Plutarch Was Not a Poet

This is at least 45 percent embarrassing.

Daybook

Last night I read the “front-matter” — probably not the right word for the preface, introduction, chronology, etc — of the recently released Damion Searls-edited NYRB Classics edition of Thoreau’s Journal. In Searls’s funny and helpful introduction, he calls the volume an “abridgement”–similar, in one respect, maybe, to an abridgment Searls made of another 19th-century [...]

Permanent Teardrop.

Hey Cancer How’s “the darkness Fine Not as dark as you make it sound Black beans and codfish Shapeshifter rsvp’d. Self-Zine? Got fired Friday, can’t make it Dog wearing lipstick? Dunno,  she’s in heat, maybe spayed,  upset really? aye listen Fear-monger canceled too. it’s just gonna be me you and self-zine shapeshifter And li’l caesar [...]

“An Education” advance screening in San Francisco, 10/7, feat. Nick Hornby IN PERSON!

LI’L TIFFANY: Thirty dollars? Fuck that. PROVOST GARY: Li’l Tiffany, you spend that much on Vitamin Water and Zen Party Mix every week. And it’s a fundraiser for the Believer magazine, which you’re always reading at Patronio’s house. But you never buy it! And you love Nick Hornby’s “sensibility.” And look at this effing still [...]

my visceral dinner

DENNIS: Too busy to blog JENNY: Too busy even for me? Your “private” blog? DENNIS: [his laughter setting his corpulence a-vibratin'] Well….. a ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho [ten minutes later] DENNIS: [screaming] Fuuckk!!!!! JENNY: [deadpan] What’s wrong DENNIS: Nothing JENNY: Oh. I thought you were screaming DENNIS: Naw, just “surfin the [...]

For the to-be-read (2-bread) file: Jesse Nathan’s giant essay on “an Italian poet named Leonardo Sinisgalli“. Should be good! Also: Everything sucks And: Everything is terrible And while I’m at it: Steamboats are ruining everything Ezra Buchla of Gowns believes that his band’s brittle harmonies have a similar effect to gospel music. (“If people have [...]

The Genre Artists

John Haskell (2003) Jack Vance (2009) [plus preddendum] [&+tripleddendum: this webpage, wherein the names of carlo rotella and ben marcus are both mentioned, has a weird suggestion: Children, Cover Your Eyes, a novel [by Ben Marcus??!] (&, late-breaking, via @r_nash: jamba juice is a bunch of sucker motherfuckers, long live david rees! Whoever made this [...]

Domo Corpusti

OCEAN: The black flag wavers for a fucking second, not safe for work, a grand glugging gets going and the waters of the world drain away. BUSTY CACTUS: They drain? Don’t you think they’d evaporate first? OCEAN: Naw. No. They drain. Through mine anus. Through mine geo-bio-tunnel. Which, I should add, can be quite sensitive. [...]

private post

I have a degenerative retinal condition that causes severe night blindness normally it only affects me at night/low-light situations this week I’ve been having trouble seeing during the day, too it’s supposedly supposed to  slowly encroach to my “normal” vision but this feels sudden maybe I just need new glasses — my prescription is a [...]

Shellfishness

This blog has lately become yet another “Chris Ying is ineffably awesome forever” blog, which is fine by me. (He’s written a few guest posts, after all!) At any rate, old Plebescite‘s got a brilliant piece in the new issue of Meatpaper, on “why we watch men eating meat”: If the complaint about porn is [...]