April 2010
March 2010
“It’s the special skill of an adolescent to imagine the end of the world as an adjunct to his own discontent.”
—[don delillo, UNDERWORLD]
False Charges of Racism, Tanning Edition →
krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
paul krugman: “So a guest on Glenn Beck claimed that health reform is racist because it imposes a special tax on indoor tanning salons. That’s ridiculous, of course. Everyone knows that the tanning tax was an act of personal vindictiveness aimed at the House Minority Leader.”
The pope is not above the law. →
slate.com
christopher hitchens: “For Ratzinger, the sole test of a good priest is this: Is he obedient and discreet and loyal to the traditionalist wing of the church? We have seen this in his other actions as pope, notably in the lifting of the excommunication of four bishops who were members of the so-called Society of St. Pius X, that group of extreme-right-wing schismatics founded by Father Marcel Lefebvre and including the Holocaust-denying Richard Williamson. We saw it when he was a cardinal, defending the cultish and creepy Legion of Christ, whose fanatical leader managed to father some children as well as to shield the molestation of many more. And we see it today, when countless rapists and pederasts are being unmasked. One of those accused in the Verona deaf-school case is the late archbishop of the city, Giuseppe Carraro. Next up, if our courts can find time, will be the Rev. Donald McGuire, a serial offender against boys who was also the confessor and “spiritual director” for Mother Teresa. (He, too, found the confessional to be a fine and private place and made extensive use of it.)”
[catholics sometimes strike me as that cliche of the battered wife: she’ll stick through until the end because at least she wasn’t beaten to death this time.]
meaghan o’connell: “I remember someone told me he was surprised by how nice and shy I was in real life, that his expectations of me based on my Twitter feed or something were much different. What I told him was that he didn’t know me yet.
When I said that I realized that I felt like I was more myself on the Internet than I am in person with someone I have just met. Which may sound counter-intuitive but makes perfect sense to me. I think it’s true! I am a writer. I’ve written in a journal for as long as I could read and write. This is the same to me, almost; it used to be more so but it’s still the same compulsion/outlet (cough). And I usually pretend nobody reads it, anyway.
But to your second question: I have no idea. I don’t consciously hide or exaggerate any parts of my personality, nor do I think too much about my personality, or compartmentalize it or try to define it…”
[curious thing about the internet is that over the just the last eight months or so, this has been swirling around my head.
four years ago this summer, corey and i began interacting on myspace (me there!). which in itself wasn’t really weird at all, you know: the internet tended to be useful, and i remember clicking on his blog and i loved what he wrote and here we are. but we didn’t meet face to face until a little over a year ago and even now, i remember that he’d said he was expecting someone who was a bit more hard, caustic (maybe) when he met me and he was surprised when it turned out i wasn’t.
recently, he’s been telling me about the type of online persona we cultivate online. he says he does it, and i wonder if i do it too.
as ms o’donnell says, i don’t think i consciously push forward an *idea* of myself for people to see. which would be a little odd for me, personally. but i can see that there is evidence everywhere that we are not all 100% ourselves other than in person (this is arguable, i know). but i do like the point that when people say, as ms o’donnell also says, that i am not who they thought i;d be like based on online interaction, well, that’s because you don’t really know me. anyway…
two nights ago we were at some horrible bar in downtown long beach, ca. afterward, the best friend says to me that j-live, the prod/rapper we’d gone to see, with whom she’s been interacting online, wasn’t what she thought he’d be like. i was a little tipsy then, so i couldn’t tell her it was because she didn’t know him; how could she have any sort of expectation?
i don’t know that i am any more or less myself online. there’s something a little raw about what’s in a written blog post or a terrible phone picture, but pretty much its all honest…until, that is, i meet you and you frown and say to me i wasn’t what you expected…because that means that you probably are EXACTLY what i expected.
anyway, what was my point…?]
“We’re all young and smart and were raised by wolves. But the phenomenon of reputation is a delicate thing. A person rises on a word and falls on a syllable.”
—don delillo, COSMOPOLIS
[my problem when reading is i start reading a book and then pick up one, two, three other ones in the process and start to forget the first book i was reading.
was reading ZEITOUN and put that aside when i read THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO and GENERATION A. then, i began reading HEY NOSTRADAMUS! because my boyfriend started to read it, and i also started POINT OMEGA just because i’d not read anything by don delillo in a while. and THEN i started INFINITE JEST.
now, i’m reading COSMOPOLIS. and i see ZEITOUN over in the corner of my bookshelf, looking at me with such anger.]
[my problem when reading is i start reading a book and then pick up one, two, three other ones in the process and start to forget the first book i was reading.
was reading ZEITOUN and put that aside when i read THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO and GENERATION A. then, i began reading HEY NOSTRADAMUS! because my boyfriend started to read it, and i also started POINT OMEGA just because i’d not read anything by don delillo in a while. and THEN i started INFINITE JEST.
now, i’m reading COSMOPOLIS. and i see ZEITOUN over in the corner of my bookshelf, looking at me with such anger.]
“What the blogosphere needs is fewer Martha Stewarts and more Danica Patricks, more real debate and less positing women as the victims of a patriarchal society gone bloggy-wild, more men that blog like women and more women who blog like men.”
—Susannah Breslin - Off the Record
[ms breslin’s response to this article. over at coilhouse, theremina shares her thoughts. i did too, somewhat.]
[ms breslin’s response to this article. over at coilhouse, theremina shares her thoughts. i did too, somewhat.]
Here's how to keep all that political 'news' in perspective for 2010
Sent to me by my mom this morning:
1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.
4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.
5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country, if they could find the time - and if they didn’t have to leave Southern California to do it.
6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a poor job of it, thank you very much.
7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.
8. The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who is running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.
10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure if there is a country or that anyone is running it; but If so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy, provided of course, that they are not Republicans.
11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.
12. The Seattle Times is read by people who have recently caught a fish and need something to wrap it in.
13. The Key West Citizen is read by people who escaped from the mainland and could care less who runs the country so long as they have enough booze to keep themselves going.
*Of course, this is for people over 45 who still read the newspaper.
“When he died he would not end. The world would end.”
—[don dellilo, COSMOPOLIS]
Fabulous Muscles [Mama Black Widow Version]
Xiu Xiu
xiu xiu, FABULOUS MUSCLES
"DO *NOT* WRITE A CROCK OF SHIT." →
facebook.com
david mamet’s letter to his writers. (link via wil wheaton)
"Am I sexually empowered … or a slut?" →
trueslant.com
“That Richardson was there to chronicle the young woman in flux, unsure whether to act on her erotic impulses, by, say, posing naked, or repress them, doesn’t make him the bad guy; although, it does, it seems, make him their fall guy.”
[susannah breslin on terry richardson.]
