Sufficient Champagne

"Here come I, my name is Jowett. All there is to know I know it. I am master of this College What I..."

Sun, 27 May 2012 06:35:51 -0400

“Here come I, my name is Jowett.
All there is to know I know it.
I am master of this College
What I don’t know, isn’t knowledge.”

- A jokey rhyme composed by Oxford students for classicist Benjamin Jowett, as quoted in the Wikipedia, and one of my favorite things ever.

ivegotzooms replied to your photo: Going through the books Amazon’s recommendation… My...

Sat, 26 May 2012 13:36:41 -0400

ivegotzooms replied to your photo: Going through the books Amazon’s recommendation…

My Netflix suggestions can’t be blamed on anything any professor made me watch - and at times I worry that should someone see those without knowing me - I might be convicted of many things I didn’t do or say or think.

I can’t even talk about Netflix recommendations. I let my account lapse, so screenshots will not be forthcoming, but let’s just say their algorithm got really, really insistent about how much I might enjoy a DVD of one of Cher’s more recent farewell tours.

Going through the books Amazon’s recommendation engine...

Sat, 26 May 2012 07:27:01 -0400

Going through the books Amazon’s recommendation engine picks for me always makes me feel either very well-rounded or like very schizoid. Which are probably not so different from one another.

I do it less to feel anything in particular, though, and more to make sure it’s not making recommendations based on books I bought for class. I really don’t want anyone—or anything, computerized algorithms included—judging me based on the fact that my professor made me buy The New Gay Teenager or Dancer from the Dance. Shudder.

"He played with the idea and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape..."

Sat, 26 May 2012 06:58:14 -0400

“He played with the idea and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat’s black, dripping, slopping sides. It was an extraordinary improvisation.”

- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

I think I’ll stop with the Wilde quotations for now, but it felt rude to not include at least one from Dorian Gray.

mildfascinations: Veep (HBO). Using a Croissant as a Dildo.

Sat, 26 May 2012 06:40:21 -0400

mildfascinations:

Veep (HBO). Using a Croissant as a Dildo.

Caecilia—also the default font on the Kindle—is a damn pretty...

Fri, 25 May 2012 21:42:00 -0400

Caecilia—also the default font on the Kindle—is a damn pretty piece of work, in my opinion.

Incidentally, it would be totally illegal for that link to lead to a zip containing its major weights, so if you like the font, there’s no reason to bother clicking on it.

frageelay replied to your quote: Enlarge this meditation upon this great world,… I fucking...

Fri, 25 May 2012 20:43:00 -0400

frageelay replied to your quote: Enlarge this meditation upon this great world,…

I fucking love that dude. No, really.

All the sensuous metaphors I use to describe his prose wind up being sensual, verging on the pornographic. Like: I keep thinking of it as a slightly-overripe plum, biting into which causes juices to flow down one’s chin.

For what should be pretty obvious reasons, I left these Devotions out of the list I gave me analyst of what I’d been reading.

ETA: Then again, it’s not like Donne himself couldn’t be pretty damn pornographic (“Licence my roving hands, and let them go / Before, behind, between, above, below. / O, my America, my Newfoundland, / My kingdom, safest when with one man mann’d”—you are filthy, sir!). Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions even contains lines about how ironic it is that God struck him with an illness to punish him for his sins, condemning him to the very bed where he had committed so many of them.

"You knew what my art was to me, the great primal note by which I had revealed, first myself to..."

Fri, 25 May 2012 20:37:07 -0400

“You knew what my art was to me, the great primal note by which I had revealed, first myself to myself, and then myself to the world; the great passion of my life; the love to which all other loves were as marsh water to red wine; or the glowworm of the marsh to the magic mirror of the moon.”

- Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

I am a Serious Scholar With Serious Scholarly Thoughts Who just...

Fri, 25 May 2012 20:25:00 -0400

I am a Serious Scholar
With Serious Scholarly Thoughts
Who just spent an hour Googling bittorrents
Because his font wouldn’t be what it ought

The rest of you are dead to me.

Fri, 25 May 2012 19:10:17 -0400

The rest of you are dead to me.

Sometimes I’m so much better than everyone else that it...

Fri, 25 May 2012 16:09:25 -0400

Sometimes I’m so much better than everyone else that it hurts.

"Love is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler..."

Fri, 25 May 2012 14:40:57 -0400

“Love is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than we are: by which we can see life as a whole: by which and by which alone we can understand others in their real as in their ideal relation. Only what is fine, and finely conceived, can feed love. But anything will feed hate. There was not a glass of champagne that you drank, not a rich dish that you ate of in all those years, that did not feed your hate and make it fat…. Hate blinds people. You were not aware of that. Love can read the writing on the remotest star; but hate so blinded you that you could see no further than the narrow, walled-in and already lust-withered garden of your common desires. Your terrible lack of imagination, the one really fatal defect of your character, was entirely the result of the hate that lived in you. Subtly, silently, and in secret, hate gnawed at your nature, as the lichen bites at the root of some sallow plant, till you grew to see nothing but the most meagre interests and the most petty aims. That faculty in you which love would have fostered, hate poisoned and paralysed.”

- Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

"One who is entirely ignorant of the modes of art in its revelation or the mood of thought in its..."

Fri, 25 May 2012 14:22:58 -0400

“One who is entirely ignorant of the modes of art in its revelation or the mood of thought in its progress, of the pomp of the Latin line or the richer music of the vowelled Greek, of Tuscan sculpture or Elizabethan song, may yet be full of the very sweetest wisdom. The real fool, such as the gods mock or mar, is he who does not know himself. I was such a one too long. You have been such a one too long. Be so no more. Do not be afraid. The supreme vice is shallowness. Everything that is realized is right.”

- Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

Happy Conviction Day, Oscar!

"Enlarge this meditation upon this great world, man, so far as to consider the immensity of the..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 20:25:05 -0400

“Enlarge this meditation upon this great world, man, so far as to consider the immensity of the creatures this world produces; our creatures are our thoughts, creatures that are born giants; that reach from east to west, from earth to heaven; that do not only bestride all the sea and land, but span the sun and firmament all at once; my thoughts reach all, comprehend all. Inexplicable mystery; I their creator am in a close prison, in a sick bed, any where, and any one of my creatures, my thoughts, is with the sun, and beyond the sun; overtakes the sun, and overgoes the sun in one pace, one step, everywhere.”

- John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

mrmullin: kratlee: langer: jennydeluxe: thursday morning...

Thu, 24 May 2012 17:25:50 -0400

mrmullin:

kratlee:

langer:

jennydeluxe:

thursday morning shopping spree

lkjashdfglkjahsdfgkljahdfgljkahdfgasdfgh

matt, i think this would go really well with your locket.

YES YES YES.

Just ordered “Full-Time Internet.” “You Are Reading” was sold out, which made me sad.

Innovations in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Thu, 24 May 2012 13:13:47 -0400

aedison:

Wake up and go straight to the mirror. Move your head from side to side and blink rapidly, making everything seem like it’s from an old-timey movie. Quote some Citizen Kane and Casablanca. Wait until you get dizzy from the blinking, and then go lay down. You are not a Hollywood actor.

Grab a pen and paper and write down a list of your biggest fears. Next to those, write down a list of things that could destroy those fears. Notice how that second list just says “Father” over and over. Start crying, and then go lay down. You are not your father.

The next time you feel the urge to obsessively wash your hands to get rid of the foul infestation of bacteria that is crawling, always crawling, crawling all over your skin, try to picture the bacteria with a smiley face, or something. Perhaps a jaunty hat?

Repeat to yourself “I am worthy of love and attention”. If the words sound hollow, carve them into your arm with a protractor, and show them to everybody you meet. You will have their attention!

Whenever you encounter anxiety over a problem or situation, use the R.A.I.L. system! Rationalize your fears by Accelerating them to their logical extreme, then Internalize the knowledge that every chain of events will undoubtedly contribute to entropy, and Lament the inevitable heat death of the universe. Does your anxiety really makes sense anymore? No, not if the Earth is going to grow cold and dark no matter what you do!

"Is this the honour which man hath by being a little world, that he hath these earthquakes in..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:06:41 -0400

“Is this the honour which man hath by being a little world, that he hath these earthquakes in himself, sudden shakings; these lightnings, sudden flashes; these thunders, sudden noises; these eclipses, sudden offuscations and darkening of his senses; these blazing stars, sudden fiery exhalations; these rivers of blood, sudden red waters? Is he a world to himself only therefore, that he hath enough in himself, not only to destroy and execute himself, but to presage that execution upon himself; to assist the sickness, to antedate the sickness, to make the sickness the more irremediable by sad apprehensions, and, as if he would make a fire the more vehement by sprinkling water upon the coals, so to wrap a fever in cold melancholy, lest the fever alone should not destroy fast enough without this contribution, nor perfect the work (which is destruction) except we joined an artificial sickness of our own melancholy, to our natural, our unnatural fever. O perplexed decomposition, O riddling distemper, O miserable condition of man!”

- John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (his book about illness)

I admit it: I was only provisionally into South Pacific until...

Wed, 23 May 2012 23:08:15 -0400

I admit it: I was only provisionally into South Pacific until the last few scenes, when YOMIGODSEXYCOPILOT heygurlhey.

"Now I take this thin-stemmed glass and sip. Wine has a drastic, an astringent taste. I cannot help..."

Wed, 23 May 2012 22:05:29 -0400

“Now I take this thin-stemmed glass and sip. Wine has a drastic, an astringent taste. I cannot help wincing as I drink. Scent and flowers, radiance and heat, are distilled here to a fiery, to a yellow liquid. Just behind my shoulder-blades some dry thing, wide-eyed, gently closes, gradually lulls itself to sleep. This is rapture; this is relief. The bar at the back of my throat lowers itself. Words crowd and cluster and push forth one on top of another. It does not matter which. They jostle and mount on each other’s shoulders. The single and the solitary mate, tumble and become many. It does not matter what I say. Crowding, like a fluttering bird, one sentence crosses the empty space between us. It settles on his lips. I fill my glass again. I drink. The veil drops between us. I am admitted to the warmth and privacy of another soul.”

- Jinny, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves

Human-rights violations.

Wed, 23 May 2012 19:38:51 -0400

Human-rights violations.