Archives for June 2010
May You Be Well on Your Three-Hour Tour Before Gilligan Knows You’re Dead…
Hinderaker on the Kagan nomination
I have a theory.
It’s wrong, of course, but theories are fun!
So, suffering and death. How do they make you feel?
Angry? Try heavy metal. (Metallica)
Sad? Try emo. (The Cure)
Pensive? Try folk. (Neil Young)
If, on the other hand, you opt for the popular “Sensual pleasure makes me forget about suffering and death!” route, try pop. (Gaga?)
Friend of Korrektiv (FOK) Ironic Catholic (IC) Wrote a Book (A+)
And she’s throwing a party to celebrate.
Working at Jobs We Hate so We Can Buy Shit We Don’t Need
Matthew’s post reminded me of this scene from Fight Club.
The Difficulties of Human Chemistry
Remember this ad from the ’90s?
Variation: Men have sex to relieve stress. Sex brings children. Children cause stress. So men have sex to relieve stress…
What in Bloody ‘Ell is Going on In Merrie Olde…?
to spite her mother
and the spiteful sun
gave her a dark print
of its heart in every blink.”
And once a boy sought
To stare down the truth
With dark nothing
And light stared back
Till his heart’s curtain tore…
After the Future
I stumbled upon the blog After the Future while tracking a Walker Percy loose end. I didn’t find the loose end. What I found instead was this post that uses Walker Percy, via Paul Elie’s book The Life You Save May Be Your Own, as a launch pad for the writer’s own musings on the state of the Catholic Church. The post takes several surprising turns, navigating some of the same contradictions I find myself inwardly navigating of late. I balk at points, but resonate with the basic drift of it. The writer, Jack Whelan, teaches a business communications (?!) course at the University of Washington and is writing a book with the same title as his blog. His bio says he is “a postmodern Catholic trying to figure out what that means in a Church still very much dominated by a premodern imagination of itself.” Again I resonate with the “postmodern” part but balk a bit at the tone of the “premodern” part. There’s a smugness in speaking that way as a Catholic about the Catholic Church that I dislike. Still, I’m intrigued. I like what he has to say about Lost, too. This blog bothers me, actually. I’ll be returning.
From Our Man In Havana, from Graham Greene and Carol Reed
While serving in the Royal Navy, Guinness had planned to become an Anglica priest. However, in 1954, while he was filming Father Brown in Burgundy, Guinness, who was in costume as a Catholic priest, was mistaken for a real priest by a local child. Guinness did not speak French, and the child apparently did not notice that Guinness did not understand him, but took his hand and chattered while the two strolled then waved and trotted off. The confidence and affection the clerical attire appeared to inspire in the boy left a deep impression on the actor. Alec and Merula Guinness were formally received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1956. They would remain devout and regular church-goers for the remainder of their lives. Their son Matthew had converted to Catholicism some time earlier. Every morning, Guinness recited a verse from Psalm 143, “Cause me to hear your loving kindness in the morning”. Alec Guinness consulted Tarot cards for a time, but came to the conclusion that the symbols of the cards mocked Christianity and burned the cards.
Well, watch the movie; it’s a good one.
Today in Porn: Filmed in Spokane Edition (Not the Porn but the Movie About the Porn)
When Julie Davis arrived in Los Angeles two decades ago with a pipe dream, she hoped she might end up directing a movie at a big Hollywood studio.
She never imagined that she’d end up in a dark room at the Playboy Channel editing hardcore pornography.
Davis, then in her early 20s, had recently graduated from the editing program at the American Film Institute, but she still couldn’t find a job. So when someone told her about the Playboy gig, which had real-world perks such as a 401(k) and medical benefits, she begrudgingly decided to take it.
After about a year there, Davis quit her job to pursue her filmmaking career. But the experience became the basis of “Finding Bliss,” her latest film, which was shot in Spokane in February 2008.
Neko Case self-identifies as white trash.
Also, she has one hell of a potty mouth. Something about the Pacific Northwest, Rufus?
Today in Porn, Memoir Edition
“All the skin photographers I met reinforced the prejudice that theirs, more than any other, is a craft of deception. The girls are fooled into believing they are receiving free money. The viewer is duped into believing the photographer has captured the girl in a moment of ecstasy. One photo shoot visit too many ruins the illusions. Afterward, you look at a ‘nude glamour’ shot, and you see a strained expression held for the duration of a camera click. If you are not careful, your cynicism penetrates beyond the illusions of the photo layouts, and nothing in real life seems authentic anymore.”
– Allan MacDonell, Prisoner of X: 20 Years in the Hole at Hustler Magazine
Thanks, JOB!
In Which JOB Lays Down an Extensive Quote from FOB (MngC (BON(BON)))
For Father’s Day, my brooding brood had a thought that I should like to be Flann O’Brien someday – So they bought me his collected novels to help start me on my way….and holla! I’m half way there, sharing in the name and all that….
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Here’s to your health, said Kelly.
Good luck, I said.
The porter was sour to the palate, but viscid, potent. Kelly made long noise as if releasing air from his interior.
I looked at him from the corner of my eye and said:
You can’t beat a good pint.
He leaned over and put his face close to me in an earnest manner.
Do you know what I am going to tell you, he said with his wry mouth, a pint of plain is your only man.
Notwithstanding this eulogy, I soon found that the mass of plain porter bears an unsatsifactory relation to its toxic content and I became subsquently addicted to brown stout in bottle, a drink which still remains the one that I prefer the most despite the painful and blinding fits of vomiting which a pluraity of bottles has often induced in me.
I proceeded home one evening in October after leaving a gallon of half-digested porter on the floor of a public-house in Parnell Street and put myself with considerable difficulty into bed, where I remained for three days on the pretence of a chill. I was compelled to secrete my suit beneath the matress because it was offensive to at least two of the senses and bore an explanation of my illness contrary to that already advanced.
The two senses referred to: Vision, smell.
On the evening of the third day, a friend of mine, Brinsley, was admitted to my chamber. He bore miscellaneous books and papers. I complained on the subject of my health and ascertained from him that the weather was inimical to the well-being of invalids…. He remarked that there was a queer smell in the room.
Description of my friend: Thin, dark-haired, hesitant, an intellectual Meath-man; given to close-knit epigrammatic talk; weak-chested, pale.
I opened wide my windpipe and made a coarse noise unassociated with the usages of gentlemen.
I fell very bad, I said.
By God you’re the queer bloody man, he said.
I was down in Parnell Street, I said, with the Shader Ward, the two of us drinking pints. Well, whatever happened to me, I started to puke and I puked till the eyes nearly left my head. I made a right haimes on my suit. I puked till I puked air.
Is that the way of it? said Brinsley.
Look at here, I said.
I arose in my bed, my body on the prop of an elbow.
I was talking to to the Shader, I said, talking about God and one thing and another, and suddenly I felt something inside me like a man trying to get out of my stomach. The next minute my head was in the grip of the Shader’s hand and I was letting it out in great style. O Lord save us…
Here Brinsley interposed a laugh.
I thought my stomach was on the floor, I said. Take it easy, says the Shader, you’ll be better when you get that off. Better? How I got home at all I couldn’t tell you.
Well you did get home, said Brinsley.
I withdrew my elbow and fell back again as if exhausted by my effort. My talk had been forced, couched in the accent of the lower or working-classes. Under the cover of the bed-clothes I poked idly with a pencil at my navel. Brinsley was at the window giving chuckles out.
Nature of the chuckles: Quiet, private, averted.
What are you laughing at? I said.
You and your book and your porter, he answered.
Did you read that stuff about Finn, I said, that stuff I gave you?
Oh, yes, he said, that was the pig’s whiskers. That was funny all right.
This I found a pleasing eulogy. The God-big Finn. Brinsley turned from the window and asked me for a cigarette. I took out my ‘butt’ or half-spent cigarette and showed it in the hollow of my hand.
That is all I have, I said, affecting a pathos in my voice.
By God you’re the queer bloody man, he said.
He then brought from his own pocket a box of the twenty denomination, lighting one for each of us.
There are two ways to make big money, he said, to write a book or to make a book.
It happened that this remark provoked between us a discussion on the subject of Literature – great authors lviing and dead, the characters of modern poetry, the prelictions of publishers and the importance of being at all times occupied with literary activities of a spare-time or recreative character. My dim room sang with the iron of fine words and the names of great Russian masters were articulated with fastidious intonation. Witticisms were canvassed, depending for their utility on a knowledge of the French language as spoken in the medieval times. Psycho-analysis was mentioned – with, however, a somewhat light touch. I then tendered an explanation spontaneous and unsolicited concerned my own work, affording an insight as to its aesthetic, its daemon, its argument, its sorrow and its joy, its darkness, its sun-twinkle clearness.
–At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O’Brien (Myles na gCopaleen (Brian O Nuallain (Brian O’Nolan)))
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