December 2009
64 posts
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Cormac McCarthy’s Paradox of Choice: One Writer,... →
bookshares:
Scott Esposito, of The Quarterly Conversation and Conversational Reading (his own blog), wrote this essay on Cormac McCarthy’s body of work — an essay that is so impressive in scope and substance that I feel like a jackass trying to settle on an adequate superlative with which to praise it. I’ll say this: I read it in full, bookmarked it, and printed out the entire 20 pages to keep...
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My boss and I just had a lengthy conversation...
This is what happens when you’re in the office with no issue to work on.
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My own little Harold Bloom joke, for Nerdshares.
skybarn:
Y.P.R.: My Date with Harold Bloom
This was after Naomi Wolf accused him of heavy petting and alleged that she had the “air aura of selection” about her.
“My dear, as far as I can tell you are a heterosexual male, one of a dying, savaged breed. Your essay on gender bifurcation in The Rape of the Lock skillfully dodged feminist jargon and made brilliant, insightful points.”
SCORE!...
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A very solemn decade retrospective (The Awl) →
Shock! This is my piece for The Awl. I originally had spent a week writing a not-very-fun piece on this being the decade of self-consciousness and reality television; it was as awful as you’d expect, so I submitted this instead. (But it did mean sacrificing a really good joke about a literary critic reality show ala “The Biggest Loser,” with Harold Bloom — the Jillian...
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Gary Vaynerchuk: on Monetizing Short Stories →
bookshares:
Has there ever been a headline in my Google Reader that has made me want to bite down on my cyanide tablet as much as this one has?
For real, new alternate blog, that no one is obligated to follow.
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Now that I've finished Blood Meridian...
I’d like to humbly propose that the outhouse at the end = Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase in Pulp Fiction.
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The Internet is Nice Now (?!) →
Has anyone read teenagers’ status updates on Facebook? How many variations of “haters to the left!” or “don’t hate on me” or “keep hatin’, bitches!” pop up on an almost daily basis? The Internet is nice and mean and reasonable and batshit insane. It totally loves and identifies with what you just said and by the way, you are totally full of...
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correlation versus causation
johnlempka:
nerdshares:
But the defining characteristic of hipsterism isn’t about what they like, it’s about how THEY want to dictate what YOU should like.
Except: that whole scene is a lifestyle movement driven by certain patterns of conspicuous consumption and/or recreational activity. It’s not really about anything anyone believes.
I think this really depends on how deeply a person...
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wannablessedbereturns:
It’s pretty interesting to watch hipsterism be deconstructed by a bunch of people who also largely love in NYC and seem to hold pretty strong individual views on the content of artistic merit. You are never so outside the mainstream as to drop the cooler-than-thou shtick, it seems.
What does living in NYC have to do with being a hipster? My parents lived in East Harlem...
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“This summer a friend mentioned that, as an upper-middle-class New Yorker in his...”
– The Cost of B. Michael’s Truly Epic Shit: Critics are the worst - or - Your tastemaking rhetoric failed to obtain
—
This is the intellectual (and moral?) argument against hipster bullshit.
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I'm having some trouble understanding the problem...
Is it the stereotyping (by both MTV and the cast) that people object to? New York magazine compared JS to a minstrel show.
Or do people object to the subculture itself? The fake tans and “guido”/”guidette” thing? Is this cast so much more offensive than Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt?
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skybarn:
“Seriousness Philip Roth can be as stupid as anything else.” - Philip Roth Seriousness
—
parisreview
Another take.
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On behalf of the Jersey Shore crew
I would like to say that there is actually a difference between dancing (or “battling”) to house music and grinding to hip hop. This is why, in the folly of my youth, when I went to Webster Hall, my lady friends and I didn’t brave the “hip hop room” without male friends; I spent about two minutes there once and got groped by three different men. And I don’t just...
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meaghano:
I’d say identifying where people lie on the autism spectrum is my primary defense mechanism.
The real question is: how often do you self-diagnose Asperger’s?
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BMichael: i am so glad i realized irony means as much as 'deconstruction' does
you could write
I would write
that starting with the alanis morisette and ending now with jersey shore irony as a usable, practical term has been thoroughly slaughtered
Me: i'm not thinking semantically
it's a mindset
a filter
BMichael: I just think it doesn't mean anything
Look at the Sunny/D.E.N.N.I.S. thing
on facebook
those people just dont get the irony of sunny
i think millions of people dont get irony
they dont get it
it is meaningless
Me: i feel like there's a difference though
between irony that actively satirizes
and irony that is a tool to distance yourself from the situation
BMichael: I think it's just media that creates the distance. Like--how close would you have been anyway to the death of Michael JAckson?
honestly?
people dont joke about things theyre that close to, generally
Me: yeah but that's such bullshit
people who are "oh shit, nothing's sacred!"
until it's about them and theirs
and then OF COURSE it's fucking sacred
BMichael: Well its just that thousands of people die every day. And you could probably watch near-live video of it on the Internet 24/7. So where you perceive irony (maybe) and distance, I perceive an artificial closeness to events we would have no idea about twenty years ago. I knew about michael jackson dying within like minutes there is that compulsion to make a quip about it quickly but thats just facebook and twitter
Me: but there are things like cultural touchtones.
always
gorgias wrote "an encomium to helen"
not "an encomium to all the other people who are not as famous and culturally known as helen"
BMichael: gorgias was a baller
Me: well, that's true
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I think I need to introduce a "Pointed Break from...
Thoughts?
I am so bored that I'm contemplating starting a...
chuffedtraveledition:
I’d say something judgmental about Twilight over here, and then reblog myself to say how judgmental I was being, and elitist, and whatever. And I would of course call myself an ignorant slut.
Do it! A unified narrative voice is just a way of glorifying the ego, anyway.
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Poetry Is Humanity's Only Defense Against the AOL... →
Hey! Hey! Gawker is getting all Heideggerean on us. (It’s about damn time.)
Not from the article:
Two recurring themes of Heidegger’s later writings are poetry and technology. Heidegger sees poetry and technology as two contrasting ways of “revealing.” Poetry reveals being in the way in which, if it is genuine poetry, it commences something new. Technology, on the other...
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I broke down and watched Jersey Shore.
If you accept the fact that these individuals proudly self-identify as “guidos” and “guidettes,” they are really not more loathsome than most reality show participants. They might be dramatically less loathsome, actually.
I could comment on their fashion choices but, I mean, my sartorial judgment is not always the best. (Tom, unfortunately, cannot detect...
“At any rate! The issue, now, is that the “happy” carries over into what I write....”
– Sadybusiness: Grr! Argh!
Have I said Sady is my favorite?
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My favorite "deadpan can be dangerous"...
Friend 1: What time is it?
Friend 2: 9:30.
F1: Man, I thought it was late! Really late!
F2: Yeah, totally, me too.
F1: Wait, are you serious? I can never tell if you’re joking!
F2: I’m serious.
F1: Okay, because I just imagine you agreeing and then saying “Man, [F1] thinks it’s LATE. WHAT A DORK!”
These people are in their thirties.
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Every time you watch Jersey Shore, you are killing...
Polizzi, known on the show by her nickname “Snooki,” told ABCNews.com that she was aware some people would take offense to the term “guido” being used so freely.
…
“I knew the reaction to the show was going to be negative because it’s about guidos, and some people think it’s a derogatory term,” she said. “But it’s not —...
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True or False: It is totally appropriate to center...
That’s not egocentric?
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And don't you hate when you start writing a piece...
(Sort of.)
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Does anyone know the cure to the writer's version...
faithandbegorrah:
nerdshares:
I have already tried cookies. This does not appear to have worked.
By “cookies,” do you mean “drinking”?
If so, I don’t know how to help you.
If not, try drinking.
If only it were whiskey o’clock. Sadly it is not.
Does anyone know the cure to the writer's version...
I have already tried cookies. This does not appear to have worked.
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"You've been a busy little girl!"
- our tech guy on the 5000 messages in my Sent folder.
A busy little girl? NB4R?
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“Wallace’s autobiographical I, whether writing about tennis, porn,...”
– Troy Patterson, “David Foster Wallace: Self-Absorbed Genius”
Cord Jefferson: Why is Snookie More Precious Than... →
I would like to counter this question with a question: Would someone have made an animated GIF of a dude getting punched? Maybe it’s more appalling because so many (other) people find the visual of a dude punching a lady to be funny.
wannablessedbereturns:
nerdshares:
wannablessedbereturns:
I don’t totally disagree, though I think you are falling into the trap of overly dichotomizing rationality and emotion. This is a standard Enlightenment-thinking trick, whereby the person who disagrees with the status quo is “emotional” while the person who supports it is “rational,” i.e. realistic.
See, here is why this could be...
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wannablessedbereturns:
nerdshares:
wannablessedbereturns:
What I need is for men to do better than their best in combating misogyny.
I also think there is a need, on all sides, in any discussion, if we are truly concerned with dialogue and not in inhabiting and cultivating an echo chamber, to think about how our messages would be best received. There’s a tension between expressing our...
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wannablessedbereturns:
What I need is for men to do better than their best in combating misogyny.
I also think there is a need, on all sides, in any discussion, if we are truly concerned with dialogue and not in inhabiting and cultivating an echo chamber, to think about how our messages would be best received. There’s a tension between expressing our beliefs without diluting them, and...
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I have followed so many people in the past couple...
sarahmc:
Thanks, Bmichael, for making my decision a little easier.
Woah, woah. BMichael linked to the (sexist) blog post as a way of saying that he a) initially reacted defensively and negatively toward comments about “male secret Internet misogyny” but b) he read that blog post and thought, “Yeahh, there’s probably something to that thesis.”
BMichael: Jersey shore is kind of depressing because of the demographic that it brings in.
Me: Hey, I have to claim these people as part of my heritage.
Me: Do you know how much I want to gouge out my own eyes, Greek-tragedy style?
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I WAS GOING TO REPLY CHURLISHLY TO YOSAMANTHRAX,...
bmichael:
But then there’s THIS. So….
Isn’t it awesome that we’ve come so far that we can continue to laugh at an animated GIF of a man punching a woman in the face?
Kirkus is folding. Wow. →
I think I need to lie down.
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bmichael:
VILE QUOTE FROM SINGLE MAN’S DIARY EXCISED (Sorry, B)
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Single Mans Diary: A Bathroom BJ, A Loser & The Single Life
I agree that there seems to be a sort of transitive law of sexual/personal value. And it really fucks with your head when you realize the person you’re seeing has recently (before or after) been with someone like ^ that.
You’re reading Single...
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“Not that she was completely violating my 3-foot personal space bubble, but that...”
– Hi My Name is Kia:
I have, along with another female friend, had to escort a drunk male friend out of a club and onto a subway, where he nearly (repeatedly) passed out. These things happen. Typically, however, a guy might be as sloppy drunk as a woman but because he is socialized to believe in...
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“…there’s a crucial difference between ‘i shouldn’t have wanted to do...”
– Sady/Tiger Beatdown examines one of the few issues no one else discussed re: Spencer Morgan’s NYO piece.
(She also wrote a piece for Feministe that I somehow missed.)
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