Today this might seem like a definition of poetry in general: we forget that there was a time when intentional obfuscation and metrical language did not necessarily come part in parcel. It is the fact that poetry has stuck so close to the path Wilson has described that makes Axel’s Castle especially fascinating, for it is as though he is writing with a crystal ball at his bedside.
On the 60th Anniversary of Wittgenstein’s death, The University of Cambridge is exhibiting his photography and how it relates to his philosophy.
Free Swartz! (In the Event that He is Imprisoned!!)
In what has to be one of the shittiest moments in US copyright/cybertheft/copyleft history (a history comprised mostly of shitty, callow, wrongheaded moments) 24 year old webhead Aaron Swartz was arrested for downloading 4.8 million articles from JStor.
Damn. It’s hot! Hot Hot Hot Hot! Some weird phenomena (heat) is gripping the northeast and I just can’t staaaaand it! Too hot! So hungry hot! Violent crime wave hot! Garbage can through window hot! Call grandma make sure everything’s-ok hot!
I know I’m supposed to put my sense of irony aside during nuptials, but I couldn’t help but recall the actual plot of Family Happiness, wherein the married couple soon realize how complicated, emotionally fraught, and full of compromises married life is as all of their naive, idealistic, youthful notions of matrimony are systematically smashed.
I think it better to echo the sentiment voiced by Tom Scharpling on this week’s Best Show on WFMU: “You put [The Office] up against Alan Partridge, it beats that thing up down and every which way….Viva Coogan!”
UPDATED: Colson Whitehead finds his degradation
The attraction to poker mystifies me. HOWEVER, Colson Whitehead’s sobering, muscular, and whip-smart writing about his participation in the World Series of Poker has gotten me to give up my aversion, if only to tag along as he navigates the sad world of casino poker.
I’ve always thought of Eugene Ionesco’s 1959 play Rhinoceros as a sort of psychic negative of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. The TV Guide summary of this Theater of the Absurd play goes as follows: Everyone in a town turns into Rhinos, except one man who chooses to remain human.
In which the bookseller chain Borders announces that it will liquidate its assets and I examine the consequences/halfheartedly apologize for stealing books.
Because I grew up without television, I’m still fairly unacquainted with some of the more significant pockets of popular American brutalism. Thanks to Avi Steinberg’s essay “Tyson Projected,” published a few weeks ago by n+1, that is no longer the case.