I LIE TO YOU ABOUT TWICE A DAY

2014-06-15T10:02:00.000-04:00

You know it's time
That we grow old and do some shit

--Broken Social Scene, Lover's Spit

2014-03-08T22:30:00.000-05:00

But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose--which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me.

--Richard Feynman

2013-11-24T22:46:00.002-05:00

Remember when you first discovered that hypocrisy existed?You wanted to take on the world, cure it of dishonesty single-handedly, by force. And then you got older, your interests shifted. You settled. That process seemed to have passed Columbus by. I kept meeting thirty-, forty-, fifty-year-old men who never outgrew the impractical, combative, unspecific yearning that accompanies one's first awareness that this world is not as it should be. It felt like I was having really important conversations, but maybe I was just soused.

--Lisa Carver, Goodbye Columbus

I should photocopy this essay and hand it to anyone who asks me where I'm from. Also, Larry's.

2013-10-13T13:33:00.000-04:00

The newest girl's called Samantha and she's a problem. She's dark and heavy-browed and has a mouth like unswept glass--when you least expect it she cuts you.

--Junot Diaz, Otravida, Otravez

2013-08-03T03:14:00.000-04:00

There comes a moment, when you get lost in the woods, when the woods begin to feel like home.

--Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

2013-06-02T15:02:00.000-04:00

He has no wish to upset what must be…a precarious double life. He is all for double lives, triple lives, lives lived in compartments.

--J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace

LEAPFROG THAT PROBLEM! FIND THE REAL PROBLEM!

2013-05-19T21:45:00.001-04:00

Afterward, when most of the students had left, he was franker with the few who hung around to talk. “You’re still not really getting it,” he said gloomily. “You’re thinking in terms of ideas. I don’t care about ideas. Find a problem, not an idea. Then solve the problem. Somebody had an idea to help stores in India so the food touched by untouchables didn’t have to be thrown away. No—leapfrog that problem! Find the real problem! Forget about the thrown-away food—make it possible for the untouchables to be touchable! It’s all about empathy! Right now you’re attempting small things. I want something fantastic. Not something good, not even something great—something fantastic. Find a problem so outrageous in its scope that it’s probably impossible. Start on it right away—next class. You have only seven more weeks in the semester.”

--Ian Frazier, Form and Fungus

~~~~~~OLD SHIT // NEW SHIT~~~~~~

2013-05-10T10:54:00.000-04:00

I transferred this blog to Tumblr. But I dunno, this format has been treating me well for four years. We shall see.

2013-05-08T09:40:00.000-04:00

Horned lizards shoot jets of blood from their eyes for distances of up to five feet. I don’t know why they do this because whenever I reach the phrase “shoot jets of blood from their eyes” in an article I just stop there and stare at it until I need to lie down.

--What If? (via)

2013-04-30T20:29:00.000-04:00

2013-04-26T13:28:00.000-04:00

Once I wanted to be the greatest
two fists of solid rock
with brains that could explain
any feeling

--Cat Power, The Greatest

2013-04-15T00:00:00.000-04:00

What we were arguing about that night--and it was late, very late, 3:10 A.M. by my watch--was something that had happened nearly twelve hours earlier. A small thing, really, but by this time it had grown all out of proportion and poisoned everything we said, as if we didn't have enough problems already. Mallory was relentless. And I was feeling defensive and maybe more than a little paranoid. We were both drunk. Or, if not drunk, at least loosened up by what we'd consumed at Chris Wright's place in the wake of the incident and then at dinner after and the bar after that. I could smell the nighttime stink of the river. I looked up and watched the sky expand overhead and then shrink down to fit me like a safety helmet. A truck went blatting by on the interstate, and then it was silent, but for the mosquitoes singing their blood song, while the rest of the insect world screeched either in protest or accord, I couldn't tell which, thrumming and thrumming, until the night felt as if it were going to burst open and leave us shattered in the grass.

--T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Night of the Satellite

This is such a good way to start a story. This is such a good story.

ON A YA FICTION KICK, FEELIN GOOD

2013-04-08T13:08:00.000-04:00

Sandy said, "Why does Meg always exaggerate everything? Why does she have to be so cosmic? What's for dessert?"

--Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door

2013-04-01T02:04:00.000-04:00

A day after I got my eye cut out, Gus showed up at the hospital. I was blind and heartbroken and didn't want to do anything and Gus burst into my room and shouted, 'I have wonderful news!' And I was like, 'I don't really want to hear wonderful news right now,' and Gus said, 'This is wonderful news you want to hear,' and I asked him, 'Fine, what is it?' and he said, 'You are going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments you cannot even imagine yet!'

--John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

2013-03-24T23:34:00.000-04:00

...No education is politically neutral.

-bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

2013-03-18T21:59:00.002-04:00

2013-01-21T20:18:00.000-05:00

"Some days he was more than that. Some days he could encompass the world. Some days he could see for miles. Some days he climbed over the foothills of indifference to see the landscape of his life and future for what it was: mappable, traversable, achievable. Everything he wanted to do had been done before, so why couldn't he do it? He could. If only he could engage on a continual basis. If only he could draw up a plan and execute it. He could! He had to believe he could. Of course he did."

--Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King

THERE'S A LOT GOING ON UNDERNEATH, PT. 2

2013-01-10T22:50:00.001-05:00

"Sometimes you are able to keep moving because you are not really yourself anymore."

--Karen Russell, Swamplandia!

And:

"When life knocks me down, I get back up, take a step back, look at it, and say, 'you hit like a bitch.'"

--Garinger HS student

GO IN PEACE. WE WERE BLESSED TO KNOW YOU.

2013-01-07T19:02:00.000-05:00

I don't know, I have been hearing these sorts of things too much of late. 2013 was supposed to be the Year of Less Death but someone's not holding up their end of the bargain.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

2013-01-02T11:29:00.000-05:00

“I’ve lived out my melancholy youth. I don’t give a fuck anymore what’s behind me, or what’s ahead of me. I’m healthy. Incurably healthy. No sorrows, no regrets. No past, no future. The present is enough for me. Day by day. Today!”

--Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (via)

KING OF THE BATHTUB

2012-12-30T13:18:00.000-05:00

2012-12-29T17:11:00.002-05:00

I was asked to blog about my thoughts or life, I think Ian covers both pretty well.

2012-12-10T20:12:00.000-05:00

I was preparing to leave when I spotted an album with a wonderful title: "More Songs About Buildings and Food." You will probably already know who it was by--I didn't. The Talking Heads. As I stopped to admire it, I was gripped by melancholy, similar perhaps to the feeling a certain kind of man gets while sitting with his wife on a train platform as a beautiful girl--different in all aspects from his wife--walks by. There goes my other life. Is it too late to get into the Talking Heads? Do I have the time? What kind of person would I be if I knew this album at all, or well?

--Zadie Smith, My Epiphany About Joni Mitchell

BEHOLD, THE NEW JERUSALEM!

2012-11-07T19:15:00.000-05:00

But make no mistake: Change is a motherfucker when you run from it. And right now, the conservative movement in America is fleeing from dramatic change that is certain and immutable. A man of color is president for the second time, and this happened despite a struggling economic climate and a national spirit of general discontent. He has been returned to office over the specific objections of the mass of white men. He has instead been re-elected by women, by people of color, by homosexuals, by people of varying religions or no religion whatsoever. Behold the New Jerusalem. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a white man, of course. There’s nothing wrong with being anything. That’s the point.

--David Simon, Inevitabilities and Barack Obama

2012-08-25T16:38:00.000-04:00

“I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer,” he said in February 2000 in a rare public appearance. “And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession.”

--Neil Armstrong Obituary