February 2010
“Understand, I’ll slip quietly
Away from the noisy crowd
When I see the pale
Stars rising, blooming over the oaks.
I’ll pursue solitary pathways
Through the pale twilit meadows,
With only this one dream:
You come too.” — From “First Poems,” Rainer Maria Rilke
Away from the noisy crowd
When I see the pale
Stars rising, blooming over the oaks.
I’ll pursue solitary pathways
Through the pale twilit meadows,
With only this one dream:
You come too.” — From “First Poems,” Rainer Maria Rilke
“I find a duck’s opinion of me is very much influenced by whether or not I have bread.”
—Mitch Hedberg
January 2010
“You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”
—Humbert Humbert, Lolita
“No one ever plans to sleep out in the gutter; sometimes that’s just the most comfortable place.”
—Bright Eyes
Bunch Of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger →
theonion.com
CORNISH, NH—In this big dramatic production that didn’t do anyone any good (and was pretty embarrassing, really, if you think about it), thousands upon thousands of phonies across the country mourned the death of author J.D. Salinger, who was 91 years old for crying out loud.
“He had a real impact on the literary world and on millions of readers,” said hot-shot English professor David Clarke, who is just like the rest of them, and even works at one of those crumby schools that rich people send their kids to so they don’t have to look at them for four years. “There will never be another voice like his.” Which is exactly the lousy kind of goddamn thing that people say, because really it could mean lots of things, or nothing at all even, and it’s just a perfect example of why you should never tell anybody anything.
(via anidlersdream)
Love. LOVE.
One of my favorite passages
“My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder’s mitt. He was left-handed. The thing that was descriptive about it, though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he’d have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up at bat. He’s dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You’d have liked him.”
- RIP, J.D. Salinger
An open letter to my across-the-street neighbor who always does his yard work in scrubs
Yes, I know you’re a doctor—well, OK, almost a doctor. We all know you’re almost a doctor. And I promise, on behalf of all of us on the block, we won’t forget that you’re almost a doctor. So, if you want to just wear ordinary clothes like the rest of us while doing your weekend mowing, watering, weeding, etc., go right ahead. It’s fine. Really. We won’t forget.
Sincerely,
The guy in the yellow house
Listen
The Flaming Lips, “Do You Realize??”
Do you realize that you have the most beautiful face?
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.”
—Humbert Humbert, Lolita
“-alive;we’re alive,dear:it’s(kiss me now)spring!
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so i
(now the mountains are dancing, the mountains)” —e.e. cummings
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so i
(now the mountains are dancing, the mountains)” —e.e. cummings
“I am beyond belief in the help I require just to exist at all.”
—Elliott Smith
To capture the true spirit of the party, GOP response will be 15 minutes of dead air.
(via savingpaper)
Jemaine: Women love weaving. They love to weave.
Bret: No, weaving is a man’s game.
Jemaine: Bret, you put a woman in front of a weaving machine and just watch her go.
At Last
Etta James
My heart was wrapped up in clover the night I looked at you.
In top ten favorite songs, fo sho.
“I saw this commercial on late night TV, it was for this thing you attach to a garden hose, it was like “You can water your hard-to-reach plants with this product.” Who the fuck would make their plants hard to reach? That seems so very mean. “I know you need water, but I’m gonna make you hard to reach! I will throw water at you. Hopefully they will invent a product before you shrivel and die! Think like a cactus!” So it said, “You can have this product for four easy payments of 19.95.” I want a product for three easy payments, and one fuckin’ complicated payment! We can’t tell you which one, but one of those payments is gonna be a bitch. The mailman will get shot to death, the envelope will not seal, and the stamp will be in the wrong denomination; good luck, fucker! That last payment has to be paid in wampum!”
—
McSweeney's
NIETZSCHE’S
ANGEL FOOD CAKE.
BY REBECCA COFFEY
- - - -
1. Allow the angel to reach room temperature. Then kill it.
2. Kill God. Set Him aside.
3. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
4. Ecstatically whip, as if possessed by a storm-wind of freedom, 1-1/2 cups of excellent egg whites with 1/4 tsp. salt and 1-1/2 tsp. cream of tartar. Continue until peaks are as if raised to their own heights and given wings in a fine air, a robust air.
5. Gradually add 3/4 cup sugar, about 3 tbsp. at a time.
6. You are brilliant.
7. Now, add 1 tsp. vanilla and 1/4 tsp. almond extract, and then sift together 1-1/4 cups flour and 3/4 cup sugar.
8. Blend in God and the angel. Emboldened, add the egg mixture.
9. Gaze into the überbatter. The überbatter will gaze into you.
10. While prancing about in a frenzy of self-satisfaction and anticipation, use a rubber scraper to push the überbatter into an ungreased 10” tube pan, for it is destined to be there.
11. Bake on a lower rack until done, usually 35-40 minutes, while reciting to the upper rack a long, convoluted anecdote about your childhood.
12. Invert the tube pan over a bottle for a few hours. Then impetuously rap the pan. Shout, “Aha!” and slide a knife along the pan’s insides.
13. Call what tumbles out a cake if you dare. Call it miraculous even.
14. Eat it. It is delicate, morbid, loveable, and you will die depressed, delirious, and overweight.
“Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat.”
— David Sedaris (Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim) (via bouncytrouncyfun) (via dailysedaris)
“You can dip your brain in joy when you find the real McCoy.”
—Yo La Tengo
Charlie: Oh shit. Look at that door dude. See that door right there? That door marked ‘Pirate’? You think a pirate lives in there?
Dennis: I see a door marked ‘Private.’ Is that the door you’re talking about?
Charlie: No, I was talking about . . I didn’t say . . what’d you hear?
“When I was reading [Twilight], I didn’t know how to read it from a teenage girl- or really any kind of woman’s perspective, I guess. I don’t know why they like it… I was convinced that Stephenie was convinced that she was Bella and that it was like a book that wasn’t supposed to be published. And you’re reading, like, her sort of sexual fantasy about some… especially when she says it was based on a dream and it’s like ‘Oh, I’ve met this—I’ve this dream about this sexy guy!’ and she just writes this book about it. And some things about Edward are so specific, I was just convinced … like ‘This woman is mad. She’s completely mad and she’s in love with her own fictional creation…’ And sometimes you feel uncomfortable reading this … And I think a lot of people feel that in the same way. it’s kind of voyeuristic and it creates this kind of sick pleasure.”
—R-Pattz, demonstrating complete disdain for his own movie
“My dad’s a women’s rights activist.”
“Your dad? Not your mom?”
“No, dad wouldn’t allow it.” — Flight of the Conchords
“Your dad? Not your mom?”
“No, dad wouldn’t allow it.” — Flight of the Conchords
“Yeah, well, she’s got two jobs. She’s a pastry chef and a sniper.”
— Bret, Flight of the Conchords
Listen
You were right about the stars:
each one is a setting sun.
Wilco, “Jesus, etc.”
“ Never trust anyone that doesn’t smoke pot or listen to Bob Dylan…Never trust anyone who doesn’t like the beach. And never, ever, EVER, trust ANYONE who says they don’t like dogs. You meet someone who doesn’t like dogs, you alert the authorities immediately and you sure as SHIT don’t marry them.”
— Ben Kingsley, The Wackness (via quote-book)
“I remember when I was a teenager thinking my girlfriend was cheating on me, and going around riling myself up. Pretending to cry. It was totally illegitimate—I actually didn’t feel anything. I went to some pub and then went crying all the way home. And I got into my dog’s bed. I was crying and holding on to the dog. I woke up in the morning, and the dog was looking at me like, ‘You’re a fake.’”
— R-Pattz, random self-loathing comment.
“It’s just that she remembers how she came running
Each evening, when she heard his step;
How she lay at his feet and looked up adoringly
Though he was absorbed in his paper;
Or, bored with her devotion, ordered her to the kitchen
Until he was ready to play.
But the small careless kindnesses
When he’d had a good day, or a couple of drinks,
Come back to her now, seem more important
Than the casual cruelties, the ultimate dismissal.” —Excerpt from “Bitch”, Carolyn Kizer
Each evening, when she heard his step;
How she lay at his feet and looked up adoringly
Though he was absorbed in his paper;
Or, bored with her devotion, ordered her to the kitchen
Until he was ready to play.
But the small careless kindnesses
When he’d had a good day, or a couple of drinks,
Come back to her now, seem more important
Than the casual cruelties, the ultimate dismissal.” —Excerpt from “Bitch”, Carolyn Kizer
