May 2013
67 posts
I know what acting is. I understand the concept. Doesn’t matter. I hate Joffrey so much that I hate the fucking actor who plays him. He has some Joffrey in him that’s how he’s so convincing! I say we burn that guy once the show is over, just in case.
The customer who has taken to calling me Disco Tugboat is my favorite customer.
It would be funny if you got into heaven to just keep bringing up the fact that Jesus was a Jew to Jesus. Like ask him about every stereotype.
Hey Jesus, do you like bagels?
When in doubt, read the last paragraph of A Moveable Feast:
There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is...
“Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be “white”— they would be Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and others engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity.”
― Cornel West, Race Matters
Sarah Robertson: At the time, it didn't seem like there was much of a choice.
Eric Dale: It never does.
“A deepity (a term coined by the daughter of my late friend, computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum) is a proposition that seems both important and true – and profound – but that achieves this effect by being ambiguous. On one reading, it is manifestly false, but it would be earth-shaking if it were true; on the other reading, it is true but trivial. The unwary listener picks up the glimmer of...
“How to compose a successful critical commentary:
1. Attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your target says: “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
2. List any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. Mention anything you have learned from your...
“As we saw in “The Da Vinci Code,” there is no thriller-plot convention, however...”
– Joan Acocella, Dante in Translation and in Dan Brown’s “Inferno”
“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still...”
– Thoreau.
Adam’s fears include rats and going to the grave with the song still in him.
Somewhere Dan Harmon says that one of his goals for Community was to make people add a drawer to their filing cabinet.
He wanted to make it impossible for anyone to mentally file the show under a category that already exists.
I love that goal so much.
Make people add a drawer to their filing cabinet.
“I moved to Chicago in the early 1990s and I studied improvisation there. I...”
– Amy Poehler
“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is...”
– Nabakov.
(Man, that is a fucking interesting way to use the phrase “common sense”)
I suspected a lot of you would disagree with me on the highlighting thing and that’s part of the beauty of books as objects. They tell the story of how we like to read them. They’re highlighted or not, underlined or not, have notes in them or not, are in pristine condition or not. They have stories associated with them. Where we bought them, when we read them, how we read...
“They should make a highlighter that fades after a period of time, like maybe one...”
– do-over.
(I think this is a fantastic idea.)
ryanjjohn asked: It really yanks my crank when someone goes through a book and highlights passages they relate to. I understand wanting to go back and reread things, but that shit is in there forever. It skeeves me out. What are your thoughts on this?
Do not put newspaper clippings in your books! This shit gets me heated. You’re ruining the binding of the book and you don’t need that stupid clipping. The book has all the stuff you need for the book right inside it. The author put it there.
“We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither...”
– Milan Kundera
Remember, music sounds better in the summer.
It’s easy to imagine a homicide detective who is always pulling people aside to ask them a few questions and then after he pulls them aside he just does a loud fart and walks away chuckling.
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
– Mike Tyson
“One reason we rush so quickly to the vulgar satisfactions of judgment, and love...”
– Tim Kreider
“Perhaps the reason we so often experience happiness only in hindsight, and that...”
– Tim Kreider
Grubhub is like one of my closest friends now. They called me the other day and corrected a mistake they’d made that I hadn’t even noticed. I really felt like they had my back. And I have theirs. I love you, Grubhub.
“I’ve demonstrated an impressive resilience in the face of valuable life...”
– Tim Krieder
Don't make fun of renowned Dan Brown - Telegraph →
This is an absurdly good thing that makes fun of Dan Brown.
EDIT: Apparently other people (like my future roommate) had already posted this, so me posting it wasn’t really necessary. However I’ll leave it up in the spirit of being repetitive and repetitive.
The Case Against Empathy →
You should read this. I don’t know if I agree with it but it’s worth thinking about.
“Let a six-year-old girl with brown hair need thousands of dollars for an...”
– Thomas Schelling
I don’t seem to have my zen place with me today. I’m getting super annoyed by everything.
Intervention? Intervention? Intervention?
I should order a burger from the grubhub.
Some people come to my bookstore and they have like suitcases or backpacks or whatever with them and they don’t want to carry around this heavy shit, they want to put it down somewhere behind the counter in my fucking space. So I find this habit really rude and fucking entitled and annoying. When I bring shit places I expect to have to be in charge of that shit, I don’t hand that shit...
“Nostalgia was better in the old days!”
“Casual racism” would be a shitty nickname to have.
Part of our emergency is that it’s so tempting to do this sort of thing now, to retreat to narrow arrogance, pre-formed positions, rigid filters, the ‘moral clarity’ of the immature. The alternative is dealing with massive, high-entropy amounts of info and ambiguity and conflict and flux; it’s continually discovering new areas of personal ignorance and delusion. In sum, to really try to be...
“Our culture is obsessed with real events because we experience hardly any.”
– andrew o’hehir
An Open Letter to Adults Who Are Supposedly Deeply...
Listen guys,
I fucking doubt it.
Let’s start with the caveats. I understand that games played with curved sticks and a ball can be found in the histories of many cultures. Hockey is actually a family of sports. But with the exception of air hockey, they all use sticks and are stupid. I know, I know, you like the ice hockey.
Sure you do. Listen, want to go to a bar and watch some field...
Hockey fans.
To whom should I write an open letter?
1 tag
An Open Letter to Documentary Enthusiasts With an...
Guys,
I recently saw the most unbelievable documentary ever. It was about these crazy terrorist dudes who took over Alcatraz in 1996. Why don’t more people know about this series of events? I had no idea about it. And the footage this documentary crew had was unreal. These terrorists were actually American—so am I using the right term actually? Anyway, they had like crazy weapons...
An Open Letter From The Pineapple Juice Industry...
No. Absolutely not an option. You can’t purchase a normal drinkable amount of pineapple juice. The pineapple juice people have made their decision on this. We are not bending.
And frankly, fuck you for wanting a conveniant container. Buy a cola, you pathetic savage. You don’t understand pineapple juice obviously. We don’t serve this magic in gas station whore sizes like every other beverage. We...
I’m going to get back into writing open letters. That’s gonna be my jam.
An Open Letter To Tumblr.
Dear Tumblr,
I am quiting Twitter and Tumblr. It’s just time. I want to spend more time writing absurdly insincere open letters. Also maybe pursuing the art of beekeeping and/or beefinding. I am just tired of the Twitter jokes and puns. Beesides I beelieve I would bee an excellent beetrader or rare bee dealer beecause I beefriend and beetray people so skillfully. I truly enjoy the cruel thrill...
“THE ALLIGATOR IS AN ANACHRONISM THAT CAN EAT YOU!”
– Karen Russell, Swamplandia!
“The future is something you haven’t thought of yet.”
– Don Draper
So let’s go over these facts:
Paul Thomas Anderson is making a movie that is an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s relatively accessible detective novel, Inherent Vice.
Benicio Del Toro and Joaquin Phoenix are going to be in it.
EDIT:
Bonus quote!
What, I should only trust good people? Man, good people get bought and sold every day. Might as well trust somebody evil once in a...
