I just can’t imagine why John King didn’t say, “With respect, Mr. Gingrich, you seemed to feel differently about the relevance of sexual infidelity and the office of the Presidency when the politician in question was Bill Clinton.
The fact that we humans – who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature – have been able to come this close to an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe is a great triumph.
Oh, okay. He infused her with moonbeams and now she calls him “Papa.” Gross.
universal “worship” icon (by jasoneppink)
thing
- AVC: On the show, you frequently return to that theme: doing the work. That seems to be what earns your respect more than anything else.
- Tom Scharpling: You get so many people who talk about what they are going to do. I think they get the same kind of emotional, almost chemical, satisfaction out of when they say, “I’m gonna write this thing, and it’s gonna be like this, and this is gonna happen, then that’s gonna happen.” They talk you through it, and they’re getting the same satisfaction from your reaction as if they actually did the thing. And that drives me up the wall. Then they never do it, because they’ve satisfied themselves by talking about doing it. I’ve known a bunch of people like that in life who start a thing, and they’ll talk all day long about the thing they’re gonna do, and how great it’s gonna be. But they’re not doing the thing.
The Games that we Play in our Berlin Apartment
- Squabble!: Guess what the Turkish family next door is arguing about this time.
- Rain Dance: Avoid flooding the bathroom despite miserably designed curtain, basin, and shower.
- Flatten!: Fit seven people into our one-room apartment for five days and nights.
- Mouse Trap: The mice aren’t winning, but the cheese is.
- Water Carrier: Retrieve all water from bathroom sink due to terrible kitchen plumbing.
- SLUMBERlin: Try to sleep through the night, despite sirens, drunks, getting light at 4:00.
- Eazy Freezy!: Find somewhere else to live before winter, due to complete lack of heating.
- Canasta.
And I thought the hardcover was beautiful. Right on, Crans!
Marvellous. Super late-summer read. Doesn’t look like a safe place for sea swimming, mind.
Humans have a tendency to fall prey to the illusion that their economy is at the very center of the universe, forgetting that the biosphere is what ultimately sustains all systems, both man-made and natural. In this sense, ‘environmental issues’ are not about saving the planet—it will always survive and evolve with new combinations of atom—but about the prosperous development of our own species.
Procrastination, he says, is a “spurious form of immortality,” the ego’s way of claiming that it has all the time in the world; writing, by extension, is a kind of death.
This is why coffee is so damn amazing. Everyone else at work goes through three or four diet cokes a day; I’m fine with one cup of delicious, delicious productivity juice (with a splash of cream, of course). If you have to do drugs at work — and hell yes you do — might as well do one with five or six hundred years worth of tradition behind it.
By the way, it is customary for reviewers of books like this to note, in a jocular aside, that they interrupted their writing labours many times to update their Facebook page, to fire off text messages, to check their email, to tweet and blog and amuse themselves on the internet trying to find images of cats that look like Hitler. Well, I’m not on Facebook and I don’t know how to tweet. I have an email account with AOL (‘America’s Oldest Luddites’), but there’s rarely anything in my inbox. I’ve never had an iPod or a BlackBerry. I’ve never had a mobile phone of any kind. Like Woody Allen, I’ve avoided the snares of the digital age. And I still can’t get anything done.
In April an Icelandic volcano caused my flight out of the city to be cancelled, which was good because I didn’t want to leave, so I decided to stay. Workers at the Carlsberg brewery went on strike after their right to free beer at work was taken away. The restaurant Noma, where you can eat live shrimp and nothing Mediterranean, was named the best in the world at the S. Pellegrino awards. Most of us ate kebabs instead.
I summarized Copenhagen’s 2010 in n+1.
The last thing we were looking for was people who were looking to extend their authorial brand name,” says Anuff. “Who gives a shit about that? That just wasn’t what we were looking for. The idea was that we were trying to get people who were more concerned with getting an idea out there or a message out or something out, than trying to become known as great writers.
From an awesome profile of Suck.com.
The function of an artist is to work for a) himself b) to leave something memorable, for the future, to shore up the ruins. Fuck the rest of them!”.
Under the Sun: The letters of Bruce Chatwin, reviewed by William Dalrymple - TLS
Great profile of Chatwin, how he’s supposedly gone out of fashion.
