Pablo Neruda’s body is being exhumed in Chile, and based on a picture of the scene in the Times, it appears there is a group of musicians playing. How did they get there? Were they hired? And what did they play? These are very important questions.
Welcome Back, Neruda
April 9, 2013THE GREAT CONTROVERSY
April 9, 2013I received a free promotional book here at my office titled as above, and it turns out it’s a seminal text of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, though that’s not indicated on the cover. Perhaps they thought a reader would be turned off by such proselytizing, but they weren’t prepared for the likes of me! The back matter makes it all sound so consequential!
“Unparalleled changes taking place around us forecast rapid and distressing events of the greatest magnitude.
“Already, in many hearts, there are sorrows and ills that no human balm seem able to heal. In many places, there are restless and unsettled state of affairs, causing political and religious forces to forge unprecedented alliances. And, wholly beyond the control of humanity, there are unregulated forces of nature which unleash calamities one after another in quick succession: earthquakes and tornadoes, destruction by fire and flood, often with great loss of life and property.
“Solemn and important, indeed, are the events taking place in our times. But what do all these really mean? Could these be warning signs, arousing us to some imminent danger? What should be our role in the fast-approaching events soon to break upon the earth?
“The book in your hands provides definitive answers. [ed note: eeeeee!] Drawing upon lessons from history as well as Bible prophecy, The Great Controversy reveals that the world is a theater of conflict. The actors –– you and me –– are preparing to act our part in the last great drama. And our choices and actions have a part to play in the outcome of this agelong struggle.
“You owe it to yourself to read this book. For, ‘those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.'”
You had me at “ills that no human balm seem able to heal.” Poetry!
In other news, I had an elaborate dream about the Counting the Omar Tumblr last night.
Not Much To Say
April 8, 2013I haven’t written a lot lately because I haven’t had much to say, but my anxiety as neglecting the poor blog for more than five days got the better of me (I suppose I’m as much as a victim of the Internet culture as everyone else) and so now I’m here to… say nothing. Some more.
1. Something keeping me going these days: the saga of Amanda Bynes. What will she do next!? I only know I want to join Twitter because one time she tweeted that if she isn’t following someone on Twitter, it means she hates them, and I just couldn’t live with myself if I thought Amanda Bynes hated me.
UPDATE based on Nicole’s comment: I do think that the reason her crash and burn is so fascinating is because there seems to be an organic (maybe) mental illness there, and therefore it’s a little sexier than the straight wild-child-deterioration narrative of Lindsay Lohan, let’s say.
2. While looking at reviews on Barnes & Noble for William Styron’s Darkness Visible, I came across this mildly disturbing one:
Anonymous
Posted October 16, 2003
dont think it
I’ve read alot of great children’s books such as Ella Enchanted, Destiny, Defender of the small, and The Time Warp Trio books, but I’ve never read a ‘sophisticated and grown up’ book before. I’m twelve, how else should I describe it? I do think this book is good. I had a hard time understanding what it meant at first, but later on I understood that no one who has not been afflicted with isnomnia will truly know the full depth of madness and emptiness that they feel. Styron, with intimate details, creates an illistration for us.
*What the fuck is a twelve-year-old, fresh off Ella Enchanted, doing picking up Styron’s memoir of depression? WHERE WERE HER PARENTS!?
Because You Watched…
April 4, 2013So I’ve been quite for a week (if only I were given such latitude in real life!) because I had THE FLU! The dreaded flu. And yes, it was horrible, and yes, I will never, ever eschew getting a flu shot again, but I did get to lie in bed and watch about 70 movies for four days, even though of the 70 movies I probably only finished about 10 due to sleepiness. Oddly enough, my choice in movies while sick is very different from my choice in movies while well/sober.
Well: Preferably European art house with no discernible plot and only a vague moral about the meaninglessness of life
Sick: 90s American made by a big studio, preferably starring Julia Roberts
I know, embarrassing, but I tell you this because after watching a particular choice Roberts flick, I noticed that Netflix was offering me a very strange suggestion. It said: “Because you watched Sleeping With the Enemy,” why not try:
which is really pretty hilarious, if you think about it. Also, is that the real cover of the show’s DVDs or did Netflix employees, tasked with designing their own, just say, “Aw hell, fuck these people?”
Tender Buttons
March 28, 2013I was just telling my beloved that I find my ability to get jealous of other people’s ideas quite unnerving. It’s not like there is a limited number of good ideas in the world, or that I have never had a good idea myself (PUH-LEASE) and yet still, when I see other people cracking great stories or doing excellent projects, I bristle and think, “Stupid me, why didn’t I think of that?!”
This goes too for the new edition of Tender Buttons, illustrated by Lisa Congdon. My jealousy is doubly meaningless here because I am not an illustrator. But when you look at the wonderfully whimsical drawings below, can you blame me for envying her talent and idea?
Tender.
Although come to think of it, I do have a pretty good idea involving this book. Admittedly, when I was in college and read TB in a graduate school seminar, I was a bit befuddled by it. I was trying to find the meaning behind the words, not allowing the prose itself –– the rhythm of it, the feel of it in your mouth –– to give me pleasure. One day, a fellow student said a friend of hers had given the book to her six-year-old daughter, and that the girl had read it with great delight, and she realized that perhaps the best way to read the text was as a child would. It was a lightbulb moment for me, and has made me want to re-read the book ever since, which I have yet to do (someone buy me the Congdon version?) I’m thinking maybe there should be an audiobook of TB read entirely by kids under the age of ten. Imagine this in a kindergartener’s voice:
COLD CLIMATE.
A season in yellow sold extra strings makes lying places.
MALACHITE.
The sudden spoon is the same in no size. The sudden spoon is the wound in the decision.
AN UMBRELLA.
Coloring high means that the strange reason is in front not more in front behind. Not more in front in peace of the dot.
A PETTICOAT.
A light white, a disgrace, an ink spot, a rosy charm.
A WAIST.
A star glide, a single frantic sullenness, a single financial grass greediness.
Object that is in wood. Hold the pine, hold the dark, hold in the rush, make the bottom.
A piece of crystal. A change, in a change that is remarkable there is no reason to say that there was a time.
A woolen object gilded. A country climb is the best disgrace, a couple of practices any of them in order is so left.
A TIME TO EAT.
A pleasant simple habitual and tyrannical and authorised and educated and resumed and articulate separation. This is not tardy.
Auditions will be held this summer. Reach out if you’d like to pimp out your child for this.
Sweet.
All this invocation of the word “tender,” by the way, has made me reflect lovingly on the Disney cartoon Recess, in which the kids use “tender” as a synonym for “awesome.” Great idea: spread this habit.
Mantras for Nervous Writers
March 27, 2013If Naomi Wolf can get through Vagina, you can get through this.
Emails from Friends
March 26, 2013From: AW
To: KM, ID
Subject: C Word
You know who seems to be an out of touch contemptuous cunt? Gwyneth Paltrow.
The end.
This is weird to say in an email with the c word in it but my grandmother died on Monday.
PS UPDATE
March 25, 2013The best looking bar in the world, two posts below, is located in Portland, Oregon! It’s actually a creperie as well as a bar! Must. visit.
HIPSIDS
March 25, 2013HELLO INTERNET,
I can’t find another mention of this portmanteau out there although a) I’ve been using it for at least a year, b) I’m sure that the good folks over Vulture have written about it at least once and c) there is a blog called Hipster or Hasid? and they, at some point, should have figured out there is such a thing as a creature who is BOTH a hipster AND a hasid. World, greet the HIPSID:
h/t –– what else? –– CrownHeights.info
Usually Hipsids are Lubavitchers, but there might be a rebellious Satmar or two out there who wear a sleek little fedora and a blazer instead of a kaften. If you live in Park Slope, Crown Heights or Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, this term should come in especially handy. If you live pretty much anywhere else, you’ll be lucky to use it twice in your whole life. Hipsids like:
1. Bulletproof Stockings
2. Colorful sneakers
3. Basil restaurant in Crown Heights
4. Tweeting the parsha
5. Jewcy
6. The Yiddish Farm program
7. The Hester
8. Biking
9. Prospect Park
10. Nebbishy plastic eyewear
Shout out to the lovely Elke Reva Sudin, whose painting series, “Hipsters and Hassids,” inspired us all to think about the way these groups interact and overlap.
On that note, everyone have a chag kosher v’sameach!
Terrible Insomnia
March 24, 2013Wish I could be at last call at this little joint.
Le Happy, where are you!?
