if only we stopped trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time
For a variety of reasons, I m in a stage of life where I m buried in paperwork. I blame computers for this. Part of the reason we have them is to make bureaucracy easier, but I suspect that because of computers, some faceless bureaucrat in a gray flannel suit or pantsuit thinks that the additional cost [ ]
I don t know how this earworm got into my brain, but the couplet By the shore of Gitche Gumee,/By the shining Big-Sea-Water burrowed its way in some time when I was in high school, and occasionally reactivates like some kind of latent tuberculosis infection. When the brainworm rears its head and hisses a song, I [ ]
In no particular order: These are the things I try to keep in mind whenever I m learning something new.
I think of Wallace Stevens classic poem, The Snow Man. One must have a mind of winterTo regard the frost and the boughsOf the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long timeTo behold the junipers shagged with ice,The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to thinkOf [ ]
I was expecting to be completely blown away, and I wasn t quite. There s enough glowing reviews online that I won t dig into the merits, and I can t really explain why this movie didn t completely work for me. It IS a good movie and I d recommend seeing it. I only want to note something wonderful about [ ]
I love criticizing Silicon Valley tech culture. It s 80% of my personality. I know, it s tiresome. I came across Paulina Borsook s work recently, wherein she calls out the surveillance culture, the lack of noblesse oblige, and the environmental impacts twenty-five years ago. Mother Jones published this article by her and it is well worth a [ ]
Spoilers ahead. I hear NPR described the author as one of our foremost talents today, and I cannot fucking believe that NPR thinks that, because that would mean putting My Heart is a Chainsaw on the same shelf as the Patrick Melrose novels. Like many other novels today, MHC is another tiresome book about trauma, [ ]
I started running regularly after finally giving up on riding my bike around Boston recreationally. The roads are narrow and I was spoiled by living only a 20 minute bike ride away from the chaparral and redwoods back when I still lived in Palo Alto. You can keep going for hours in the Boston area [ ]
I don t understand the Cannes audience. If you believe the stories that come out of that festival, people literally fainted when they watched Julia Ducournau s movie Raw. Everyone in the theater where I saw Raw managed to stay upright. Are they just very emotional, very fragile, sort of like butterflies caught in the strong breeze [ ]
It s a rich enough book that you could do some decent lit crit, but I couldn t finish it and can t be arsed. Tartt s obsession with class is even more obnoxious here than in The Goldfinch. She s like a third-rate Evelyn Waugh. Where his class-worship had at least the benefit of a satirical distance that gave [ ]