Monday, October 26, 2009

Michael Chabon: We’re All Amateurs Here

Perhaps there is no perfect word for the kind of people I have raised my children to be: a word that encompasses obsessive scholarship, passionate curiosity, curatorial tenderness, and an irrepressible desire to join in the game, to inhabit in some manner—through writing, drawing, dressing up, or endless conversational riffing and Talmudic debate—the world of the endlessly inviting, endlessly inhabitable work of popular art. The closest I have ever come for myself is amateur, in all the best senses of the word: a lover; a devotee; a person driven by passion and obsession to do it—to explore the imaginary world—oneself. And if we must accept the inevitable connotation of hopeless ineptitude that amateur carries, then at least let us stipulate that we shall be hopeless and inept like Max Fischer, the hero of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore: in the most passionate, heedless, and whole-hearted way.

via litwit
via tor.com

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Quote-y, Quote, Quote, Quote.

“This is the true joy in life, to be used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, to be thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap. To be a force of nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am a member of a community and as a member it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can before I die. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch that I want to make burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

George Bernard Shaw

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Wild.


Ahem.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
- Mary Oliver



Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Um.

Holy shit monkeys.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Book Nerds Unite.

For some bizarre reason this made me so happy.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Better Than Sausages?

"A report filed by a Barrington-Inverness police officer says Eni Skoien found her husband in the children's playroom with two prostitutes. But Skoien disputes the report and says he's working to correct it.

The report says Eni Skoien allegedly swung a toy guitar at her husband and punched him. Police say she's charged with misdemeanor domestic battery and a 21-day restraining order was issued."

More here.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Mike Leigh = Me.

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200903/?read=interview_leigh

Thursday, January 29, 2009

TRUMPETS!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXU9Ur9QznE

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Laziness has its own rewards.

Ha, HAH!

Praise to the Spaghetti Monster

For my husband:

"[I]t is one thing to disbelieve in God; it is quite another to never feel a twinge of doubt about one's own disbelief. And just as the Christian who has never entertained doubts about his faith probably hasn't thought hard enough about the matter, the atheist who perceives the Christian God and the flying spaghetti monster as equally ridiculous hypotheses really needs to get out more often," - Ross Douthat

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Bush's Last Presser

This strikes me as the thing that has sickened me about this douchebag all along. I went to school with guys like this my whole life. The entitled, the shallow, the self-serving. The guys who sweet talks the nerdy girl to get her Chem notes only to talk shit about her as soon as she's out of ear shot. The guy who makes the most inane, ill-informed comment in class and then thinks it's so funny. He's the kid who tried to kick birds during recess. And the guy who never worked hard at anything - except making sure he got away. I fucking hate that guy.

A reader's comments from my new favorite gay republican:

"I watched it through twice. It was extremely revealing. When discussing his "mistakes," Bush focused on whether to land his plane in Baton Rouge and the press coverage of Abu Ghraib. So he understood his role not as a decision maker and allocator of resources, but as a television personality--a media interface. That really has been his role, I think. It suggests at minimum a superficiality about his job, a failure to connect to the deeper importance of policy. Everything is understood in the Rovian terms of advancing an electoral agenda. But then also the lack of compassion for victims--the mocking looks--it all suggested a frat boy arrogance to me. This needs to be preserved for posterity. Bush showed his true self. And it was extremely ugly."

More here.