December 2011
65 posts
A gentleman is someone at a party who knows how to play an accordion, but doesn’t.
—Frank M. Grittner.
The Apartment gives Jack Lemmon free rein to play C.C. Baxter, that funny, dark and bitter little guy at which he excelled…
—Jenny Diski.
Grinch: Nerve of those Whos. Inviting me down there, on such short notice. Even if I wanted to go, my schedule wouldn’t allow it! (flips his datebook open) 4:00: Wallow in self-pity. 4:30: Stare into the abyss. 5:00: Solve world hunger. Tell no one! 5:30: Jazzercise. 6:30: dinner with me. I can’t cancel that again! 7:00: wrestle with my self-loathing… I’m booked! Of...
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
—Phillips Brooks.
Both of these authors [J.G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick] are poets of stagnation, blockage and perversity, of the anti-journey or the journey that loses any constructive purpose, or never had one.
—Christopher Palmer.
Zeitgeber (from German for “time giver,” or “synchronizer”) is any exogenous (external) cue that synchronizes an organism’s endogenous (internal) time-keeping system (clock) to the earth’s 24-hour light/dark cycle.
—Wikipedia.
The respect for authority, the presumption in favor of those who have won intellectual reputation, is within reasonable limits, both prudent and becoming. But it should not be carried too far, and there are some things especially as to which it behooves us all to use our own judgment and to maintain free minds. For not only does the history of the world show that undue deference to authority...
I dreamed: I am the fish whose flesh is eaten, and because I am fat, it is good. (Bob Silverberg ate me.)
—Philip K. Dick.
I wanted to be sure to reach you; though my ship was on the way it got caught in some moorings. I am always tying up and then deciding to depart. In storms and at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide around my fathomless arms, I am unable to understand the forms of my vanity or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder in my hand and the sun sinking. To you I offer my hull and the tattered...
Now when you’re feelin’ low
and the fish won’t bite
You need a little bit o’ soul
to put you right…
—The Music Explosion.
[P]eople are struggling to affirm terra novas and new magical geographies of the imagination, new islands of safety inspired by dream…
—Andy Merrifield.
Guy Debord…bivouacked in this self-same Auvergne, in a farmhouse behind a high stone wall. The house, he was fond of saying, “opened directly onto the Milky Way”…
—Andy Merrifield.
[In] “An Instinct for Dragons”…anthropologist David E. Jones…argues that the image of the dragon is composed of the salient body parts of three predator species that hunted and killed our tree-dwelling African primate ancestors for about sixty million years. The three predators are the leopard, the python, and the eagle.
According to Jones (what follows is a condensed summary of a...
I see in the near future a crisis arising that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. By a result of war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic...
All dogs go to heaven.
—Don Bluth.
There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.
-Leonard Cohen (thanks to Luke Storms).