Torn-bread.

Lessons learned.

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:48:22 +0300

K: i had the reverse problem, but i'm pretty sure I had it down by the time i had been told SIX OR SEVEN TIMES
S: people are stupid
S: #1 thing learned this year
S: *people don't give a fuck and therefore seem stupid
K: yes, this is true
S: ugh what a lesson
S: hand delivered
S: from life's ass
S: into my brain

the Rumblr: My first recorded journal entry is from 1998, when I was in third...

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:24:35 +0300

the Rumblr: My first recorded journal entry is from 1998, when I was in third...:

My first recorded journal entry is from 1998, when I was in third grade. It’s the only entry in the entire book, right there on the front page, transcribed after a muddy school field trip to Muir Woods. It begins:

When it rains the mushrooms magically appear! OR SO PEOPLE THINK. Banana slugs have eyes on their tentacles and tongues covered in teeth. They can smell a mushroom from THIRTY FEET AWAY!

I wince when I read this. I have never stopped wincing when reading something my younger self wrote, if only because it reminds me of what my younger self was like: an overly serious somebody, with severe bangs and a bowl cut that resembled Darth Vader’s helmet. What is a journal entry meant to do but bring you face to face with the person you loosely recognize as yourself?

Much of this resonates. Particularly this:

Anyone who writes in a journal will recognize that his or her entries all conform to some false sense of continuity. To write in a journal is to construct a painstaking narrative linking authorial versions of ourselves so apart from one another that they feel disconnected. It is only when we go back and revisit those versions of ourselves that we realize they had anything in common in the first place.

And:

This passage resonates with me because I believe journal writing is largely anticipatory. To write in a journal is to consciously or unconsciously acknowledge the corrosive capabilities of time. Journal writing is an act of mummification: one embalms the present in expectation of a future hunger for remembrance. I build my memories out of these books. I write not because I think my life is interesting, but because I have a deep abiding love for imperfect systems of archive.

I’ve been journaling since before I knew how to think about myself as a human. (My first entries are from first grade and feature McDonalds and a stuffed animal bear named Brittany.) But I treasure the 30-odd notebooks I’ve filled because they often remind me of how much I’ve changed and — when I’m depressed and crying and dying — how impossible it’s always been for me to predict the future.

imwithkanye: The Number 1 Best Cold Open Of The...

Mon, 20 May 2013 20:14:00 +0300

imwithkanye:

The Number 1 Best Cold Open Of The Office.

Remember when The Office landed the coveted post-Super Bowl slot? It was a breath of fresh air after several years of hour long dramas (even though Kyle Chandler on Grey’s Anatomy was riveting). Sometimes you just want to laugh after watching your favorite team lose the most coveted game of football. And the show delivered show much comedy in 4 1/2 minutes that it was shocking this was the show that debuted to dismal/hateful reviews nearly five years before.

Unanswered plot question: How long had Angela been storing one of her cats in her filing cabinet?!

Crying in a newly Office-less world.

"Police in Kentucky say Trevor Runyon slipped into a supermarket and waited for it to..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 19:40:24 +0300

“Police in Kentucky say Trevor Runyon slipped into a supermarket and waited for it to close.Surveillance cameras show he then had a feast. He cooked and ate six steaks, and washed them down with beer, shrimp and birthday cake. Police found him hiding in the ceiling.”

- NPR (via ohitsyou)

NPR, with the hard-hitting journalism. All day every day.

poptech: Yikes. This from the New York Times on the impact of...

Mon, 20 May 2013 17:34:11 +0300

poptech:

Yikes. This from the New York Times on the impact of mass incarceration of African American men on voter turnout.

Well fuck.

"One improves by learning to be productively ashamed of who one currently is."

Mon, 20 May 2013 06:00:31 +0300

“One improves by learning to be productively ashamed of who one currently is.”

- Alain de Botton

(via kateoplis)

guys: uh why do girls care so much about being skinny? it's so annoying

Sun, 19 May 2013 18:00:18 +0300

guys: uh why do girls care so much about being skinny? it's so annoying
guys: ew fat chicks
guys: why do girls care so much about shopping and romance and nail polish lol so annoying
guys: ew crazy butch lesbian manly feminazis why can't they act more feminine lol
guys: why do girls wear makeup they look so much better without it
guys: oh i'm so sorry are you sick? tired? dying?
guys: haha girls suck at math/science/sports
guys: a girl who does math/science/sports? well? get back in the kitchen that stuffs not gonna get you a husband
guys: why are girls so sensitive when we look at their boobs or something c'mon with that top you're asking for it
guys: oh my god a gay guy just hit on me how disgusting what a creeper doesn't he have any boundaries?

Finals Week To-Do List

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:59:32 +0300

thedigitalrhetoric:

Write a bunch

Study hard

Don’t eat real food

Have nervous breakdown

Cry

Procrastinate

Pretend like there’s nothing pressing to do

Stare at words until they no longer make sense

Forget how to make words

Scream obscenities at inanimate objects

I have accomplished all but two of these things.

Sometimes I’m so glad to be done with school.

wise owl.

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:51:58 +0300

wise owl.

"Similarly, I did not know that a person at my office was black until I asked him, “Are you black?” I..."

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:42:00 +0300

“

Similarly, I did not know that a person at my office was black until I asked him, “Are you black?” I knew there was something different about him, but because I am so race-blind, I just couldn’t put my finger on it until I asked. Plus, he always wore really expensive suits to work, which I thought was something only white people did. I was thrilled to learn that he was black, because I have always wanted a black friend, so I asked him if he wanted to chillax at my cribizzle on Fridizzle, and then he reported me to HR and now I no longer work at his company.

Funny things like that are always happening to me because of my inability to see race. For instance, how I like to tell race jokes when I am with white people, but sometimes I forget that a color person is there and no one laughs. Or, how I like to tease my white friends by jokingly calling them racial slurs, but because I cannot distinguish between my white friends and my color friends, sometimes I accidentally call one of my color friends a word which sometimes is the right slur for their race but other times isn’t. But in any case it explains why I do not have many ethnicity friends.

”

- Christopher Man (“I Don’t See Race” | McSweeney’s)

"Visual artists, poets, and musicians are releasing free content online faster than ever before...."

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:35:48 +0300

“Visual artists, poets, and musicians are releasing free content online faster than ever before. There is an athleticism to these aesthetic outpourings, with artists taking on the creative act as a way of exercising other muscle groups, bodybuilding a personal brand or self-mythology, a concept or a formal vocabulary. Images, music, and words become drips in a pool of art sweat, puddling online for all to view. The long-derided notion of the “masterpiece” has reached its logical antithesis with the aesthlete: a cultural producer who trumps craft and contemplative brooding with immediacy and rapid production.”

- Brad Troemel, Athletic Aesthetics (via photographsonthebrain)

"The best way to dehumanize someone while claiming you’re not is to believe you are just the same...."

Thu, 16 May 2013 02:12:55 +0300

“The best way to dehumanize someone while claiming you’re not is to believe you are just the same. You erase their experiences and perspective, their struggles and obstacles, their unique way of having to deal with those things in a world that also erases them. With the words, ‘but humans are humans’ or the bullshit dramatics of ‘we all bleed red’ normal people can simply pretend that if we all did things the way they did, then everything would work out okay. But, yes, we all bleed red but you don’t treat a papercut the same way you treat a gash, you don’t treat an infected wound the same way you treat one that isn’t, you don’t treat a wound to the leg the same way you treat a wound to the gut. You are not acknowledging someone’s personhood when you ignore the very things that make their lives different than yours, and when you refuse to understand that their circumstances have given them their own perspective that is just as valid as yours. More valid in fact – their perspective about their experiences that you haven’t been through is far more valid than anything you could ever think about it.”

- The danger of worldviews (Speaking when the world sleeps)

Truth bomb if I ever saw one.

(via ikenbot)

super-wholock-avengers: thetimetravelersguidetothegalaxy: mindg...

Thu, 16 May 2013 01:27:44 +0300

super-wholock-avengers:

thetimetravelersguidetothegalaxy:

mindgames-and-logicpuzzles:

andernina:

Can we talk about how Anne Hathaway’s husband Adam Shulman looks a bit like William Shakespeare… who had a wife named Anne Hathaway?

perfect.

perfection or actual time travelers?

I’m imagining a crazy time-traveling conspiracy in which the original Anne Hathaway & William Shakespeare are actually from the present, but they travel back in time with the manuscripts for Shakespeare’s plays so that “William” can stage them and take credit for them (clearly, since pft women writing? yeah right), but actually they didn’t write the plays either — the plays just exist in the literary ether, a mysterious authorless set of masterpieces.

MINDY BE MY BEST FRIEND.

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:11:42 +0300

MINDY BE MY BEST FRIEND.

cosmologue: Perfect Milkshake, 2011

Wed, 15 May 2013 23:44:34 +0300

cosmologue:

Perfect Milkshake, 2011

My new address.

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:00:16 +0300

A: whatevs i am not giving a shit
A: we will live in a hut in the vagina mountain, where no mansplainer rape apologist ever set his foot
S: haha the vagina mountain
S: can we live on the clit of vagina mountain?
A: i am fairly certain this is where most people think i live

gogodoesbulgaria: … The lips on that thing are doing a lot. I...

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:09:03 +0300

gogodoesbulgaria:

…

The lips on that thing are doing a lot.

I feel this way a lot lately — have been applying for short summer internships because I have more time than I expected upon my return to the US before my job starts. I’ve been receiving tepid responses from a number of media organizations and internships, usually to the tune of “the timing’s off.” But I’m a productive hardworking person and I’m making puppy eyes at you! Ugh ugh.

ohitsyou: I just looked through this and I don’t think I blinked even once. Peruvian breakfast I...

Tue, 14 May 2013 06:00:19 +0300

ohitsyou:

I just looked through this and I don’t think I blinked even once.

Peruvian breakfast I think I love you.

"Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be."

Mon, 13 May 2013 23:05:09 +0300

“Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.”

- Clementine Paddleford (via givemeajobplease)

p.s. now that’s a tumblr name i can get behind.

"This is also, I’d argue, why Nick is attracted to in Gatsby. It’s not that Gatsby is, as..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:07:58 +0300

“

This is also, I’d argue, why Nick is attracted to in Gatsby. It’s not that Gatsby is, as the movie Carraway insists, the “single most hopeful person” he’s ever known. Rather, it’s that Gatsby is a momentous, glorious, incandescent sham. If Jordan is deceitful, Gatsby is even more so. And just as he falls for Jordan and her dishonesty, so is Nick riveted by the transformation of poor, nobody from nowhere Jimmy Gatz into the wealthy somebody Jay Gatsby. Nick and Gatsby are alike not in their innocence, but in their capacity for subterfuge.

In one of the film’s stupidest choices, Nick ends up in a sanitarium after Gatsby’s death. His pure heart is so repulsed by the cruelty and corruption of the city that he is driven insane. In the book, though, Nick doesn’t see Tom Buchanan and Daisy as decadent. He sees them as dangerously innocent. “I felt suddenly,” he says of his last meeting with Tom, “as though I were talking to a child.” Tom and Daisy, with their old money, can afford to be careless; they don’t need to know who they’re running down. But folks like Gatsby, or Nick, or Jordan Baker, who live life on the margins, have to be more careful.

Pehaps that’s why the book The Great Gatsby, despite its blaring title and filthy-rich protagonist, feels so restrained. Nick never tells you everything. The film, in robbing him of his queerness, also robs him of his reserve, and not coincidentally, of his intelligence. The result is a loud Hollywood celebration of hopeful desire. Fitzgerald’s Nick, though, knows that desire must often hide behind ellipses, and that even hope can be a kind of mask.

”

- Noah Berlatsky (“The Great Gatsby Movie Needed to Be More Gay” | The Atlantic)

Actually I think I’m enjoying these nuanced readings of Gatsby more than I will enjoy the film.