Remembered this when I got to tweeting about modal stacking this afternoon. Y'all.
Southern American English - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
September 21, 2011
Changeling
Changeling. Man, Clint Eastwood has a steady hand. He will take his damn time and everything will be in its place. He even did the music. There’s no razzle-dazzle here, it’s just firm, reliable storytelling. I’m glad he didn’t go into the more lurid aspects of the story, focusing more on building your outrage and indignation. You only see one death in full and its impact caught me off-guard. Heavy stuff. Angelina Jolie is excellent. The only other Jolie films I’ve seen are one of the Tomb Raider films (ugh) and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (eehhhh), so this was a nice change. My current rankings for Eastwood’s work as director:
- Unforgiven
- Gran Torino
- Million Dollar Baby
- The Outlaw Josey Wales
- Changeling
- Play Misty for Me
- Bird
- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Lots of good work there. Cf. Hitchcock.
Uncreative Writing: It's Not Plagiarism. In the Digital Age, It's 'Repurposing.' - The Chronicle of Higher Education
Summarizing some of Marjorie Perloff’s ideas on unoriginal genius:
Today’s writer resembles more a programmer than a tortured genius, brilliantly conceptualizing, constructing, executing, and maintaining a writing machine.
Also:
For the past several years, I’ve taught a class at the University of Pennsylvania called “Uncreative Writing.” In it, students are penalized for showing any shred of originality and creativity. Instead they are rewarded for plagiarism, identity theft, repurposing papers, patchwriting, sampling, plundering, and stealing. Not surprisingly, they thrive.
(via)
September 19, 2011
“If Celebrities Moved To Oklahoma” — Pretty Faces, Poor Bodies | Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style.
The power of these photos, then, is the way that they illuminate the amount of capital it takes to make bodies not look like this. Celebrities weren’t born looking gorgeous and sophisticated. They are created; they are the product of capital. That process is elided, in part because the allure of the celebrity is the effortlessness with which he or she appears. But it’s absolutely crucial for us to remember, if only to recall that bodies are never automatically “trashy” or “classy,” “famous” or “poor,” including our own.
September 19, 2011
Ethereal Slowmo BASE Jumping Shot with GoPro and Slowed with Twixtor. Okay. Make base-jumping slow and angelic, and you can count me in. I’m not ready for the breakneck stuff yet.
(Source: https://player.vimeo.com/)
The New Inquiry - Fear of an Ape Planet
It’s a neat trick: If you make a rousing summer blockbuster that allows for a certain amount of smug critical masturbation, you’ll get great reviews for no added cost.
Remembering a Relationship, One Chat at a Time - GOOD
Y'know, just in case you need to read something depressing this morning. Previously in morning heartbreak.
Out of the Past
Out of the Past. My favorite movie of all time? Quite possibly. Probably. I loved it the first time I watched it and every time since. This is well-written, witty, funny, overwhelmingly tragic stuff. Man. So good.
September 15, 2011
Map of Atlanta on a pizza. Via The Making of Modern Suburban Atlanta; or, The Great Dunwoody Tennis Boom of 1991 « pecanne log. Love me some Pecanne Log.
September 15, 2011
For what shall I wield a dagger, o lord?
What can I pluck it out of or plunge it into
when you are all the world?
Devara Dasimayya, 10th century Indian poet/saint. (via)
September 14, 2011
dirt & dogs: Mongolia by Mountain Bike. This strikes me as something worth doing.
September 14, 2011
We must be indulgent to the mind, and from time to time must grant it the leisure that serves as its food and strength.
On Tranquillity of Mind - Seneca
As predicted, I’ve been on a stoicism bender. This was a good one to dive into early, as my recent Heraclitus and Seneca might have tipped you off. This bit on friendship was one of my favorite parts:
Nothing, however, gives the mind so much pleasure as fond and faithful friendship. What a blessing it is to have those to whose waiting hearts every secret may be committed with safety, whose knowledge of you you fear less than your knowledge of yourself, whose conversation soothes your anxiety, whose opinion assists your decision, whose cheerfulness scatters your sorrow, the very sight of whom gives you joy! We shall of course choose those who are free, as far as may be, from selfish desires; for vices spread unnoticed, and quickly pass to those nearest and do harm by their contact.
The Millions : Nobody Hearts L.A.: A Personal Los Angeles Canon
Readying myself for a move to Los Angeles, I naturally turned to literature, but I decided to avoid the region’s richest, oldest, most beloved literary currents: its unflinching examinations of Old Hollywood, its hardscrabble outsider odysseys toward the kingdom of celebrity, its hard-boiled tales of murderous intrigue and complex deceit beneath the palm trees. Those novels became iconic for a reason, but I had to ask: given Los Angeles’ practically unfathomable size and diversity, what other kinds of literature does it offer?
The Millions : Nobody Hearts L.A.: A Personal Los Angeles Canon
Food-Based Body Clock the Key to Jet Lag – Lone Gunman
Man, if I’d known this when I got back from Tokyo, I would have saved myself sooooo much anguish.
September 14, 2011
Video Games Killed the Video-Game Star: Tom Bissell on Dead Island - Grantland
On the dangers of over-gamifying games. (via)
There is, anyway, only one story worth telling in a zombie game, and here it is: See those zombies over there? You should probably get away from them.
Video Games Killed the Video-Game Star: Tom Bissell on Dead Island - Grantland
September 13, 2011
Paper Trail: Atlanta | Features | Pitchfork. Nice interview with Kelefa Sanneh about the Atlanta book, and Atlanta, and hiphop.
Another thing that’s interesting about Atlanta is that it’s a real magnet. A lot of the people that define that music aren’t from there; they’re drawn there. Gucci Mane comes from Alabama.Waka Flocka was born in Queens. The amazing producer Lex Luger comes in from Virginia. T-Pain’s from Florida. Even when Lil B launched his own first co-sign post Pack, he goes and hooks up with Soulja Boy. Machine Gun Kelly, from Cleveland, goes to Atlanta and hooks up with Travis Porter. I think one reason why the city has sustained itself so well is that it has welcomed artists from all over the place.
Pitchfork: Yeah, even Ludacris is from Illinois.
KS: Right. There is this industry infrastructure. Maybe it’s because Atlanta is known as a comfortable place to live if you’re African-American and have some money, and people generally enjoy living there. Can it become the Nashville of hip-hop? With Nashville, it’s not even about a Nashville sound anymore. It’s just that if you want to go into country music, that’s where you go. It’s not impossible to imagine that Atlanta can get there.
And also:
Somehow, and this is weird to me, the labels are all still in New York, except for Interscope in L.A. But you see these people get contracts. Living here in New York, I got the feeling that the label people were signing Atlanta artists because they had to, but that there wasn’t much enthusiasm for them within the labels. It’s like the history of hip-hop in miniature because that’s how hip-hop used to be treated by the music industry, like: “I guess we’ll sign them because this is what the kids are doing, but we don’t really get it, and we don’t really want to spend more time on this stuff than we have to.” So, for better or for worse, the Atlanta stuff has been pretty grassroots.
September 13, 2011
Artists and fans in Atlanta don’t seem to struggle with [getting hung up on one style] so much. They don’t seem to get as hung up on it as people do in New York, which is probably the capital of hip-hop people getting hung up on stuff.