January 2012
“You do not always know what I am feeling.
Last night in the warm spring air...”
– “For Grace, After a Party,” Frank O’Hara (via clavicola)
Liberals Are Cool: Newt Is A 45 State 'Time Bomb'... →
“To the extent Newt threatens the Establishment, it’s because of his electability-or lack thereof. The GOP’s mandarins see Gingrich’s nomination as a sure way to blow their chance of deposing Barack Obama. They see Gingrich as the political equivalent of a Fukushima nuclear plant worker, with…
“Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and...”
– Paul Valery (via booksandnerds)
“An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own...”
– J.D. Salinger, Franny & Zooey.
Salinger died two years ago today. (via doubledaybooks)
“When fear crawls out in the evenings from all four corners, when the winter...”
– Elsa Binder, 30 January 1942, from Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust (edited by Alexandra Zapruder)
Elsa Binder wrote eloquently and passionately about the destruction of the Jewish community in Stanislawow, Poland. Her diary was found in a ditch on the way to an execution...
“Many people in the Bush administration were insisting [it] was not torture at...”
– Writer Cullen Murphy, on waterboarding, which was used in the Inquisition against possible heretics. [complete interview here] (via nprfreshair)
“One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is...”
– Lewis Carroll With all the birthdays this week, today’s Tumblr is getting “curiouser and curiouser!” Happy 180th Mr. Carroll! (via nypl)
guro-tan:
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Read by...
Awkward Foal: The Remains →
awkwardfoal:
I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets. I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road At night I turn back the clocks; I open the family album and look at myself as a boy.
What good does it do? The hours have done their job. I say my own name. I say goodbye. The…
J. Safran Foer on 'Comfort Food'
On the sixth day, my wife and I were able, for the first time since arriving, to leave the hospital together. Our son was clearly over the hump, and doctors thought we'd be able to take him home the following morning. We could hear the bullet we'd dodged whistle past. So as soon as he'd fallen asleep (with my in-laws by his bedside), we took the elevator down and reemerged into the world.
It was snowing. The snowflakes were surreally large, distinct and durable, like the ones children cut out of white paper. We glided like sleepwalkers down Second Avenue, no destination in mind, and ended up in a Polish diner. Massive glass windows faced the street, and the snowflakes clung for several seconds before descending. I can't remember what I ordered. I can't remember if the food was any good. It was the best meal of my life.
-Eating Animals, 2009
Ok, no, but seriously--why are we talking about...
mohandasgandhi:
leftist-linguaphile:
democratsaresexier:
Like, really, every fucking debate? Is this necessary?
Deficit? Poverty? Health Care? Education?
FUCK THAT SHIT. WE’RE GONNA COLONIZE THE MOON.
INFILTRATE THE MOON
I have a theory they want to colonize the moon, or at least Newty does, so that we can send all Brown people there because ew, oh gosh, they are so un-American. WASPs...
“I know a much better way than using force to get along with people.”
– Ron Paul, right on the only thing he’s ever moderately right about: foreign policy (via mohandasgandhi)
What you said: I'm pro choice because it's the logical stance on abortion and because women shouldn't be told what they can and cannot do with their bodies.
What they think you said: I suppose I'll burn down a few orphanages before I go over to Satan's place and drink the blood of newborn babies.
3 tags
tmills:
This is an exercise I use whenever I want to start complaining about something arbitrary: I imagine a world in which there is a feature length movie version of Salinger’s Franny and Zooey starring, well, take your pick of actresses typically cast as the manic pixie dream girl, and actors typically cast as broody smokey jaded dude. When I stop imagining such a world, I awaken to a reality...
“The global crisis in education is a silent, invisible crisis, perhaps because...”
– Former British prime minister Gordon Brown explains why he’s pushing for a global education fund. (via cheatsheet)
This. So much.
just a man, talking about his wife →
champagneofblogs:
monamade:
All my life, I have been stitching together a family, through stories or memories or friends or ideas. Michelle has had a very different background—very stable, two-parent family, mother at home, brother and dog, living in the same house all their lives. We represent two strands of family life in this country—the strand that is very stable and solid, and then the...
