Monday, cigarette #3Back home on the front porch, 5:20pmOpen source software is a lot like vaudeville. That’s not the opening line of a joke. (I suppose it could be. The Party of the Right had an Algonquin Round Table moment when the Chairman, challenged to come up with a...
Monday, December 31, 2007
Rosalind Russell vs. the Albanian sworn virgins
Monday, cigarette #2Connecticut Hall, 10:45amThe first thing Caitlin said when I showed her this article from the Yale Globalist was, "Wow, that woman looks just like Radclyffe Hall":Without hesitation, Sanie steps into the building, orders a raki — the national drink — and...
Jesus? A fine teacher, but didn't publish.
Monday, cigarette #1Walking to the computer lab, 10:20amToday's assignment is to log a few hundred words of the senior essay. But when it's a few hundred words about this, what's the difference between work and vacation, anyway?:Indeed, that is the charm about Christ, when...
Sunday, December 30, 2007
"...being the Comedian's the only thing that makes sense."
Sunday, cigarette #5Outside Gourmet Heaven, 5:45pmSacha Guitry, who was apparently “the French Noel Coward,” said You can pretend to be serious, but you can’t pretend to be funny. (If he had been the French P.T. Barnum, he would have said You can sucker somebody into believing...
Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations majors say the darnedest things.
Sunday, cigarette #4Axis Orange, front porch, 2:45pmMUSIC: "Outfit," the Drive-By TruckersHave fun, and stay clear of the needle, and call home on your sister's birthday,And don't tell them you're bigger than Jesus, don't give it away.Every time I hear this album I think of...
Ooh, a weekly feature! I should get one of those.
Sunday, cigarette #3Au Bon Pain, 10:35amPaper Cuts does a thing every Wednesday that calls itself Living with Music, and this week they did it with Jack Pendarvis:12) No Return, The Kinks. The Kinks are my favorite rock band, so it’s hard to pick just the right song. If we’re...
Speaking of Ace in the Hole...
Sunday, cigarette #2Walking downtown, 9:50am"I can handle big news and little news, and if there's no news I'll go out and bite a dog." Ace in the HoleFound this while poking around for that Kirk Douglas picture: "It's News! Man bites rabid dog in southern India."From Reuters,...
Then again, how many not-hideous pictures of Bette Davis are there?
Sunday, cigarette #1Walking downtown, 9:40amThings I Would Not Have Done Had I Been the Author of This Slate Article1. Summed up the way Hollywood makes smoking "cool" with this hideous photo of Bette Davis.2. Referred to Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall as "the Brangelina...
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Dispatches from Senior Essay Land
Saturday, cigarette #1Chez Orange, front porch, 8:45pmDandyism is always dandyism in relation to God. The individual in so far as he is created can oppose himself only to the Creator. ALBERT CAMUSFor those who don’t know, I'm spending my senior thesis trying to work out some...
"Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard."
Saturday, cigarette #2Back at Axis Orange, front porch, 7:15pmMUSIC: "Oh Bondage! Up Yours!," the X-Ray SpexSpeaking of “girls like violence,” my own go-to guy for that is Heinrich von Kleist. From Penthesilea (it's a love story about Achilles and Penthesilea, queen of the...
"If women were good, God would have one."
Saturday, cigarette #1Outside Koffee On Audubon, 8:45amTHUMBING THROUGH: The Weekly StandardIt's possible to direct Edward II so that Edward is basically sympathetic. Derek Jarman did it in 1991 in his unsettling movie, and he did it by being very angry.Eve Tushnet's review...
David Bromwich slams English-Class-as-Show-and-Tell.
Friday, cigarette #1Outside RDU airport, 7:40amI'm glad to see Phi Beta Cons taking notice of Stanley Fish's new book, because I've been looking for an excuse to dredge up this quote from my other favorite candidate for "The Left's answer to Closing of the American Mind," David...
Juno: Less Knocked Up, More Ghost World.
Thursday, cigarette #2Outside the theatre after watching Juno, 10:35pmJuno was written by someone called Diablo Cody, and it shows. If I thought I could get a laugh from "This is one doodle that can't be undid, home-skillet," I would probably write under a goofy-awful name,...
Things which are bad ideas.
Using the song "Brazil" (as in "Terry Gilliam's vision of the future, which apparently involves lots of ducts and oh yeah Jonathan Pryce getting tortured to death") as background music in the trailer for your cute robot mov...
Sunday, December 23, 2007
That's the way the girls are from Texas.
Sunday, cigarette #3Cup-a-Joe, 11:45amMUSIC: "Born a Woman," Sandy PoseyMakes no difference if you're rich or poor or if you're smart or dumb,A woman's place in this old world is under some man's thumb,And if you're born a woman, you're born to be hurt,You're born to be stepped...
Priorities
Sunday, cigarette #2Cup-a-Joe, 11:35I hadn't jumped on the Ron Paul bandwagon until Michael Brendan Dougherty explained the real attraction: Ron Paul: More Fecund than the Mormo...
"Gonna be here the rest of my life, all I did was shoot my wife..."
Sunday, cigarette #1Cup-a-Joe (inside!), 11:25amMUSIC: "Parchman Farm Blues," Bukka WhiteListen here man, I don't mean no harm,Listen here man, I don't mean no harm,If you wanna do good, you better stay off Parchman Farm...This month's Oxford American music issue has got me...
Friday, December 21, 2007
PoMoCo & Eros-Lo-Volt go on an assonance safari!
Friday, cigarette #5Cup-a-Joe, 2:35pmChris didn't think much of J. G. Ballard's Crash, and mostly I'm with him on it. I liked that Ballard asked the question, "Can eros survive in a hyper-technological world?" I didn't like that his answer was, "If by eros you mean something...
My genre is "urban haute bourgeoisie."
Friday, cigarette #4Outside the Irregardless Cafe, 1:30pmThe House Next Door has linked to Big Media Vandalism's interview with Arnold White in which he explains how it makes sense to love Wes Anderson but still think Noah Baumbach is "an asshole":AW: Some people say, "Oh,...
Misogynists on parade!
Friday, cigarette #3Cup-a-Joe, Raleigh, NC, 10:25amDonald Fagen (not a man celebrated for his sympathy toward the fairer sex) has a very sweet obituary for Ike Turner up at Slate:By all accounts, Ike got higher every year, and meaner, too. It's really hard to focus when there's...
"You can tell a woman's past by the way she holds her cigarettes." — Sacha Guitry
Friday, cigarette #2Cup-a-Joe, Raleigh, NC, 10:05amMUSIC: "Good Morning Britain," Aztec CameraMusic's food till the art biz folds, let them all eat culture!Mark Antliff has a review up of David Weir's Anarchy and Culture: The Aesthetic Politics of Modernism:David Weir’s thesis...
It's been a good year for the roses
I can hardly bear the sight of lipstick on the cigarettes there in the ashtray,Lying cold the way you left them, but at least your lips caressed them while you passed,And a lip print on a half-filled cup of coffee that you poured and didn't drink,But at least you thought you...
Thursday, December 20, 2007
If old hymns you like, or bare limbs you like...
Thursday, cigarette #1The Old House, 6:30pmMUSIC: "Anything Goes," Ella FitzgeraldIn olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking,Now, Heaven knows, anything goes!Not much to do back at the old Carolina homestead except sing Cole Porter and frighten the...
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Not to mention your across-the-board ban on smoking inside
Tuesday, cigarette #3Outside the Calhoun common room, 2:35pmPERUSING: this month's Yale Free PressFrom this month's issue of Yale's Finest Publication:The sign, if you can't read it, says: "Several instances on campus have made it necessary for us to come together as groups...
At least he saved himself for marriage...
Tuesday, cigarette #2Outside the dining hall, 1:45pmThe consensus over at IvyGate seems to be that the take-away lesson from l'Affaire Anscombe is that anyone who believes Ivy League campuses are hostile to conservative ideas is rubber room material. While no one in my circle...
"I love you, and you don't pay me."
Tuesday, cigarette #1On the porch, 12:05amDECLAIMING: Henry IV, Pt. 1’Twixt his finger and his thumb he heldA pouncet-box, which ever and anonHe gave his nose and took’t away again;Who therewith angry, when it next came there,Took it in snuff; and still he smiled and talk’d,And...
Monday, December 17, 2007
L'Affaire Anscombe
Monday, cigarette #4Branford courtyard, 10:45pmThe best part of IvyGate's coverage of the Francisco Nava story is not the phrase "anti-modernity-club" (although it's a pretty killer shorthand for the Anscombe Society). It's the reader comments. One student's take:D08 says:...
Fur: A Disappointing Portrait of Diane Arbus
Monday, cigarette #3Outside the Silliman movie lounge, 9:55pmI wanted very badly to like Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. Steven Shainberg has all the makings to be My New Favorite Auteur: a beloved debut, an obvious knowledge of genre conventions and a willingness...
"Haunted by the lives that I have loved and actions I have hated..."
Monday, cigarette #2The Owl Shop, 2:15pmMUSIC: "Amazed," PoeThe voice of my father still loud as before; it used to scare me, but not anymore . . .Roger Scruton's meditation on forgiveness got linked on the A & L Daily, but after reading it I wished I'd spent twenty minutes...
More from the right-wing nostalgia file
Monday, cigarette #1Outside Bass Library, 10:45amAs I stand ankle-deep in snow outside the library, I can only think of the late 1980's, when the study room of Yale's main undergraduate library had a smoking section.Something tells me I would write papers faster if I had a pack...
Sunday, December 16, 2007
"Is it true what they say about Dixie?"
Sunday, cigarette #3The Branford courtyard swing, 5:15pmLike Camille Paglia, I spend half of my time earning credibility with the Left and the other half spending it. (This review in one sentence: "If I praise your list of euphemisms for male ejaculate as 'mesmerizing vernacular...
More fun with nouns
Sunday, cigarette #2Still trudging downtown, 1:25pmI spent the entire second cigarette thinking about the woman in the scooter commercial who complains that she used to be "limited by her mobility" and eventually decided that it doesn't make sense to say that you are limited...
The only good aphorism is a dead aphorism?
Sunday, cigarette #1Knee deep in snow, trudging downtown, 1:15pmI did not expect to enjoy anything written by someone who took time out of his life to write a book called Why Poetry Matters ("From the author of Mobility is So Key and Declaring War on the Sun: The Case Against!"),...
Thursday, December 13, 2007
"Hing hang hung, see what the hangman done."
I posted a while ago about the paired images of virtue (masculine/feminine, chastity/matrimony, integrated/exiled) that pop up in Christianity. Each half is complete and coherent but also utterly incompatible with its other half. In other words, perfect manly virtue and perfect...
William F. Buckley: The F is for Funny
Nicholas Desai has begun blogging over at The American Scene and breaks out of the gate with a review of Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription.I tried very hard to remember my own favorite Buckleyism, and eventually resorted to looking it up:If there is a key to the problem of...
Fun with Nouns
Thursday, cigarette #1Outside Commons, 7:15pmA book review in Hermenaut contains the sentence "As we say around the Hermenaut office, humor is the lowest form of humor," so I spent this cigarette chatting with a blond interlocuter about other nouns which could replace "humor"...
Dandywatch - Hermenaut, Issue #11
Wednesday, cigarette #3Outside Bass Library, 3:45pmAward for Most McSweeney-esqe Piece in Hermenaut #11 (The "Camp" Issue): "The Art of Being Uncomfortable.". . .one can only live so long on coffee, gin and tonics, romance, dressing up, philosophy, and insomnia (for the truly...
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
"Why are all the rich kids sitting together in the cafeteria?"
Wednesday, cigarette #1Outside the computer lab, 10:15amHousemate Dara hits the nail on the head: I often wonder if the reason that Yale’s mainstream culture seems so upper-class to some isn’t because it reflects most students’ backgrounds, but rather because students who do...
Counterfactual counterprotests
Monday, cigarette #4The hacking bench, 11:45pmI encountered drunken conservative revellers in the Branford courtyard, and together we speculated on possible counterprotests to the Women's Center's protest of the Harvey Mansfield debate. (I forgot to mention in the last post...
"All writing is a betrayal."
Monday, cigarette #3Outside Au Bon Pain, 11:35pmMUSIC: "Be a Little Quieter," Porter WagonerWhen you left you said you would not be returning, nothing here you'd ever want to see again,But each night you come to visit me in memories, so won't you be a little quieter if you can?Last...
Between grief and nothing, I'll have the chicken.
Monday, cigarette #2Still outside WLH, 11:05pmMUSIC: "Floating in Space," the Seth MaterialFloating in space with no constraints,Tell me, are you free?Harvey Mansfield keynoted the last debate of the semester, Resolved: Men should be manly, and the Women's Center was out in...
Smells like . . . victory.
Monday, cigarette #1Outside William L. Harkness Hall, 10:45pmPosting has been light. Explanation to be found here.According to one party's election bulletin, their endorsement was swayed by "her emphasis on an ideal debate's search for essential truth through clash, as opposed...
Friday, December 7, 2007
The Counterlife is good to the last 'drop of theatrical existence!'
Sunday, cigarette #2Bedroom, out the window, 9:25amTHUMBING THROUGH: The Counterlife, Philip RothI asked you, with excessive impatience, if your identity was to be formed by the terrifying power of an imagination richer with reality than your own, and should have known the answer...
Otto Preminger's Angel Face
Sunday, cigarette #1Out the window, 3:15amIt's hard being a humble laborer in the vineyards of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, for one is beset on all sides by ideological temptations: objectivism, monarchism, anarcho-capitalism, etc. While I cannot deny having done my time...
Sunday, December 2, 2007
'O Logos ho!
Saturday, cigarette #3Walking downtown, 12:15pmThe editor of the Pythagorean Brotherhood's newsletter 'O Logos asked me for a "meditation," so on the way to the computer lab I thought up one. Here is the final result.Thoughts are censored; some things are simply unthinkable....
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