being like a family that took out too large a mortgage, and will have a hard time making the monthly payments.
This is, however, a really bad analogy in at least two ways.
First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base. The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the income subject to taxation.
Second — and this is the point almost nobody seems to get — an over-borrowed family owes money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves.
from the comments
This kind of play always gets me excited. It’s easier for me to remember opening lines I like, though, because the ones I don’t like don’t stay with me. But there’s no denying that dislikes shape us too. Writing an opening sentence in a fiction is like walking up to a stranger on the street and saying excuse me…. In real encounters like this, all of human nature waits in that moment of turning to look at the person. We have secret lists of near-future possibilities waiting: panhandler? thief? long-lost friend? detective….? And we start considering the list before we actually even see the person. I like opening sentences that don’t let me feel comfortable about my list or my impulse to apply it. I like opening lines that say — something interesting is already happening. This power only comes when everything down to punctuation and single word choice is significantly managed.
Here’s a favorite opening sentence:
Worst First Sentence
Tyler Cowen posted the opening sentence of Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton’s Paul Clifford, a sentence that often gets mentioned as the worst opening sentence in the history of fiction.
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
I still contend the opening sentence from Richard Ford’s Independence Day is worse:
In Haddam, summer floats over tree-softened streets like a sweet lotion balm from a careless, languorous god, and the world falls in tune with its own mysterious anthems.
How do I feel about this car?
Dear Clusterflock: 2011
Thumbs up or thumbs down?
dear clusterflock
Torrent.
from the moderated comment spam
Yes! this jet train built for political prisoners to dump in vast wilderness of Siberia.swift and speedy.one time kommissar directed to design bureau…,more and more jet engines to be fitted for smooth travel.genadi enraskoi of kommissar is responsible to see daily progress of the project.he was so keen to travel by this nasty time capsule.but he died in road accident before the project reached at testing stage.another prototype TURBOPROP,train was destroy after its first experimental run.unfortunatly they can`t perfectly aligned the pushing and pulling engines.soviets are planned new type of tracks for this train.but after some serious controlling and safety problems they abandoned this project.
Life in a Day
Any of you watched Life in a Day? I watched it this afternoon as part of my Funemployment. I liked it, put together by many, “directed” by the Scott brothers (Ridley and Tony). I’d like to see other directors take the 4,500 hours of video submitted and do their own take. A sort of “Aristocrats” for directors.
I put a post up before it happened. I didn’t see anyone familiar in the film.
How do I feel about this . . . car?
dear clusterflock
Strong silent type.
How do I feel about this car?
dear clusterflock
:$
How do I feel about this car?
dear clusterflock
Favorite Beatles song.
dear clusterflock
Instapaper vs. Readabilty.
Whitney Cummings on lady writers
I talked to Whitney Cummings last night at a Paley Center event for her new sitcom Whitney. I asked her about her views on lady writers having difficulty in the industry and she had this to say:
“I don’t know, I guess I’m confused when people say that, I guess I don’t see that. I know the numbers might say that. I don’t think its because they’re not qualified, I think it’s because they don’t want to do it because it’s a shitty gig. It’s the same reason women don’t play football, because we’re not stupid enough to play a sport that you have to put on a helmet to get in there, it’s a bad idea. I think a lot of women are qualified to higher level writing jobs but they’re kind of like “This is torture, I’m going to do something that’s easier and more fun.” I think it’s the same reason that there’s less female comedians, it’s just a really grueling life and they are not masochistic, they’re smarter.”
I don’t know what I think about that, exactly.
Cadillac Ciel Concept
How do you feel about this car?
How do I feel about this car?
On the redemption of physical reality
“This is, of course, what (film theorist) Siegfried Kracauer meant when he spoke of the ‘redemption of physical reality.’ It’s also at the heart of Werner Herzog’s new documentary, The Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011), in which he attempts to retrieve the ‘now’ of prehistoric cave painters flickering into life – the analogy often used to explain the psychological power of film.”
In the same way that cutting ourselves off from any older aspect of our culture diminishes us by dimming our awareness of who we were and how that made us who we are, there is something lost when we turn away from the gray ones.
It’s quite a long piece, but it is worth reading. Bill Mesce’s The “Gray Ones” Fade To Black, brought to attention by Ebert.
dear clusterflock
Are there genres of sandwich?
from the comments
I guess the whole idea of needing to be apologetic about enjoying something is absurd on the face of it. The need says more about social conventions (and traps) than it does about the works being read. I guess experienced readers talking to other experienced readers often want to establish a sense of community by pushing works away as much as by pulling works in. But this is as much a mask as it is an invitation. Are there fictional worlds we should feel ashamed of enjoying? If so, the most ridiculous fiction to be named would be the one we make when we deny our actual affections. The adventure story, for instance, is a genre lost to the days of “men’s magazines.” But who is not still caught up instantly by the tale of a person (any person) who must take an inventory of personal qualities and abilities, and apply them with courage and hope to a hugely problematic and unexpected circumstance? Really, anything that gets my heart rate up and makes me see things anew is welcome by me. A story doesn’t have to do everything it’s possible for a story to do in order to be great.
dear clusterflock
Each decade’s most ridiculous song.
How do I feel about this car?
