Next year all our troubles will be miles away..

"We’re moving pretty fast now. When you slide by it all, so fast, you think you won’t ever have to get bogged down in it again — the traffic, the neighborhoods, the stores, waiting in lines. We’re really speeding now. The ride is smooth. Pretty quiet. Just a little squeaking from some metal part in the car that’s jiggling. We’re all jiggling a little."

I can't think of a better way to celebrate this annually strangely bitter sweet morning than with a story by Lydia Davis, the contemporary of the strangely bitter sweet.

But no one will dance with us in this zaney town

Cut up

They being prescription THC pills

Merry Christmas, you beautiful old Building & Loan!

"Welcome to the Real America, my name's Ted Nugent."

Two days back in the Land of the Free and I'm already flirting with possible redneck status.




What you can't see are the super cool duck boots down below. I think this may be my new uniform.

"When I was a kid, we used to suck on pennies, and it was a delight."

So there's like, four feet of snow out there. It's been coming down since around this time last night, and it got so bad today that my mother and I actually had to stop our car in the middle of route 50 and wait for the road to reemerge from the thick white out by which we suddenly found ourselves enveloped. I think this is all so wonderful.

In any case, I spent my evening eating chicken pot pie and sipping bourbon in front of a roaring fire. I also watched the SNL Christmas special (thanks to my mother's, who, as it turns out, is surprisingly savvy with the DVR), and was delighted to find myself reacquainted with this gem of a skit:


Also, did you know that Fred Armisen and Peggy from Mad Men are engaged? Because I did not, until today.

Fits of ecstasy

"Sometimes the experience of the voices was ecstatic, sometimes so much so that it was almost too intense for me--as when you first bite into an apple or a confection that tastes so delicious and causes such a flood of oral juices that there is a moment of intense pain in your mouth and glands--particularly in the late afternoons of spring and summer, when the sunlight on sunny days achieved moments of immanence and became the color of beaten gold and was itself (the light, as if it were taste) so delicious that it was almost too much to stand, and I would lie on the pile of large pillows in our living room and roll back and forth in an agony of delight and tell my mother, who always read on the couch, that I felt so good and full and ecstatic that I could hardly bear it, and I remember her pursing her lips, trying not to laugh, and saying in the driest possible voice that she found it hard to feel too much sympathy or concern for this problem and was confident that I could survive this level of ecstasy, and that I probably didn't need to be rushed to the emergency room, and at such moments my love and affection for my mother's dry humor and love became, stacked atop the original ecstasy, so intense that I almost had to stifle a scream of pleasure as I rolled ecstatically between the pillows and the books on the floor."

There are few writers that can keep a sentence going, keep your eyes on the page, like David Foster Wallace. (From his story "All That" in the Dec. 14th Yawka)

It’s sad and it’s cold at the bottom of the sea, but at least I got my blueberries with me

Have a lot to update, but a flight back home to catch in five hours. My limbs feel all rubbery and I'm consumed by the most subtle feeling of dread. Strange things happen in America.

What am I saying! I was born for America, I am an American! I want to, as Hemingway put it, "go west with this face and grow up with the country." I bleed America. I sweat fucking nationalism. Haha. I am so tired, and my suitcase, so heavy. This will have to do.

I hope they play Last Chance Harvey on the plane.

Take anotha drinka wine!

It was Christmas last night on South Clerk Street!
Imagine this in a refined British accent

Ridhima and DB, thinking about how hungry they are.

Meanwhile, Shaun lends a hand in the kitchen.

Delicious, delicious roast

The chef



Giant Yorkshire puddin'







Pretty drunk and skeptical of the self-timer and really really really full


(photos courtesy of Lucy Stew)

if it don't bounce back, you go hungry

But I know we'll meet again some sunny day

"Don't complain about anything, ever."

These videos are compliments of EFA, who really outdid himself tonight on the late night facebook chat funny shit sharing front.



I don't even know, man.


For the record, that's how they spell hypothesizing over here in The Kingdom. Otherwise we wouldn't be friends.

Number one song after number one song

"Can god know the death of god? Barf." -Lucy Stewart

I've got one exam to crush, tomorrow, God in Philosophy. Remarkably worry free. December is officially the laziest month since November. After tomorrow it's 24/7 Christmas fun and debauchery until I return to the states for the holidays. As for recently, been spending my days catching up on this and last seasons of 30 Rock, eating lots of cereal, threatening to write on people's faces with an enormous black felt-tip marker, missing extraordinary early-morning English tutorials on feminist literary theory because of engagements with the toilet after nights in Glasgow to see Regina Spektor and a flask of Scotmid's finest brandy, listening to a pretty even mixture of Christmas carols, The Chronic, and the Fantastic Mr. Fox soundtrack, getting to know the post office employees on a personal level, pretending my life is as aesthetically pleasing as a '70s Woody Allen film (starting with the chunky, seasonal sweaters), and perusing every major publication's "Holiday Gift Guide" (The WSJ definitely wins this year for their unapologetic lean toward excessive luxury--erm, sorry, "pride in one's work". As for me, I can't decide whether I'd prefer to receive the six figure watch which "negates gravity's restraining force" and "looks as soft as a warming pan of milk," the Bottega Veneta alligator briefcase, or the negligee that takes seven specially-trained-in-the-art-of-lace-construction Belgian seamstresses six hours to craft. What's best is Joe Queenan's op-ed, which, despite undermining the "craftsmanship" element relied on to justify the decadence of the gift guide, encourages Americans everywhere to embrace their lavish sides and splurge seemingly mindlessly. In his words, "Getting those cash registers ringing is almost a patriotic duty, for as our enemies have learned, to their anguish, again and again, a nation prepared to kill is no match for a nation prepared to shop." Yeesh.) in an uncertain attempt to find the perfect gifts for my family members.

I also rewatched Lolita the other night when I was trippin' face after Peter's rager. In the words of Jack Donaghy, "That film has layers." Really though. Every time I watch it the absolute perfection of it resonates even more. I recently watched A Clockwork Orange for the first time in quite awhile, and had similar feelings. I think it's like that with any masterpiece though, literature or film. Like rereading a Pynchon novel and noticing all the hidden subtleties that just work to subconsciously perpetuate the meaning, like the inside of a clock eh. And I think if there's one thing Kubrick's films can be indisputably dubbed, it's masterpieces. I'm really not sure if that last sentence is grammatically correct. In any case, I'm in love with this film, and think that it outshines the novel in many, many ways, one of them actually being Nabokov's own reworking of the book. So go watch it. And then we can talk about it together. Also, Peter Sellers is a dude.



So that's that. Edinburgh has adopted a biting cold, but I don't mind it at all. To quote Sartre, "I am happy: this cold is so pure, this night so pure: am I myself not a wave of icy air?"

"You're right, James Franco, it is all about context. For example, if the context of these sentences was an undergraduate art history paper then you would get an A+ and a smiley face. However, these sentences appear in the Wall Street Journal, which is a famous newspaper that relies on the quality of its content to attract readers and advertising dollars. Less quality = less newspapers. So, in the context of writing a terrible op-ed in a newspaper and thus endangering print publications everywhere, you are—how did Jon Stewart so eloquently put it?—hurting America." [Gawker]

I'm fit with the stuff to ride in the rough

Happy Friday

Happy December

Don't worry; you have 25 days to stop crying every time you watch that video. I fucking love December. There's so much to look forward to.

A Tasteful Christmas List

1. Flannel pajamas a la L.L. Bean


2. These J Crew desert boots that I've been salivating over since before they started making them in women's sizes..


3. L.L. Bean's Irish Fisherman's sweater


4. Inner Workings: Literary Essays 2000-2005 by J.M. Coetzee


5. Very warm socks


6. A really dope old edition of Leaves of Grass

Will give handjobs for British Monocaster

"Yes, make it attractive, but make it be what the text needs it to be. Whereas, in the wild and wooly world of computer typography, there are no rules. The old guys got it remarkably right. There was an intuitive understanding of what constituted readable text, and so you can be at home with letterpress. It will die, eventually. Because people will no longer remember how to do it." The letterpress: a mighty machine.

FireFly Letterpress from ilovetypography.com on Vimeo.

Today's commodity

D&AD Entry. Series of experimental covers for Faber’s new POD film range. Inspired by the phenomena of a visual glitch, the design utilizes a logarithm that translates the title and section into a distinct graphic pattern. Original script developed by Ted Davis.

Also, can we just acknowledge the level of badassery in the concept of "Gilliam on Gilliam"? Consider it: Weimer on Weimer.

I got a bird that whistles, I got a bird that sings

And so it's over, and we're too sickly full to care. Sure, Thanksgiving*, but also the year. One month left until this awful decade of millennial uncertainty comes to a fucking end. And I am optimistic for the coming year, I am sure it will be great, but I am also optimistic about this great month of December that lie ahead of us, because I think I have a chance to end this year on a much more phenomenal note than with which I began it. T'will be a month of mulled wine and decorating, of writing more than reading, of drinking espressos in bed and listening to the Mountain Goats and The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and wearing men's trousers, of feeling the fierce December wind rush through the cracked window and whip against the corners of the room and then carry back out. Of finally saying goodbye to the Grudges of the Year before they carry on to 2010--of letting them dissipate alright, and completely; it's lonely with or without them.

*A quick note on the outcome of the Holiday: everything was extremely edible/non-toxic, and I'd like to give two shout outs, to Lucy and myself, for managing to balance, with a fairly even hand, the acts of preparing a feast, and of celebrating a Great American Holiday via excesses of debilitating substances. Seriously though. Who do you know who can baste a turkey and smoke a joint simultaneously? In this narrator's humble and modest opinion, our performance was admirable. Admirable, and American.

"Isn't it peculiar, Charlie Brown, how some traditions just slowly fade away.."

Year two with the whole National Lampoon's European Thanksgiving thing, only this time, I'm preparing dinner. Yikes. But uh. Yeah. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I long for the Great American Thanksgivings of yore, but this will have to do, and I am thankful for many things.

On the menu for Thanksgiving

Turkey! (German stuffing, gravy with the giblets & juices), buttermilk mashed potatoes, glazed apples & carrots, roasted parsnip bread pudding, pumpkin pie, and a whole bunch of red wine.

And hopefully it will be edible--I've been doing my research (see video). Bring your own pilgrim hats. Or headdresses.

"but some of us do go nowhere and can con ourselves into believing it to be somewhere"