In Lieu of Happy Monday

or any other actual content,

please enjoy...

Things I Am Thankful For...

autocorrect feature :: the belle of amherst :: brother who impregnated his wife; thus allowing you to be the thinnest person at the thanksgiving table :: brother who is so distrustful of your cooking skills that he banishes you from the kitchen; thus allowing you to start thanksgiving off with two hours of messing around on facebook :: brother who is so distrustful of your driving skills that he volunteers to chauffer you between various family members’ homes; thus allowing you to get and remain drunk throughout the duration of the thanksgiving holiday :: chocolate-covered edamame :: choose your own adventure :: finally coming to the realization that winter requires a warm coat rather than a fashionable coat :: friend’s long-standing promise to karaoke living on a prayer :: friend who knows how to/is excited about bookbinding, papermaking :: giving up on hypertext project :: gołąbki :: guitar hero (for keeping family occupied while turkey finishes) :: the incurable disorder :: intersectionality :: intertextuality :: limewire :: minky momo :: mother :: not having alzheimer's :: oregon trail revival :: poethicalness :: the romance of happy workers :: small press sub sales :: travel-sized flat iron

Whatever Anyone Says

No, this is something I can't understand, positively can't understand. But the strangest, the most incomprehensible thing of all, is how authors can choose such subjects. I confess that this is quite inconceivable; it is indeed...no, no, I just can't understand it at all! In the first place, there is absolutely no benefit in it for the fatherland; in the second place..but in the second place, there is no benefit either. I simply don't know what to make of it...

    And yet, in spite of it all, though, of course, we may assume this and that and the other, perhaps even...And after all, where aren't there incongruities?—But all the same, when you think about it, there really is something in all this. Whatever anyone says, such things happen in this world; rarely, but they do.

- Nikolai Gogol, "The Nose," The Overcoat and Other Short Stories (tr. by Gleb and Mary Struve) (ellipses author's own)

Happy Monday!

Happy Monday!

(tagged)

Using only books you’ve read this year (2009), answer the following. Try not to repeat a book title.





Describe yourself: American Hybrid

How do you feel: Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Describe where you currently live: Remainland

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: The Birthday Party

Your favorite form of transportation: Inside a Red Corvette

Your best friend is: One Neither One

You and your friends are: The Madman and the Nun, The Crazy Locomotive, and The Water Hen

What’s the weather like: The Varieties of Religious Experience

You fear: With Strings

What is the best advice you have to give: The Little Virtues

Thought for the day: My Vocabulary Did This To Me

How I would like to die: Dance Dance Revolution

My soul’s present condition: X-Ray

Chapter and Verse

from H.D.'s Tribute to Freud:

The years between seemed a period of waiting, of marking time. There was a growing feeling of stagnation, of lethargy, clearly evident among many of my own contemporaries. Those who were aware of the trend of political events, on the other hand, were almost too clever, too politically minded, too high-powered intellectually for me altogether. What I seemed to sense and wait for was frowned upon by the first group , though I learned very early not to air my thoughts and fears; they were morbid, they were too self-centered and introspective altogether. Why—my brother-in-law spent such a happy holiday in the Black Forest (with—so-and-so—chapter and verse) and the food was so good—everybody was so hospitable and so very charming. If, on the other hand, I ventured a feeble opinion to the second group, I was given not chapter and verse so much as the whole outpouring of predigested voluminous theories. My brain staggers now when I remember the deluge of brilliant talk I was inflicted with; what would happen if, and who would come to power when—but with all their abstract clear-sightedness, this second group seemed as muddled, as lethargic in their own way, as the first. At least, their theories and their accumulated data seemed unrooted, raw. But this, I admit—yes, I know—was partly due to my own hopeless feeling in the face of brilliant statisticians and one-track-minded theories. Where is this taking you, I wanted to shout at both parties. One refused to admit the fact that the flood was coming—the other counted the nails and measured the planks with endless exact mathematical formulas, but didn't seem to have the very least idea of how to put the Ark together.