Text
January 15, 2012
2 notes

Seven Things the Internet* Thinks About Confessional Writing on the Internet

1. “Increasingly, the process of novelisation goes hand in hand with a strait-jacketing of the material’s expressive potential. One gets so weary watching authors’ sensations and thoughts get novelized, set into the concrete of fiction, that perhaps it is best to avoid the novel as a medium of expression.”

2. ”I always feel like I’m lying when I write poems. Whatever idea I want to translate gets distorted by my attempts to compare it with my already-vague understanding of what poetry is and why people write it, so I don’t think I’m ever fully present. For a few years blogging felt like the most direct route to externalizing thoughts–the only things I compared blog posts to were my own ideas of what I’d like to read.” 

3. ”Confessional writing […] can provide a unique opportunity to reflect on selfhood and identity creation. But sloppy writing is a refusal of hope; it denies the day-by-day comfort of narrative; it breaks the promise of coherence. It consigns us to the same numbing mundanity that we already experience too often in the actual unfolding of events, refusing us the tools to elevate them.” 

4. “STOP WRITING ABOUT EVERYTHING YOU SEE”

5. ”Unregulated honesty is painted as juvenile tendency, as if with age comes the gift of selective concealment — to succeed in any serious literary endeavour, one must develop a cold distance even from the most intimate events of our lives. This necessity to step back from experience mirrors a valued coldness in human interactions; feel little, remain private, do not speak openly of the ugliness in one’s life.”

6. ”And finally, from reading his articles, besides his intelligence, what I had really admired about his writing was essentially this feeling of how he seemed to uphold human dignity and the sacredness of human feeling and connection.”

7. “In an age of avatars and digitally altered profile photos, endlessly falsified and therefore perfectible online personas, we are all invited to construct ourselves closer to what we dream of being than what we simply are.”

*One of these is not really from the internet. Luckily, on the internet it’s easy to lie.

Tags: the human condition

Photo
January 12, 2012
5 notes
This is one of many shots in Melancholia that reminded me of a Vogue fashion shoot. I’m not sure that’s necessarily a bad thing except that I was expecting something more gauzy and dream-like and insubstantial. Instead, Kirsten Dunst’s tulle wedding dress looks heavy, like a pile of buttercream frosting. Also, has anyone ever made a comprehensive list of metaphors for depression? Bell jar, black dog… grey wool?

This is one of many shots in Melancholia that reminded me of a Vogue fashion shoot. I’m not sure that’s necessarily a bad thing except that I was expecting something more gauzy and dream-like and insubstantial. Instead, Kirsten Dunst’s tulle wedding dress looks heavy, like a pile of buttercream frosting.

Also, has anyone ever made a comprehensive list of metaphors for depression? Bell jar, black dog… grey wool?

(Source: melancholiathemovie.com)

Tags: melancholia metaphors for depression

Photo
January 08, 2012
3 notes
ericapolis: Seriously, I own this This is my favorite thing I [co-]gifted in 2011 or in the last five years. Or ever. Kudos to our friend Steve for spotting this.

ericapolis:

Seriously, I own this

This is my favorite thing I [co-]gifted in 2011 or in the last five years. Or ever. Kudos to our friend Steve for spotting this.

Video
January 05, 2012

Researchers at Stanford map exchanges of letters among Enlightenment intellectuals, yielding some pretty sweet infographics. (via 3 Quarks Daily)

Photo
December 23, 2011
2 notes
this season’s skymall catalog has really outdone itself.

this season’s skymall catalog has really outdone itself.

Tags: finally a ketchup that's good for you the mouthfeel you expect skymall

Video
December 17, 2011

My friend is throwing a Nirvana-themed holiday party tonight. I hope someone goes as RuPaul.

Photo
December 07, 2011
7,855 notes
awesomepeoplereading: Alfred Hitchcock reads. theconstantbuzz: Alfred Hitchcock

awesomepeoplereading:

Alfred Hitchcock reads.

theconstantbuzz:

Alfred Hitchcock

Link
November 15, 2011
4 notes
Ericapolis: Beyoncé groupthink

ericapolis:

After reading this excellent Hairpin piece, friends and I brainstormed some new “Beyoncé songs re-imagined as undergraduate theses in women’s or gender studies”:

I Was Here: Records Left by Non-Literate Persons at the Fringe of the Ottoman Empire

1 + 1: The Cultural and Economic Status of…

Stupid reblog function cuts off the best one. (Hint: it’s about penis envy.)

Quote
September 25, 2011
"It is a curious fact of life in New York that even as the disparities between rich and poor grow deeper, the kind of large-scale civil agitation that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg recently suggested might happen here hasn’t taken shape. The city has two million more residents than Wisconsin, but there, continuing protests of the state budget bill this year turned out approximately 100,000 people at their peak. When a similar mobilization was attempted in June to challenge the city’s budget cuts, 100 people arrived for a sleep-in near City Hall."

—

Protesters Are Gunning for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim - NYTimes.com

New York—still not catching up with Wisconsin.

Video
August 31, 2011

Is That a Fish In Your Ear? and Other Questions About Translation