July 2010
6 posts
“The more I believe in something, and the more I take something other than me...”
– David Foster Wallace
World War II was full of plot-holes
I think the worst offender here is the History Channel and all their programs on the so-called “World War II”.
Let’s start with the bad guys. Battalions of stormtroopers dressed in all black, check. Secret police, check. Determination to brutally kill everyone who doesn’t look like them, check. Leader with a tiny villain mustache and a tendency to go into apopleptic...
June 2010
16 posts
Best sentence of the year contender
“A German student “mooned” a group of Hell’s Angels and hurled a puppy at them before escaping on a stolen bulldozer, police have said.”
“The England team visited an orphanage in Cape Town today. “It’s...”
“Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting...”
– Bertrand Russell
“I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States....”
– Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the USA (1834), on the notion that banks privatize profits and socialize losses.
Ask Culture meets Guess Culture
In a great web posting
a certain someone nicknamed ‘tangerine’ exposes a very common - and
recognizable - source of conflict: Askers and Guessers.
In some families, you grow up with the expectation that it’s OK
to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize you might get no for
an answer. This is Ask Culture.
In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into...
2 tags
Being Homeless →
‘Xiotech’ recounts his experiences of being homeless in his late teens.
Finding any kind of shelter was paramount. I would avoid the traditional homeless mens shelters because people stole your stuff…Shelters were far worse than the streets, they were potentially violent, nasty, and shitty places. Getting run out of bus stations or train stations was a nightly occurrence....
May 2010
16 posts
Magnicifent: word of the interval that I can...
Main Entry: mag·nic·i·fent
Pronunciation: -fənt\
Function: adjective
Date: 15th century
1: not all that impressive or grand once you sober up.
2: impressive or grand to a dyslexic
synonyms: see impresshive,
— mag·nic·i·fent·ly adverb
Exercise in self-awareness
You’re now breathing manually.
You now start hearing that really faint but annoying sound in the background.
You are now aware that your jaw has weight and you have to forcefully hold it up.
And you are blinking.
You are now aware of your nose in your vision.
(At least you’re not thinking about crying babies.)
Your toes are feeling suffocated in your shoes. They want to...
“I drank WHAT?”
– Socrates
“He killed my ma; he killed my pa; I’ll vote for him.”
– — Winning campaign slogan for Charles Taylor
Well at least his marketing is honest.
Woord van de Week, of maand, ofzo
patjepeeër
` pat - je - pee - ër de -woord (mannelijk) patjepeeërs protserig persoon, parvenu
“An English Evangelical bishop wrote in 1991 that clear signs of Satanic...”
– Of men and monsters - Terry Eagleton (new statesman)
2 tags
2 tags
Shed your skin, every old skin
“I just wondered what a thing it would be…if overnight everything you owe anything to, justice, or love, had really gone away. Free.
It would be…heartless terror. Yes. Terrible, and…
Very great. To shed your skin, every old skin, one by one and then walk away, unemcumbered, into the morning.”
— Tony Kushner, Angels in America
Two episodes in, and I...
“Let’s declare a war on wars on things!”
2 tags
Benjamin Franklin: In all your Amours you should...
“In all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones. You call this a Paradox, and demand my Reasons. They are these:
Because as they have more Knowledge of the World and their Minds are better stor’d with Observations, their Conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreable.
Because when Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Influence...
March 2010
18 posts
“Evola did n(l{ mean lO cngl1ge til an cxhlluqivc interpretation of cultures a:-....”
– — Revolt Against the Modern World, Julius Evola
This is what happens when you use state of the art text recognition on a bad-quality, rare image pdf, open the resulting text in a pdf viewer, copy all 200+ pages to the clipboard while praying that your computer won’t crash, paste the...
Not a lightweight or unambitious vacuum
But all this is small potatoes compared to 1009’s fascinating and potentially malevolent toilet. A harmonious concordance of elegant form and vigorous function, flanked by rolls of tissue so soft as to be without the usual perforates for tearing, my toilet has above it this sign:
THIS TOILET IS CONNECTED TO A VACUUM SEWAGE SYSTEM. PLEASE DO NOT THROW INTO THE TOILET ANYTHING THAN ORDINARY...
Magnitude →
(via www.lukesurl.com)
“We are not born into this world, but grow out of it; for in the same way an...”
– Alan Watts
“A woman walks up to a bartender and asks for a Double Entendre, so he gives it...”
– That is all…
“Good thing Indiana Jones stopped after the third film! I hear there was a script...”
– (via: reddit)
“There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older...”
– David Foster Wallace
“Foreignness was a means of escape—physical, psychological and moral. In another...”
– Being foreign: The others (via marco)
