Thursday, cigarette #41. From a man who no longer breathes fire, a small tribute to cigarettes.2. Wimpy goes ghetto in Bed-Stuy: "The Tasmanian Devil wearing a hoodie? Yawn. Marvin the Martian wearing gold chains? Stupid. But have I seen a sleeveless Wimpy preparing to administer...
Thursday, January 31, 2008
"To Edmund Burke we raise our glasses up! Damn the French, call the wench, bring another cup!"
Thursday, cigarette #3I should have known better than to think I could get away with calling Edmund Burke an aesthete, especially after I was shot down for saying so in class on Monday (I assumed I had a sympathetic audience...), so let me try to clarify.The question is "When...
First papayas, now cabbage heads, is no vegetable at Yale safe?
Thursday, cigarette #2Any time the Yale Political Union debates free speech (like Resolved: Yale should not regulate student speech last night), this quote comes to mind:With regard to the arousal of ‘undesirable’ emotions by art, the twentieth century would be inclined either...
Abbot is to Costello as Oscar Wilde is to Jesus Christ.
Thursday, cigarette #1"What's the matter, sister? You ain't saying much.""Seems to me you're doing excellently without any assistance.""Well, shut my big mouth! You know, there's nothing I like better than to meet a high-class mama that can snap 'em back at ya. 'Cause the colder...
"Sugar-sugar, oh, honey-honey, you are my Goldwater girl and you got me wanting you..."
Wednesday, cigarette #1Pre-YPU cigaretteAn interesting theory from Housemate Dara:HELEN: I never would have remembered that "Candy Girl (Sugar Sugar)" was released in 1969.DARA: I mean, it has to be, right? Before 1968, you don't really have bubblegum pop.HELEN: What would...
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Yes, but what's his china policy?
Tuesday, cigarette #2I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china. Oscar WildeRoss Douthat has put up a temperate post calling aesthetic politics "ultimately pernicious." I know that quoting Homer and Burke in one day is so undergraduate, but sometimes I...
Sing, heavenly muse, of the wrath of McCain, Goldwater's son, which brought on the Americans countless agonies...
Tuesday, cigarette #1Morning Paper cigarettePeter Johnston turns out not only to be a "debonair vigilante," but an equally debonair turner of phrases:Dwelling on policy differences will not win the day for Romney. Rather, he must project the character of his candidacy, which...
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Chivalry is alive and well and living in New Haven
Sunday, cigarette #1The fraternity stunt receiving so much attention over at IvyGate — Zeta Psi pledges held up a sign reading "WE LOVE YALE SLUTS" in front of the Women's Center (you know, the place where women go after they've been raped) and snapped a picture — has provoked...
Thursday, January 24, 2008
A liberal who understands Edmund Burke?
Thursday, cigarette #5From Shelley, Godwin, and Their Circle by H. N. Brailsford (out of print):Of Burke one must ask not so much "What did he believe?" but "Whom did he pit...
Further Dispatches from the Malmsey Butt: "Oh, excellent device! We'll make a sop of him!"
Thursday, cigarette #4Pre-debate cigaretteI should clarify what I meant by this post, in particular my endorsement of the statement "Becoming Catholic didn't make me noticeably more moral; it just made me start drinking more." I don't mean that Catholicism removed any concern...
Debate Round-Up: Resolved: Let the old people die and Resolved: Liberalism is the true source of America's greatness
Thursday, cigarette #3The Party of the Left (our beloved nemesis) debated Resolved: Let the old people die on Tuesday. It passed.Most people grasped very quickly that giving up on expensive health care for the inevitably death-bound is not a utilitarian question of how best...
"She should be more like Bianca? She can't be more like Bianca! Bianca isn't like anything!"
Thursday, cigarette #2My mind hath been as big as one of yours,My heart as great, my reason haply more,To bandy word for word and frown for frown;But now I see our lances are but straws,Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,That seeming to be most which we indeed least...
"You shall have wine enough, my lord, anon..."
Thursday, cigarette #1I do not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any true religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce industry and frugality, and this cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will love of the world, in all...
Monday, January 21, 2008
I, in this weak piping time of peace, have no delight to pass away the time...
Sunday, cigarette #1Post-Shakespeare cigarette"Not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish; which of you, if you were a prince's son, being pent from liberty as I cam now, if two such murderers as yourself came to you, would not entreat for life? My friend, I spy some pity in...
Friday, January 18, 2008
Presidential parking pardons? Please.
Friday, cigarette #2Hangover clears; Strauss-induced headache persistsContrary to Wikipedia, the tradition of each newly-elected French president forgiving parking tickets on his first day in office (a tradition that Sarkozy broke) did not begin with Napoleon but with medieval...
Five reasons not to hate Yale too much
Friday, cigarette #1Average hangover cigarette1.) "I'm happy to report that you have been admitted into my 'What Is Conservatism?' seminar. Since there is an extensive wait-list, please let me know as soon as possible if you will not be taking the course."2.) The above email...
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
YPU: Resolved: Spread democratic liberalism through free trade with Tom Palmer
Tuesday, cigarette #6Post-floor fight cigaretteOutside the Union meetingWhen the Union debates free trade, there's usually money to be won on betting that the debate will be awful. Luckily, Tom Palmer's guardian angel was on watch.Much to the Right's surprise, the Left didn't...
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
In the Yale Political Union, "Film is a problematic medium for conservatives" is a conversation starter.
Tuesday, cigarette #2...the squeaking of Mme. Arpel's shoes is amusing at first, and almost maddening by the end. It's not just that Tati uses gags and keeps striking the same chord. His aesthetic position and insane logic lead to a totally deformed and obsessive world view....
Donald Barthelme: "You may not be interested in absurdity, Mr. Peterson, but absurdity is interested in you."
Tuesday, cigarette #1From "Margins":I know what you're thinking. If I'll steal books I'll steal other things. But stealing books is metaphysically different from stealing like mon...
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Because Resolved: Put a Starbucks on every streetcorner was "too cute."
Sunday, cigarette #2Outside the YPU office after E-BoardThe Yale Political Union will meet this Tuesday evening with guest Tom Palmer. The resolution is yet to be finalized, but candidates include Resolved: Westernize the world through free trade or Resolved: Life, liberty,...
Boss fires staff for not smoking
Sunday, cigarette #1From Reuters:"I can't be bothered with trouble-makers," Thomas was quoted saying. "We're on the phone all the time and it's just easier to work while smoking. Everyone picks on smokers these days. It's time for revenge. I'm only going to hire smokers from...
Friday, January 11, 2008
"I fell in love with the first cute girl that I met who could appreciate Georges Bataille..."
Friday, cigarette #6[The saint's] actions are driven in no small part by cruelty: "There is also an abundant, over-abundant enjoyment at one's own suffering, at making oneself suffer" — the pleasure one would call cruelty... [But] whatever value one might place on medieval ascetic...
Southern Gothic vs. Ivy League Gothic, part 2: Low comedy
Friday, cigarette #3Add another one to the Southerners-who-went-north-to-Ivy-League-schools-and-didn't-love-it tally: William Alexander Percy. From Lanterns on the Levee, "At the Harvard Law School":...My next lesson in differences was more amusing. Harley Stowell and I had...
Bookwatch: Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950's
Friday, cigarette #2Mail call!A Guide to the Hangover by M. J. MeakerIf you are an average hangover victim, you will most likely find the hangover in your bed. If you are above average, you will find it in a strange bed...This morning's mail call delivered the fruits of an...
Dandywatch: Sebastian Melmoth to be gayest Wilde movie yet!
Friday, cigarette #1Rupert Everett is making a movie about Wilde's last years:Everett’s project about the post-libel trial life of Wilde, during which the playwright, novelist and poet lived in exile and had to adopt pseudonyms like Sebastian Melmoth, covers much of the same...
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Right-Wing Dandyism: Talk about feeling a stain like a wound...
Thursday, cigarette #2"The more conservative members of our clique deny that a woman can be a dandy. What do you have to say to them?""A dandy recognizes no authority except her tailor."An anonymous reader suggested in an email that all my recent posts about the future of conservatism...
"It'll help me quit? So, what, I can smoke the book? Is that what you're saying?"
Thursday, cigarette #1David, the Largehearted Boy, has posted his favorite graphic novels of 2007. Included on the list is Emily Flake's These Things Ain't Gonna Smoke Themselves. The subtitle, "A Love/Hate/Love/Hate Letter to a Very Bad Habit," doubles as a description of...
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
With enemies like this, who needs friends?
Wednesday, cigarette #1The view implicit in my education was that the basic narrative of Christianity had long been exposed as a myth, and that opinion was now divided as to whether its ethical teaching was of present value, a division in which the main weight went against it....
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Huckabee: The only candidate willing to defend completely useless subjects of instruction
Tuesday, cigarette #2Just to show that not all Catholics regard Huckabee with suspicion, I'd like to register how much I approve of the "Education and the Arts" page of his issue profile:Music and the arts are not extraneous, extra-curricular, or expendable — I believe they...
They want to talk about Texas, we want to talk about love...
Tuesday, cigarette #1Over really terrible instant coffee on the front porchSpeaking of Housemate Will, this is from an email from him:Q: Why did Douglas Hofstadter cross the road?A: To make this joke possible.Just finished reading all 800 pages of Metamagical Themas by Hofstadter,...
New Haven: "They're not homeless, they're anchoritic."
Monday, cigarette #1On Chapel St., 9:15amYale takes the indoctrination of freshmen very seriously, and the proper way to handle the New Haven homeless gets its own paragraph in the orientation handbook. Still, in spite of every freshman counselor's insistence that one should...
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Hallam Foe: "Voyeurism, taxidermy, and a hero for our times."
Saturday, cigarette #3 Hallam Foe (trailer here), which has been tearing up the European awards circuit, is going to be released in America under the title Mister Foe. I don't understand the name change, but I'm happy to finally get the chance to watch [Whatever] Foe. Most...
Wait a minute, this cookie is not filled with arsenic!
Saturday, cigarette #2Tabloid journalism should live forever, not just because objectivity is impossible — everybody knows that, even liberals — but because even trying for objectivity is fatal to a storyteller, which is all a reporter really is. Also, I feel very strongly...
File under "Oh, really?"
Saturday, cigarette #1From Francis Lee Utley's "Pride and Humility: The Cultural Roots of Ike McCaslin":If women had been [the South's slave] masters, there would have been no taint, and thus women cannot understand man's obsession with guilt and repentan...
Friday, January 4, 2008
If he thinks Breaking the Waves plays up love-as-slavery, he should just watch Manderlay.
Friday, cigarette #5From Gerard Loughlin's Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology:[Bess in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves] is possessed of a love that knows no limits, that gives itself away without thought of the cost — giving "anything to anyone," as Dodo...
"Hubris is grist for other mills..."
Friday, cigarette #4I can't mention my least favorite paragraph from an education-related court ruling without also mentioning my favorite: in 1962, Mississippi's Governor Ross Barnett was charged with criminal contempt for using his office to support the segregationists at...
More My Lai tastelessness, this time from Jonathan Kozol
Friday, cigarette #3In front of Sterling Memorial LibrarySpeaking of people being tasteless about My Lai, Jonathan Leaf took education expert (not to be confused with an expert educator) Jonathan Kozol to town and back in the latest The Weekly Standard:...in the ideal school,...
Michael O'Donoghue (January 5, 1940 - November 8, 1994)
Friday, cigarette #2The internet has failed to do right by Mr. Mike, which is a sad fate for the man who was a mentor to P.J. O'Rourke. The only articles available online are old bitter Michael O'Donoghue pieces, which aren't a patch on young angry Michael O'Donoghue pieces...
Luc Sante Preaching the Gospel
Friday, cigarette #1Outside Koffee on AudubonFrom Kill All Your Darlings:...just as an alcoholic remains an alcoholic even after decades of abstinence, so a smoker is a sinner forever after. You have breathed fire. You have experiened one of the deepest satisfactions of life:...
Thursday, January 3, 2008
"My name is Joe Roberts. I work for the state."
Thursday, cigarette #1Outside Bass LibraryMUSIC: "Highway Patrolman," Bruce SpringsteenWell, I chased him through the county roadsTill a sign said Canadian Border Five Miles from Here.I pulled over to the side of the roadAnd watched his taillights disappear.I catch him when...
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
"Qui fume prie."
Wednesday, cigarette #2Outside Sterling Memorial LibraryTwo news stories about smoking bans have crossed my desk in the last twenty-four hours: a Reason Brickbat about a bar in England being forced to close its windows because cigarette smoke from the porch drifting inside would...
Five Ways in which Of Montreal's "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" was the most Conservative Single of 2007
Wednesday, cigarette #1Outside Sterling Memorial Library1. "Things could be different/But they're not" is Burkean.2. Any allusion to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is conservative, not so much because the play takes cheap shots at "progress" ("You're the one with all the...
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Southern Gothic vs. Ivy League Gothic
You go North — you become expatriated, exiled. You reach out for the first symbol that completes your apostasy — you become a Communist or a social worker or you marry a Jew. In all good faith, too, yearning to repudiate the wrong you've grown up with, only to find that embracing...
RMS speaks at YPU; results "titanic"
Tuesday, cigarette #1Some wi-fi hotspot in back of the libraryWhile on the topic of all things open source, here are highlights from the Yale Political Union's debate with Richard Stallman. The resolution in question was about digital restrictions management (the thing that...
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