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| Friday, August 11th, 2006 | | 1:18 am |
from "Our Roving Bible," by Lawrence E. Nelson: naming amongst the Puritans
While this vocabulary of vituperation flourished, there rose and fell also the most grotesque fashion of personal names that England ever knew. "At the Reformation such a locust swarm of new names burst upon the land that we may well style it the Hebrew Invasion." Three factors aided this spread of Old Testament names. The rupture with Rome had made New Testament names unpopular, as many of them were the names of Roman Catholic saints. Printing the English Bible had made Old Testament names more familiar to the general public. The Puritan temper was attuned to the Old Testament sternness. Parents ruthlessly affixed to their helpless offspring such names as Abimelech, Habakkuk, Hezekiah, Melchizedek, Pelatiah, Shadrach, Zebulon, and Zerubbabel. "Cromwell," said Cleveland, "hath beat up his dreams clean through the Old Testament, you may know the genealogy of our Saviour by the names of his regiment. The muster master hath no other list than the first chapter of Saint Matthew." As controversies increased even these became too tame. Zealots flaunted their faith in the names of their children. Be-Stedfast Elyarde, Faint-not Dighurst, Fear-not Rhodes, Flie-fornication Andrews, Glory-be-to-God Penniman, Good-gift Gynnings, Hew-Agag-in-pieces Robinson lived, died, and were ceremoniously buried. Job-raked-out-of-the-ashes, found deserted on the ash pile in the lane leading to Sir John Spencer's back gate, mercifully died the day after baptism, but Stand-fast-on-high Stringer, Swear-not-at-all Ireton, and Obadiah-bind-their-kings-in-chains-and-t heir-nobles-in-irons Needham all lived. The Barebone family, which gave name to a notable session of Parliament, included Praise-God Barebone, Fear-God Barebone, Jesus-Christ-came-into-the-world-to-save Barebone, and If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-had st-been-damned Barebone, the last of whom was familiarly known as Dr. Damned Barebone. | | Saturday, July 29th, 2006 | | 7:57 pm |
haha i agree
I had a huge post once, complete with huge amounts of quotes from all disparate music reviews on Pitchfork, collated and edited to demonstrate why I think Pitchfork is pretty much exclusively run and populated by bad damaged unhelpful people. But it was kind of unreadable and embarrassing to me - just me be whining and making a lot of heavy weather. Basically, if I had to sum it up, I would say that what rubs me the wrong way about every single Pitchfork review I've ever read is this attitude that, instead of just seeing what the music wants to do and how well it does this, holds it up to this really mock-detached, anxiety-ridden lens that's just looking for how authentic the music is, how much of it is just kind of posing and image, and how much is (by whatever concatenations of poses and phrases) omg life-changingly deep and meaningful. So it was really nice to be reading this interview with Stephin Merrit, and see him say this: "I love the idea of singer-songwriters, but I also hate the idea of the singer-songwriter, because the association of that with sincerity is silly. Sincerity has no place in popular music, any more than it has in cooking. It just isn't an issue." Exactly. I know it sounds terribly trite, but at root, if something means something to you, then that's on at least some level legitimate - this constant hunger I see in the Pitchfork mentality, to expose the slightest hint of calculation, the slightest hint of a methodology tilted towards re-working rather than spontaneity, seems to me to be like this classic starfucker insecurity - you hate yourself and your own reactions so much that you have to get close to someone who you idealize as really out there, really living life. None of us are, of course. So much of what we do, even in the most emotionally intense and important moments of our lives, is a fucking melange, a pastiche, of weird old ideas and feelings we got from somewhere else, or derived from the ideas and boundaries that constrain us. We're all cutting and pasting, every day. "Originality" is kind of like "truth" or "beauty" in that way: it's not just that if you examine it (in an intellectual and empirical sense), it seems to be hard to actually find, it starts to seem like kind of weirdly artificial and amorphous way of approaching reality itself (see also: " language games") PS Lauren: Sorry for missing you - I really don't know if you can block people on MySpace or not - I haven't logged in in weeks, and before that only like twice. Sorry. :( | | Thursday, July 20th, 2006 | | 10:29 pm |
The Adventures of my Dad and Clare
So I was sitting around at the table with my dad and my sister, and they're both using their laptops (well, my dad was using my mom's laptop, his computer is sadly broken, but whatever), and we're just hanging out in the family unit or whatever, a nice late-evening ain't-got-shit-to-do kind of thing and I was talking with my sister about this post on this celebrity gossip blog she was reading, about how Ethan Embry looks like Paul Giamatti now ( link!), and I was like What site is that, and Clare says, it's Go Fug Yourself, and dad was all WHAT, what did you say? And Clare's all omigosh chill it's just Go Fug Yourself, whatever. So we move on from that, and my sister immediately subsequent is telling us how all of her coworkers are bugging her to get a MySpace, but she doesn't really want to. Quick as a flash, my dad goes, "I guess you should tell them to go fug themselves!" I don't know, it made me laugh pretty hard. | | Friday, July 14th, 2006 | | 4:10 am |
we all make mistakes
From an article about Kennedy's whole "Ich bin ein Berliner" thing, in American Heritage magazine ( http://www.americanheritage.com/events/articles/web/20060626-john-f-kennedy-berlin-west-germany-charles-de-gaulle-nikita-khrushchev-cold-war.shtml): He threw down the gauntlet, audibly jabbing the lectern each time he repeated a now famous refrain: "There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that Communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that Communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin." Kennedy’s euphoria matched the crowd's. His rhetoric echoed his inaugural-address promise to "oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." The American President had given Berliners "a pledge of the West's adamant defense of their city," explained Riggs. He had said that he was one of them. There was just one problem. As Reeves writes: "In his enthusiasm, Kennedy, who had just given a peace speech and was trying to work out a test ban treaty with the Soviets, had gotten carried away and just ad-libbed the opposite, saying there was no way to work with Communists." "Oh, Christ," the President exclaimed, when he realized what he had done. *** You can just hear that little sitcom "WONH WONH WONH WONNNNH" sound effect. Is there a name for that? | | Sunday, June 4th, 2006 | | 11:35 pm |
from the second chapter of the Book of Acts
2:1 And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. 2:2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. 2:3 And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. 2:4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. 2:5 And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. 2:6 Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. 2:7 And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? 2:8 And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? 2:9 Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, 2:10 Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, 2:11 Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. 2:12 And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this? 2:13 Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine. 2:14 But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: 2:15 For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. The humor there might remain obscure until you consider that in this idiom, "the third of the hour of the day" means the third hour of day light, something like 9 or 9:30 in the morning. Which, as my dad pointed out in his sermon this morning, makes you kind of wonder what hour of the day Peter and the other apostles did consider it acceptable to be tanked by. Plus it's just funny and relatable that Peter doesn't, like, draw himself up to his full height and inveigh against the spiritually dead and recalcitrant to whom the glory of God is not readily apparent (or whatever), he's just basically like, man, you think we'd be drunk in the morning? | | Thursday, April 6th, 2006 | | 12:40 pm |
| | Friday, March 31st, 2006 | | 9:37 am |
while watching America's Funniest Home Videos
Say this with the same intonation with which Chris Farley says: "Fat guy in a little co-ooat!": "Cat's ass on a baby's fa-aace!" Because there was a video with a cat rubbing its ass on a baby's face. | | Sunday, March 26th, 2006 | | 11:56 pm |
Arya's Airplane Ride
"The guy next to me was an elbow-asshole, so I was silently tooting the whole way." | | Friday, March 24th, 2006 | | 12:47 am |
from "Heart of Darkness Revisited," by J. Hillis Miller
The consistent tone of Marlow's narration is ironical. Irony is truth-telling or a means of truth-telling, of unveiling. At the same time it is a defense against the truth. This doubleness makes it, though it seems so coolly reasonable, another mode of unreason, the unreason of a fundamental undecidability. If irony is a defense, it is also inadvertently a means of participation. Though Marlow says, "I have a voice too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced," as though his speaking were a cloak against the darkness, he too, in speaking ironically, becomes, like Kurtz, one of those speaking tubes or relay stations through whom the darkness speaks. As theorists of irony from Friedrich Schlegel and Soren Kierkegaard to Paul de Man have argued, irony is the one trope that cannot be mastered or used as an instrument of mastery. An ironic statement is essentially indeterminate or undecidable in meaning. The man who attempts to say one thing while clearly meaning another ends up by saying the first thing too, in spite of himself. One irony leads to another. The ironies proliferate into a great crowd of little conflicting ironies. It is impossible to know in just what tone of voice one should read one of Marlow's sardonic ironies. Each is uttered simultaneously in innumerable conflicting tones going all the way from the lightest and most comical to the darkest, most somber and tragic. It is impossible to decide exactly which quality of voice should be allowed to predominate over the others. | | 12:29 am |
from Gormenghast, by Melvyn Peake
This is a love that equals in its power the love of a man for a woman and reaches inwards as deeply. It is the love of a man or a woman for their world. For the world of their centre where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame. The love of the diver for his world of wavering light. His world of pearls and tendrils and his breath at his breast. Born as a plunger into the deeps he is at one with every swarm of lime-green fish, with every coloured sponge. As he holds himself to the ocean's faery floor, one hand clasped to bedded whale's rib, he is complete and infinite. Pulse, power and universe sway in his body. He is in love. The love of the painter standing alone and staring, staring at the great coloured surface he is making. Standing with him in the room the rearing canvas stares back with tentative shapes halted in their growth, moving in a new rhythm from floor to ceiling. The twisted tubes, the fresh paint squeezed and smeared across the dry upon his palette. The dust beneath the easel. The paint has edged along the brushes' handles. The white light in a northern sky is silent. The window gapes as he inhales his world. His world: a rented room, and turpentine. He moves towards his half-born. He is in love. The rich soil crumbles through the yeoman's fingers. As the pearl diver murmurs, 'I am home' as he moves dimly in strange water-lights, and as the painter murmurs, 'I am me' on his lone raft of floorboards, so the slow landsman on his acre'd marl - says with dark Fuchsia on her twisting staircase, 'I am home.' | | Tuesday, March 21st, 2006 | | 2:33 pm |
| | Thursday, March 16th, 2006 | | 12:48 pm |
| | Monday, March 13th, 2006 | | 10:07 am |
E. Annie Proulx writing in The Guardian
"And rumour has it that Lions Gate inundated the academy voters with DVD copies of Trash - excuse me - Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline." OOOOOOOOOOOOOHHH!!! BURNED, CRASH!!! HOW DO YOU LIKE E. ANNIE PROULX NOW?!?!?!? Seriously, though. That's just fucking embarrassing. Whole article here. | | Sunday, March 12th, 2006 | | 11:43 pm |
Arya last night, all in one breath
"Swathi Arrested Development chocolate beer!" PS: It's been forever, hasn't it? Rather embarrassing that. This was a Summer thing, in a lot of ways; something with which I could distract myself from doing research on Samuel Johnson. I haven't been too, too busy this semester, or last semester even (when it started to slow down), but somehow I haven't been in the right frame of mind to sift stuff through for this site. Or, well, to be honest, to be reading much, despite how I try. Perhaps there'll be a new trickle when Spring Break starts. | | Wednesday, February 8th, 2006 | | 3:52 am |
from Nietzsche's "Twilight of the Idols"
To put up with men, to keep open house in one's heart - this is liberal, but no more than liberal. One knows hearts which are capable of noble hospitality, which have curtained windows and closed shutters: they keep their best rooms empty. Why do they so? - Because they await guests with whom one does not have to 'put up'... | | Saturday, January 28th, 2006 | | 3:07 am |
you'll get song lyrics and like it
i am a tree - i show my age when i don't cry i have the leaves that will fall off when wind blows by don't strip off my bark - i have been stripped of it before cos yesterday's gone and tomorrow has so much more in store you are a bird - you're taking off in every way say the last word until there is nothing more to say don't interrupt - you know the squirrels are my friends get off my limb - for i will break before i bend i'm planning to see i'm planning to feel you all over me so climb up my trunk and build on your nest come get the sap out of me I Am A Tree! Fruitless and Free! No Symmetry! Touch Me and See! i am a tree - counting my rings will do no good i won't live long but i would be with you if i could when you take flight, remember me to one who lives there since you have flown, there’s something special in the air (Guided by Voices) | | 2:39 am |
Jollye Olde Englande
The following is from a recent Slate article about Charles Kennedy, the leader of the UK's Liberal Democrats (the third party there) who recently had to resign due to a foofaraw about his purportedly excessive tippling habits. *** After I joined the staff of the Spectator magazine 30 years ago, I was taken to the House of Commons as part of my political apprenticeship. We watched a debate from the press gallery and pottered through the lobbies of the cavernous building before repairing at around 9 p.m. to one of the dozen or more bars found in the Palace of Westminster. There we fell in with a Tory MP, the original vaudeville drunk, glassy eyes, slurred speech, teetering on his bar stool. I bought him one or two more and then I helpfully asked if I could find him a cab home. He looked at me with puzzlement. "Wha'you mean, go home? I gotta shpeak on thish amendment." And so he did. ... More alarming were Richard Nixon's last years at the White House. After a good many evening martinis, he would call Henry Kissinger, and the secretary of state would grin silently as he passed around the telephone so that others could listen to their commander in chief's unbalanced ramblings. ... In 1911, Winston Churchill wrote to his wife about Prime Minister H.H. Asquith: "On Thursday night the PM was very bad: and I squirmed with embarrassment. He could hardly speak and many people noticed his condition. ... [O]nly the persistent freemasonry of the House of Commons prevents a scandal." *** There are a few other drink-related anecdotes I enjoy; off the top of my head, it's hard to top the rich simplicity of the story of Dylan Thomas' death. Briefly, Thomas was in a bar, and not in the best of health, and after pounding 18 straight whiskeys, he addressed the barman with a brisk "I believe that's the record," before just as briskly expiring. | | Saturday, January 14th, 2006 | | 10:31 pm |
| | Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006 | | 12:50 pm |
"Against Pollution," by the Mountain Goats
when i worked down at the liquor store guy with a shotgun came raging through the place muscled his way behind the counter i shot him in the face this morning i went down to the catholic church cause something just came over me forty-five minutes in the pews praying the rosary when the last days come we shall see visions more vivid than sunsets brighter than stars we will recognize each other and see ourselves for the first time the way we really are decorative grating on my window gets a little rustier every year i don't know how the metal gets rusty when it never rains here a year or so ago i worked at a liquor store and a guy came in tried to kill me so i shot him in the face i would do it again i would do it again when the last days come we shall see visions more vivid than sunsets brighter than stars we will recognize each other and see ourselves for the first time the way we really are *** This song has a really plangent, beautiful cast to it, but the story-part of the lyrics never fail to make me uncomfortable, given how easily afraid I'm made by the prospect of unexpected violence. It rarely happens, but it does to some, and that alarms me to no end. I guess maybe that's why the more emotional part of the lyrics really grabs me and makes me feel that poignant yearning. The song is complicated, too; you really have to hear Darnelle sing that "I would do it again" part to understand what a tangled, urgent mess the song is; it's not just a manipulative juxtaposition designed to get your guard down. It's a spellbinding song. | | Sunday, January 1st, 2006 | | 11:11 pm |
two from Paul Johnson's "Modern Times"
On 22 September 1922 there was an appalling scene at the Hotel Matignon in Paris between Raymond Poincaré, the French Prime Minister, and Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary. Three days before, the French had pulled out their troups from Chanak, leaving the tiny British contingent exposed to the full fury of Ataturk's nationalists, and making a humiliation inevitable. The two men hated each other. Poincaré was the spokesman of the French rentiers, a Forsytian lawyer, sharp, prudent, thrifty, who liked to quote Guizot's advice to the French, ' Enrichissez-vous!' L'Avocat de France, they called him: he had inherited the nationalism of Thiers, whose biography he was writing. His boast was incorruptibility: he insisted on writing all his letters by hand and when he sent an official messenger of private business, paid for it himself. Curzon, too, wrote his own letters, thousands and thousands of them, sitting up late into the night, unable to sleep from a childhood back-injury. He, too, had a parsimonious streak, rigorously scrutinizing Lady Curzon's household accounts, keeping the servants up to the mark, not above telling a housemaid how to dust the furniture or a footman how to pour tea. But Poincaré brought out all his aristocratic contempt for middle-class vulgarity and French emotional self-indulgence. As the two men argued, Poincaré 'lost all command of his temper and for a quarter of an hour shouted and raved at the top of his voice.' Lord Hardinage, the British Ambassador, had to help the shocked Curzon to another room, where he collapsed on a scarlet sofa, his hands trembling violently. 'Charley,' he said, 'I can't bear that horrid little man. I can't bear him. I can't bear him.' And Lord Curzon wept. *** [The Emperor Meiji's] heir Yoshihito, who reigned in theory until 1926, was clearly unbalanced. Though his regnal name, Taisho, signified 'Great Righteousness,' he oscillated between storms of rage, in which he would lash at those surrounding him with his riding-crop, and spasms of terror, dreading assassination. He sported a ferocious waxed moustache, in imitation of his idol, the Kaiser Wilhelm II, but he fell off his horse on parade, and when inspecting his soldiers sometimes struck and sometimes embraced them. On his last appearance before the Diet, he had rolled up his speech and, using it as a telescope, peered owlishly at the bobbing and bowing parliamentarians. |
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