November 2009
62 posts
1 tag
Jeanette Winterson:
Encounters with the real, in particular what we really feel, are something we generally try to avoid. Art mediates the encounter, allowing us to get nearer to our longing and our loss, to risk more, to dare more. Yet for the maker, the exposure is not mediated; it is total and terrifying.
via ewilcox.
Making art means exposing interiority, exploding the myths of ease and...
from my evening.
From my friend’s proofing comments on my paper:
15. See [book, pg.#] for [author’s] use of this phrase. I will return to the scene in more detail later.
{Totally random, but I think I’m gonna make this my “I’ll be back” catch phrase at parties!}
I hope she does. I may try it myself.
3 tags
langer:
“Populism is ultimately always sustained…by the cry ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve just had enough of it! It cannot go on! It must stop!’ Such impatient outbursts betray a refusal to understand or engage with the complexity of the situation, and give rise to the conviction that there must be somebody responsible for the mess—which is why some agent lurking behind the scenes...
Halloween plan.
What am I dressed up as for Halloween? a responsible adult. I’m hosting/supervising a party of 15-year-olds. Occasionally, I go to the door and wave at a departing parent to show them a grown-up is here. Also, I listen vaguely to the muffled conversation from upstairs (in case it turns into screaming?) and try to keep the dog from eating any small children. My main plan for the evening is...
October 2009
53 posts
2 tags
Why make?
via sometimesagreatnotion:
Making Love - Rebecca McClanahan
Why make? I used to wonder. Is it something you have to keep on making, like beds or dinner, stir it up
or smooth it down? Sex, I understood, an easy creaking on the upholstered springs of a man you meet in passing.
You have sex, you don’t have to make it, it makes you - rise and fall and rise again, each time, each man, new....
“The four things that make this city something: Columbia Tower; the movement on...”
– The Sign of Four | Slog | The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper
Charles Mudede’s got some stunning moments of gutsy insight buried in the general hubbub of Slog.
2 tags
The writing process
You guys, I’m gonna write a thing.
Coffee.
No, really. It’s gonna be awesome.
I think my desk needs cleaning.
Well, I can’t start until I’ve read these other 40 things.
I think your desk needs cleaning.
I hate writing.
Have I always been such an idiot?
I hate writing I hate it I hate it I hate it.
Copy/paste quotes.
I hate myself.
Fingers » keys.
...
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the highlight of the new FTC guidelines
Every time they reference this example, I picture “the celebrity” being Tracy Jordan, making the whole thing read like a 30 Rock bit:
Example 4: A well-known celebrity appears in an infomercial for an oven roasting bag that purportedly cooks every chicken perfectly in thirty minutes. During the shooting of the infomercial, the celebrity watches five attempts to cook chickens using...
5 tags
Useful, usable costume strategy. →
I have such a crush on Brain Traffic.
Like, I kind of want to be Kristina for Halloween. Would that be weird? What are you? A content strategist! Uhh. It’s like a superhero, but for web content!
1 tag
Please Don't Do This, Nerds | Slog | The Stranger,... →
I second Paul Constant’s plea.
At the Coop, “fiction” was on the mezzanine/2nd floor with the cafe and the magazines. Sci-fi, fantasy, romance, graphic novels, and mystery were (are, I presume, though I haven’t been by in a few years now) in the basement with the kids’ books, cooking, humor, and other smallish and oddball categories. The system (Heil B&N!) told...
3 tags
“Now as everyone knows, when you want to do better you first buy a book and print...”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, “How to Live on $36,000 a Year”
(via kottke.org » The American Scholar » limited preview)
“UI that looked sexy in Photoshop almost always looks overdesigned when we try it...”
– Signal vs. Noise (37signals)
Sometimes, I post something with a typo but don't...
shoesonwrong:
Reason #583 why the internet is probably not the best medium for me.
No kidding. Me too (except I don’t get reblogged, which might make my overreaction even crazier).
7 tags
that’s The Amazing Rhythm Aces’ “I...
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Sometimes I find myself drooling...
…over business software that manages email campaigns or customer relationships or document collaboration.
And I think it’s time to paint my bookshelf sea-green and take that Texas roadtrip.
WatchInternet, why do you have these things? Why are you so wonderful? How the fuck did I find this? I do not know.
3 tags
Different but Equal Has a Familiar Ring To It
shoesonwrong:
pollymoon:
shoesonwrong:
I think Hollywood does have a dearth of strong characters who are what we think of as traditionally feminine, but I don’t think that’s a reason to shit all over characters like Starbuck or Buffy just because they get to kick people in the head, aren’t stereotypically feminine with their emotions, and generally act like assholes. To limit the definition...
1 tag
rulesformyunbornson:
399. Buy it in hardback.
I know he’s selling his book specifically (which I’m sure will be lovely in hardback), but I’m going to beg to differ from the general rule; I dislike 85% of hardback books. I love paperback, with all its lightness, flexibility, and wear-out-ability. You can tell which of my books are best-read because the spines won’t...
7 tags
Adam Zagajewski* (via a friend, by email):
Don’t we use the word poetry in two ways? One: as a part of literature. Two: as a tiny part of the world, both human and pre-human, the part of beauty. So poetry as literature, as language, discovers within the world a layer that has existed unobserved in reality, and by doing so changes something in our life, expands somewhat the space of what we are....
3 tags
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langer:
Me: I didn’t realize until just now that...
1 tag
This Pandora station seems to be made up of all the songs that feel like the gentlemen singer/songwriters are reaching inside my chest and playing on my ribs.
Translation: Ow. But in a good way.
4 tags
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Watch
Merlin Mann:
Be circumspect. About who you allow to tell you who you are, what you need to pay attention to, and what your options are for doing something about it.
(with notes)
6 tags
"character"
R: it has a lot more "character" than the last
having been built in 1928 and all
me: character=mold, or character=moldings?
R: heh
character = moldings
me: good.
3 tags
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the old man and the mac. →
via kottke.org (albeit a different part of the article):
Writing on a computer lacks this materiality. Of course this is not true as data recovery makes clear. Even a deleted document leaves a trace burned into the hard drive. Yet the immediacy of the typewriter biting into paper is not there, to say nothing of the pleasure of the act of handwriting. Cutting and pasting digitally lacks the...
4 tags
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You know what? I hate chairs. Specifically, I dislike sitting facing forward in chairs. I think couches and/or slouching ability and/or floors may be key to my productivity.
Is there such a thing as chair therapy? Could someone talk me into liking chairs? Does anyone sell a special non-fidgeting therapy chair?
4 tags
Broken windows work →
bobulate:
Twenty-seven years ago, James Wilson and George Kelling published “Broken Windows” in The Atlantic. It proposed that even “untended disorder and minor offenses” would lead to serious crime and the decay of an urban environment. While responses to the article were wildly mixed, New York City had a seemingly undisputed crime drop in the nineties. But the theory and approach has never...
4 tags
“The unmoving dancer rehearses her steps.
Again, perfection eludes her.
Fate...”
– Jane Hirshfeld, Given Sugar, Given Salt
6 tags
Everything I don't want to become.
merlin:
We word types love to piss and moan for days about minor niggles in usage and grammar, but, I’m worried about something a lot bigger and a lot more malignant: a broadly held belief that deliberately opaque PR horseshit is not only okay, but necessary in order to sound — horrifically enough — “real.” And, that’s a shame.
Because, if you’re working in a job where your credibility is...
today in unfortunate phraseology →
Kaushik not only knows his stuff, he puts out with charm and generosity.
6 tags
Google Wave: Not for everyone (and that's a good... →
macjustice:
A very good breakdown of what works about Wave. A lot of people have been coming at it from the wrong direction, people for whom most of their interactions are with small teams or between individuals. People are complaining it is too complex. What they don’t understand that it’s a vast simplification compared to communication in a corporate environment. It’s entirely routine for me...
WatchThis song is so excellent. Also, the video features a hilarious quantity of bananas.
Sometimes I read something in the passive voice (that shouldn’t be), and it hurts my soul, and then I realize I am fundamentally broken. Maybe in a good way, maybe not. But life would be different if passive voice and comma splices didn’t make my soul hurt a little.
“Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again.”
– Derek Powazek - Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists
