In any event, the point is that unforeseeable circumstances that call into question an existing understanding of life, function to progress and move humanity forward. They prevent the rigidity of custom and tradition by forcing outdated modes of thought to be discarded in favour of those that more accurately represent the times. In this way, those moments of critical insight… Read more →
Category: One-and-done
Portraiture and Literature
Got a little time to spend crawling around on the web? Allow me to recommend that you use some of it to check out the archives at Hey Oscar Wilde! It’s clobberin’ time!!! You might ask “what the hell is that”? Well, in the site’s own words: This website, now in its ninth incarnation since being launched in 06.1998, is… Read more →
For Fans of The Wire (and the morbidly curious)
I was fascinated to learn that the real Baltimore Sun has an interactive page/Google Maps application that shows the location of murders, and allows you to filter by age, race, gender, cause of death, and whether or not there was an article about the murder. (It also allows you to filter by district which is helpful for fans of The… Read more →
OK, You have to admit, that’s pretty damn funny
Jerry O’Connell’s message Read more →
Quote Of The Day
“People who have to apply rules like them because they eliminate the need to exercise judgment.” –Ernie The Attorney He goes on to suggest that some people don’t want to have to defend a judgment, but I suspect there are a really large number of people who are too lazy to get that far: they just don’t want to have… Read more →
Thought for the day
“We are here to witness; if we were not here the show would play to an empty house . . . .That is why I go for walks . . . to keep an eye on things.” –Annie Dillard While I am unsure about the teleological implications, I am sure I love the quote. I believe that nature is a… Read more →
I (heart) public domain
From Japanator: Did you know that right now you can get a handful of Akira Kurosawa films for free? Like, as in legally for free? That’s right! The nice people over at Japan Probe have pointed out that some of the master’s films have fallen into the public domain. Archive.org has them available for download right this second. Among the… Read more →
SurveillanceSaver again
Following up from the recent post on SurveillanceSaver, I saw that very talented writer M. John Harrison had also been playing with it. Just let me quote him: after a bit, the narrative possibilities collapse, the intensity of your gaze subsides & these are just empty corners of the world again. It’s a bit like hitch-hiking & not getting a… Read more →
The Day The Bulls Won
I meant to mention this last month, and then things got out of hand. So, you know the “running of the bulls” in Pamplona? I don’t get it, but then there’s a lot of that Hemmingwayesque butch stuff that I don’t get. Knowing that “Injuries are common, both to the participants who may be gored or trampled, and to the… Read more →
U.S.A. Number One!
I think that’s probably just Ted A’Zary screwing up the curve for you guys. (Still, that’s a crazy gap. No wonder you guys can’t tell Fox News from reality any more.) Read more →
Q.O.T.D.
“I pretty much started believing they’ll try anything they can get away with once it was confirmed that they really have instituted a series of secret prisons around the world and that they reserve the right to kidnap anyone on the planet, hold them forever without trial, and torture them to death.” Read more →
A really fun way to waste some time.
Have you seen the Skeptic’s Dictionary site? It bills itself as “A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions”, but I think it should really be labeled with a warning about the potential for losing quite a bit of time browsing around the amusing entries. The entry on true-believer syndrome may shed some light on those people who… Read more →
Proving Once Again That The Real World Is At Least As Creative As Fiction…
Man, that’s one hell of an obituary: Count Gottfried von Bismarck Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies. The great-great-grandson of Prince Otto, Germany’s Iron Chancellor and architect… Read more →
There was at least one moment of true genius.
I see that Brant Parker has died. I take this moment to claim (again) that mixed in with the years of formulaic and unfunny, there was at least one Wizard of Id strip that was pure comedy gold. I know you don’t believe me, but you’re all wrong. It occurs to me that this is funny for exactly the same… Read more →
QOTD
Another quick aside, this time for the definite quote of the day, as Danny explains the real secret of art for art’s sake in an interview: Once you learn to be poor, you can do anything and no one can stop you. —Danny Michel (Or, as Terence put it “Pecuniam in loco negligere maximum est lucrum“.) Read more →
