too many clauses should be avoided

Rhetorical Device of the Week: THA ZEUGMA

Someone should really tell that girl she can not pull off that color

Rediscovered this photo, taken by Brigid at some party over spring break, back in New York. I'm going to tell you why it's a good picture. First of all, whose hand is that? It's literally as if Lisa Greco has a phantom artist hand to constantly promote her work while allowing her full use of both her hands. Second, the composition is fantastic. Third, that monster is doing a pretty good rendition, down to the sunburn (it was unusually sweltry that weekend, for April, and I spent a lot of time falling asleep on Lisa Greco's roof). Fourth, lightweight mustard yellow anorak. Fifth, if we can't sell you on Blackberrys being cool, I don't know who can. Speaking of cans, that one's pretty solid.

A Couple Points Regarding the Beginning of the Week

-Somebody needs to upload the intro to Gravediggaz's (unsure of exactly what to do with the apostrophe there) The Pick, the Sickle and the Shovel to Youtube so we can talk about whether it actually makes any sense or not.

-I started reading McSweeney's again, having unconsciously stopped sometime at the end of my senior year of high school. It's probably the funniest shit out there right now. Funnier than 30 Rock. Funnier than Portnoy's Complaint. Funnier than Charlie Croft talking about Native Americans via text message at 8 in the morning. Funnier than the Autobiography Ziggy Stardust's Personal Assistant. Wait. But it's also subtle, and ever wise. Here is an excerpt from one of my favorite recent pieces entitled, "Miles Davis's Container Gardening tips" (written by Ryan Abbott):

"This is it, this is the most important tip, so wrap it in tissue paper and take it out of here when you go. The space around everything is more precious than the items occupying the space...The space around your plants is what defines them. Save that space, relish it, drink it in. Give your plants room to walk, to be seen and heard, to develop deep and hungry roots with their own space to explore and invent, the freedom to create new shades and shapes, arms that reach through the empty air to carve fresh pockets in which to build an entirely new kind of fruit or flower. A type never tasted, something unheard of."

More impressive, however, is James Felming's Selections from the Cosby Codex, which, "represents an attempt to offer the definitive theoretical reading of The Cosby Show, a foundational text in Late Postmodern Western Culture, or a multicultural, post-cognitive text par-excellence," and which I'm not going to quote from because I'm pissed I didn't write it, it's so genius.

-This week's gonna be amazing.

-We're doing a radio show, on Mondays, starting next week. Don't really know who "we" entails at this point. Elliot and I and some meth heads. Forget what time it's at. The title of the show was supposed to be "Songs About Jesus," which is snappy and fun to say (with Nietzschean undertones), but Elliot managed to reword that into some bulkily sarcastic reference to the bible or some shit, which wasn't even the point. Will probably spend the majority of the first show bitching about this and discussing the Camden Family's views on marijuana, which will actually tie in, as Mr. Camden's obstinant response to the herb likely stems heavily from a certain paradigm of "morality" propagated by the church to which he is tied and his views on the implication of God. (In fact this kind of melodramatic outburst proves to be, when observed against the image of Mr. Camden established by the show --for the most part a"cool reverend" (and the WB's closest rendition of Atticus Finch): non-judgmental, understanding, and actually sometimes helpful; the sort of guy that you'd expect to respond rationally and judiciously to this kind of situation-- surprisingly out of character. For more on glimpses of deeply embedded socially constructed prejudices savagely bursting through the astute façades of archetypal television fathers, and the social implications, see Howard Cunningham Flipping Out When Richie Brings a "Beatnik" to Dinner (Happy Days, Episode 1.13.)) Link to show/less lofty details to be posted.

-If you're ever faced with the opportunity to take an English course centering on "Western American Expansion Fiction," decline immediately. You will read one really good Mark Twain book, some Cormac McCarthy (maybe) and Annie Proulx, and the rest will be bull shit yet require an enormous amount of your time and effort, because while a very good book does demand a heightened level of, well, mental work, a bad book is nearly fucking impossible to get through. Yes, I'm looking at you, James Fenimore Cooper: for all your grand ambition, you are a cliché, and a lousy writer, and getting even halfway through Last of the Mohicans was like pulling out my own teeth in front of an enormous screen with American landscapes projected on it. I think it was your underlying fear of miscegenation. (Actually, for an amazingly ruthless roast on Cooper, see Lawrence's essay "Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Novels," which is full of wit, as well as a couple valid arguments regarding the aforementioned text.) I understand the importance of some shitty texts in the context of the history/evolution of certain kinds of literature. But I don't really get why one should be required to read them. So heed my advice, children. Study Chaucer.

-"If I wanted to watch an arrogant nerd act passive-aggressive for two hours I'd sit at home and Skype with my ex-girlfriend." A friend, on the Facebook movie, which I am officially done talking about.

-Bacon, egg, tomato, avocado, and Gruyère on toasted fucking wheat bread is the best fucking sandwich of all time I do noooot want to hear it

Beers for years

After two weeks of acting like a dick and a string of embarrassing conversations and monumental hangovers, I propose two weeks sober, at least, followed by an entire lifetime of Puritanical Moderation. Shit's getting out of hand. Bleghhhhhh

Things we could talk about now:

-How every electronic device I bring into this apartment seems to magically break, inexplicably, from somewhere deep inside itself, which cannot be helped (lamps, televisions, electric mixers, etc.)

-How Laura Mulvey's essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," applies to me and my viewing of the season finale of Mad Men

-The trials of domesticating another living thing, and attempting to maintain an affectionate mastership, and taking it all way too seriously

-How to fail at making a birthday cake

-How to waste an entire day failing at making a birthday cake

-Ways to avoid checking last night's awkward texts (outbox)

-The Facebook Movie, reasons I was hyping it so hard, how I spent the majority of my time in the theatre wishing I was watching The Squid and the Whale instead, those dreamy Winklevoss twins, or better yet, that ridiculous video of Mark Zuckerberg taking off his hoodie that is honestly the most lumberingly uncomfortable thing I have ever watched on the internet, and how it's affected the progress of my campaign for matrimony (on hold until further notice)

-Autumn's abrupt arrival and the necessary outerwear

"IS SUBJECTIVITY TEMPORAL OR AFFECTIVE?"

On top of a filing cabinet in room 6.11 of the English department in David Hume Tower, there are a few stacks of enormously thick, oversized leather-bound books, which upon further examination turn out to be a set of complete archives of the New York Review of Books. Shitloads of volumes. I feel like this is some sort of important discovery. Who is using these? Can I use them? Who do I speak to about using them? Does anyone know more about this?

And while we're on the subject: while I used to dispute with Shaun over whether or not Lee Spinks is the biggest hessian in the English department (I was always on team Millard, which is funny), I have indeed been swayed after today's lecture. Holy shit. Dude said more profound things in the last few minutes than most people say in their entire lives--it was literally is if he were competing in some contest to say the most esoterically intelligent things about lyrical poetry in under two minutes. I think everyone in the theatre experienced some sort of existential epiphany; I personally felt like my head was going to explode with them. I don't think there's enough words, at my immediate disposal anyway, to articulate how good this guy is at talking about literature, and making it seem important. I'm pretty sure he knows everything, and could talk about it, beautifully, all the time, forever. Absolute madness. It's like he turns a thing completely over to reveal the absolute truth of it, in perfect clarity.

Nerd alert.

Start the Hype

We had some conflicts with Prince Erudite drawn out on spreadsheets

The other day I showed up slightly early for a class and ended up chatting with my professor for a bit. He asked me how I was finding third year, and I told him I was pretty stressed out. That there only seemed to be time for half of the things I'd like to be doing right now--the monotonous/stressful/awful half-- and that I'm rarely finding the time to consider doing anything other than sit in my apartment, plowing through reading. I told him I'd become very solitary, without even meaning to or noticing it. And he assured me that was okay, and that he could pretty much sum up his entire life with the notion of solitude. He's a total hessian. Has written mad books on everything he's teaching us, which he subtly adds to the secondary reading lists but never mentions. But, why would you want to spend your life all by yourself just thinking about fucking Renaissance rhetoric? What does a life like that imply? Sometimes I lie awake at night absolutely plagued by a vacuous uncertainty that seems to suck all my courage out through somewhere below my navel. It dissipates by morning, but usually creeps back by dusk, as if each passing day were it's own little microcosmic existence inching its way closer to infinite termination with every minute. Ohmygoooooood I don't even LIKE existentialist literature somebody shut my brain off. Have no idea what's going on! Also when did men and women exchange mentalities seriously can't we just go back to the fifties I just want to be objectified and told what to do what is this why does everyone have so many emotions by the way how stoked are you for the Facebook movie it's getting good reviews like when that guy at the Times called it the "best movie about business ever even better than Wall Street even better than Up In the Air" or whatever and I'm probably gonna agree with him because I really never thought Office Space was that funny and the trailer is all super well edited and it has the kid from The Squid and the Whale in it but I mean I bet it's gonna have a lot less prepubescent masturbation than that movie which is good because that means I can prob watch it with my parents whateverrrr duuuuuude just keep drinkin black coffee and listening to Deerhunter and soon it will be Christmas.

"Leave a message on my phone I'm only sort of home, the rest of me is sort of in the zone where the dodos roam."

Things that Happened in Manchester:

I fell over on a bus. Somebody lost a ferret. We saw them filming the Pride & Prejudice zombie film. I mean. Don't ask me! We were seriously there for like twelve hours and spent the majority of them just drinking vodka in different locations.

"You don't understand what it's like to disappear! To be nothing; to be annihilated!"

Edward Hermann's character is one of my favorite parts of this film.

Always move forward, never sleep, like a shark, bro

This album has straight defined my year. I rock my Wesleyan sweatshirt on the reg for theez dudes.

The Best Thing on the Internet Right Now

[The Awl]

[Pitchfork]

"In Syria, once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, a camel took charge of my overcoat while the tents were being pitched, and examined it with a critical eye, all over, with as much interest as if he had an idea of getting one made like it; and then, after he was done figuring on it as an article of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article of diet. He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anything as good as an overcoat before, in his life. Then he smacked his lips once or twice, and reached after the other sleeve. Next he tried the velvet collar, and smiled a smile of such contentment that it was plain to see that he regarded that as the daintiest thing about an overcoat. The tails went next, along with some percussion caps and cough candy, and some fig-paste from Constantinople. And then my newspaper correspondence dropped out, and he took a chance in that--manuscript letters written for the home papers. But he was treading on dangerous ground, now. He began to come across solid wisdom in those documents that was rather weighty on his stomach; and occasionally he would take a joke that would shake him up till it loosened his teeth; it was getting to be perilous times with him, but he held his grip with good courage and hopefully, till at last he began to stumble on statements that not even a camel could swallow with impunity. He began to gag and gasp, and his eyes to stand out, and his forelegs to spread, and in about a quarter of a minute he fell over as stiff as a carpenter's work-bench, and died a death of indescribable agony. I went and pulled the manuscript out of his mouth, and found that the sensitive creature had choked to death on one of the mildest and gentlest statements of fact that I ever laid before a trusting public." An abrupt digression at the end of a chapter dedicated to the description of sage-brush in Mark Twain's Roughing It. It is a fascinating chunk of writing.

The Nazz

Meet my Cat from Japan.




He's all curious n shit. Has a noble face with silly eyes. Also very good and graceful at catching and killing bugs, even ones that fly. He is very much the kind of cat by which all other cats should model themselves, and in every way a fascinating creature to observe, so full is he of alert, friendly fearlessness in his investigative quest to conquer the apartment. I didn't even have to show him how anything worked. He just had it down, from the minute he got here.

"After all, here we've been, so many years, biffing about at opposite ends of the world."

Welcome back, my intermost net; it's been a long month and a half, but the curses of bureaucracy have finally been lifted. And so I bid adieu to the meditative state. Autumn is upon us, and indeed it elapses with not a minute to spare. Who knew third year would be so overwhelming? No time for nothin' but work work work, and the new season of Gossip Girl.* Many things have happened and many things haven't. These are my new kicks; they're surprisingly empowering.


Also, is anyone else in Edinburgh dying of allergies right now or am I just falling ill with plague?

*Seriously, it's gotten so ridiculous that it's actually inching its way closer to the realm of realism; to a progressively more authentic portrayal of the ludicrous tribulations of the stupidly rich. Especially the way everything is so over-commercialized; they're really beginning to capture an accurate sense of shameless superficiality. What would Aristotle say this enables us to further understand? [See also: how reality television is an analogy for Plato's theory on the deception of Reality] The one thing about this show though, is it would be so badass if the characters had any emotional depth whatsoever--if they were actually tried and phased by any of the terrible shitstorms that rain upon the show. But they never are; they pout for a scene or two and are ultimately on to the next thing, never to truly acknowledge the impact of the devastation except for maybe an awkward anecdote for the sake of recap in the following episode, usually something along the lines of "Wow, do you remember when I had that baby? That was pretty weird and outrageous," which I like to think suggests a quaint self-abasement on the part of whomever writes this shit. But imagine if these vapid peoplepictures engaged in sprawling Shakespearian soliloquies, pregnant with woe and regret and scary existential disorientation, every time disaster struck; if they allowed themselves to teeter seriously on the cusp of stability, and not in a romanticised hold-up-in-my-hotel-suite-drinking-Belvedere-and-snorting-blow-out-of-the-navels-of-several-high-class-escorts-for-an-entire-week kind of way. Now that would be a show. Like, people often complain about the Nate character being really dimensionless and insipid, but come on, didn't his dad go to jail for embezzlement back in the day, inflicting homelessness upon young brownstone-bred Nathaniel, who eventually resigned himself to prostitution in order to pay off their townhouse? Didn't his grandfather, like, disown him at a Vanderbilt family reunion? I vaguely remember his mother bearing a creepy, manic Sissy Spacek resemblance. Now his girlfriend is a certified lunatic. Dude should be a basket case, but instead he's as banal as brown rice, albeit with a hinted-at marijuana dependency. Nate's had the shittiest end of the Gossip Girl stick, and as a result, he's seemingly the most unaffected. But in reality, people--especially those who've been warped by last names like Archibald and van der Woodsen --are that absurdly repressed. I guess what I'm saying is, I wish it were more like a Flannery O'Connor novel. I wish they'd let things be just fucking horrible. [See also: is television like this because we are, or are we like this because television is?]

(None of this changes the fact that Serena van der Woodsen is the hottest girl on the planet/actually sort of gets away with wearing shorts that tiny to nice restaurants.)