March 2010
26 posts
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An Actor's Epitaph
ALIQUOTIES MORTUUS SUM
SED SIC NUNQUAM.
“I’ve died many times before,
but never like this!”
-Epitaph of Leburna, an elderly manager of a troupe of mime actors from the Roman city of Siscia (modern Sisak, in Croatia)
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Some Silly and Serious Thoughts on Old Photographs
I really love old photographs. Give me a book of Civil War daguerreotypes and a Tahitian Treat and I am set for the afternoon! I’ve been trying to articulate my fascination with old photographs recently. Why is one picture more interesting than another just because it happens to be a lot older? It’s a good question, and I think it has something to do with certain intangible aspects of...
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CONSUME. DESTROY. REPEAT. CONSUME. DEST...
I’m a very poor, struggling writer, so I have immediately sold-out and put tons of adverts on my sidebar in a desperate attempt to “MONETIZE MY CONTENT™”. Click on all of them for me, daily, and buy shit through Amazon, Textbooks and AbeBooks through here. I chose some non-evil places where you can find good stuff-AbeBooks, especially, is a great website wherein you can buy...
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American Liberty
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Celan at the Beach
I’m not quite sure what compelled me to bring along the Collected Poems of Paul Celan (translated by Michael Hamburger-no relation to Neil) to Manhattan Beach yesterday; he’s not your typical beach read, and this sort of poem doesn’t complement a vigorous game of beach volleyball at all:
THE BROACHED YEAR with its mouldering crusts of delusion bread. Drink from my...
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St. Patrick's Day
I WENT out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering...
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“AUGE DER ZEIT (TIME’S EYE)
[Dies ist das Auge der Zeit:
es blickt...”
– Paul Celan (trans. Michael Hamburger)
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“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”
– Jerome K. Jerome
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Keith Jarrett and the Audience
Alex Ross has a typically brilliant essay on the solemn, funereal atmosphere that pervades the classical music hall. In short-audiences at classical music concerts are made to feel very nervous about making noise, as if some spontaneous applause (say, following a spectacular symphonic movement, or a particularly excellent piano run) will make the bread fail to transubstantiate. It’s one of...
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“יחיו מתיך נבלתי יקומון הקיצו ורננו שכני עפר כי טל אורת טלך וארץ רפאים תפיל׃
...”
– Isaiah 26:19
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“One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.”
– Erich Fromm
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Last night's dream
Lauren and I are invited to Al Gore (who at times becomes Burt Bacharach)’s house for some sort of presentation. At some point we leave, and Al Gore’s wife (not Tipper-rather a young, attractive brunette) asks us if she and her young son can stay overnight with us. She has no place to go. She is exhausted from presenting about energy vortices and crystals all day. Lauren says no, I say...
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A Closer Look at Evolutionary Faces →
(above: Homo erectus)
If you must ask: yes, yes I would.
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“Yes, I too like to admire great men, but only those whose works I do not...”
– Lichtenberg
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"Birdemic: Shock and Terror" VS. "The Room"
James Nguyen left his native Vietnam with a dream. What the dream was, I really can’t say. Don’t know the man. Perhaps his dream was to make a lot of money in Silicon Valley, designing computer software. If so, his dream came true. Or, maybe, his dream was to make a very bad film about eagles and falcons waging war on a small Northern California town. With Birdemic, a full-length...
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Consolation
In the years following the murder of daughter Kayleigh Lee Ellery, Mr. Tadd Ellery has found comfort knowing that murderer Mr. Carl Wilkins (currently serving a life-term in Pine Bluff Penitentiary, Hazlitt County Arkansas), will forever be denied the quiet joy that comes with watching a humorous new television commercial, or a playfully clever viral clip on Vimeo.
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