June 2011
37 posts
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One need only shut oneself in a closet and begin to think of the fact of one’s being there, of one’s queer bodily shape in the darkness (a thing to make children scream at, as Stevenson says1), of one’s fantastic character and all, to have the wonder steal over the detail as much as over the general fact of being, and to see that it is only familiarity that blunts it. Not only that anything...
Moonface - The Way You Wish You Could Live In The...
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“There are years and places, sometimes whole decades and entire nations, in which...”
Every week, Caroline also attends voice lessons at a clinic in Washington, D.C. When it comes to vocal adjustment, transitioning male-to-females have a tough time, because estrogen does not make the voice higher. And there is a lot more to speech than hormones. Men speak in monotones, using volume instead of pitch to emphasize different syllables, with their heads perpendicular to their...
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One of the greatest enemies of happiness, of enjoying life, is the intrusion of loneliness. When you’re most alone is in nausea; when you’re throwing up you are alone on the face of this earth. The moment of orgasm is very lonely too—a little island in the middle of nowhere. There are a lot of paradoxes involved.
When you’re working very hard you’re not lonely; you are the whole damn...
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INTERVIEWER: I’ve heard that when the third Civil War volume was finished and you turned it in, it went straight to typesetting without being copyedited.
FOOTE: So did volume two. I had a funny experience with copy readers back at the outset. They worship reference books and dictionaries and all that ticky kind of thing. We had a sure-enough expert for volume one. He complained that I was using the phrase “by ordinary” instead of ordinarily. He said, That’s incorrect. You shouldn’t do that. I said, No, I’ve heard that and used it all my life. He said, That doesn’t keep it from being wrong. I said, “Well, let’s look.” I opened the Webster’s unabridged and went to ordinary. Under it, it said, “By ordinary—Shelby Foote.” That convinced him.
INTERVIEWER: So he didn’t try to change anything after that?
FOOTE: No. Random House stopped using him after that.
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Watch
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Potemkin's Carriage Passes Through (1965)
April 11, 1784
Last night we received orders from Sebastopol to remain here and await further instructions. It seems that we are to be kept here even after the carriage has passed through. It makes sense, we have traveled a great distance from our native villages, and even before we began building this village we had to prepare regular sleeping accommodations for ourselves. We began by building...
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Jelly Roll Morton - Honky Tonk Blues / In New...
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per accidens—By accident, by virtue of some accessory or non-essential circumstance, contingently, indirectly. Opp. to per se.
per aliud—By or in another entity; extrinsically; with reference to anything else.
per annum—(so much) by the year, every year, yearly.
per anum—By the anus, applied esp. to anal sexual intercourse.
per capita—‘by heads’, applied to succession when divided among a number...
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Lightnin’ Hopkins - Mister Charlie
What if I told you this was the best thing you'd...
A very sick child.
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Bob Dylan - Shelter from the storm (best version)
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Household Apples
I knew nothing about apples. Why should I? My country came in my childhood, and I dreamed of sitting among the blooms like the bees. I failed to spray the pear tree too. I doubled up under them at first, admiring the sturdy low branches. I should have pruned, and later I acclaimed the blossoms. Shortly after the fruit formed there were falls—not many—apples the size of goodish stones which made me...
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If we make a couple of discoveries here and there, we need not believe things will go on like this forever. An acrobat can leap higher than a farm-hand, and one acrobat higher than another, yet the height no man can overleap is still very low. Just as we hit water when we dig in the earth, so we discover the incomprehensible sooner or later.
