May 2012
9 posts
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“Like the earlier graffito of the Accounting-Scribe Neferhotep, the text left by...”
– The Graffiti of Pharaonic Egypt: Scope and Roles of Informal Writings
Guys, come on. He was all by himself. You know damn well how he was enjoying himself in there.
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Anonymous asked: are you planning to go see 'the beatles: the lost concert' film?
April 2012
16 posts
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“My students are very excited about Indian culture. They also know a great deal...”
– Idealizing Aboriginals | University Affairs
The quotes from students left me speechless, so forgive my lack of commentary. DIGGING STICK.
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“… the silence that followed seemed to herald the beginning…”
– Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann, trans. Moncrieff and Kilmartin (via proustitute)
I really can’t believe people are still reading this translation. The Lydia Davis one is so far superior. But maybe people who aren’t fluent in French can’t tell the difference?
(via ecrivaine)
(This whole...
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Hilliard Ensemble - Sumer Is Icumen In
Groweþ sed...
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Waiting for the 86
I saw Cabin in the Woods last night with a gratifyingly enthusiastic crowd and we all laughed our asses off. I am often crotchety about unwarranted or illogical applause, like parents giving a standing ovation to every piece in a children’s recital, but I’m always touched by audiences applauding a movie screen. The gesture is certainly not a communication of gratitude to anyone...
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WatchA springtime mix of happy music for the worn out and weatherbeaten.
Bruce Cockburn - Happy Good Morning Blues Rheostatics - One More Colour (Jane Siberry cover) Dean and Britta - Hear the Wind Blow Martin Tielli - Redwing Blackbird Richard Thompson - Sumer Is Icumen In Lavender Diamond - Rise in the Springtime The Concretes - Come Here (Kath Bloom cover) Bruce Springsteen - Girls in Their...
George Clooney's satellite spies reveal secrets of... →
This is exactly as cool as it sounds and the Guardian’s commenters are exactly as ridiculous as you’re probably expecting.
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“« J’étais très médecin de tempérament; ma vocation n’était pas...”
– quoted in Louis-Ferdinand Céline, by Merlin Thomas
snickr asked: Name a poem you once knew by heart.
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I never get asks, but I'm bored tonight.
Here is my ask box. Indulge me and I will hold forth on any topic. Anons are enabled.
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An anecdote from Wittgenstein's WWI military...
At the end of September Wittgenstein was again at the front. Encircled by the Italians, he constructed, as he later described to an English friend, his own mortar using a method dating back to antiquity: he wound bronze wire around a tree trunk of the same diameter as the shells and by means of an intense fire, fused the metal into a gun barrel. (Source)
This is some MacGyver shit right here.
...
March 2012
17 posts
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IDK my BFF Lucius
Let me preface this quote by saying how much I love Apuleius. Reading Apuleius is so much fun that it makes me a little sad sometimes, because I wish he wasn’t dead. I want to go have dinner with him at some place downtown with a patio where they serve decent-sized pitchers of sangria, and we would talk and get gradually hammered. (See: Tim Kreider’s old cartoon “My Dream...
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Public Service Announcement
Yo, when you change your tumblr name and at the same time you also change your tumblr icon, in online terms you are now a goddamn shapeshifter and I have no idea who you are. I also get confused if there are two blond actors in the same movie, and God help me if one of them changes his hair slightly during the story. What I’m saying is I’m very stupid, so please, just change the...
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“Specifically in linguistics, Apollonianism is manifested in justifications for...”
– Wiki
THEY FOUND A WAY TO MAKE DR. SEUSS EVEN MORE ADORABLE.
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Advanced adverbs
Alex: using "literally" properly isn't just about making sure you don't mean "figuratively", IT SHOULD ALSO MEAN SOMETHING
Alex: I am literally sitting on a chair right now
Clare: yeah I am literally watching Bernadette Peters on SMASH right now
Alex: I literally remember her from the movie Heartbeeps that she made with Andy Kaufman
Alex: she literally played a robot
Clare: I literally listened to Into the Woods for a year straight my senior year
Clare: because I was literally in it and literally love it
Clare: MAYBE I FIGURATIVELY LOVE IT
Clare: WHO CAN SAY
Alex: WHY DON'T YOU MARRY IT
Drunk on tumblr, hello
Watching In Bruges because it’s on and hey, Irish actors for St. Patrick’s Day. My love for Brendan Gleeson is fighting against my hate for Colin Farrell, who is coming infuriatingly close to being okay but not quite—his timing sucks and his accent manages to sound fake when it’s not, which I think is some emanation of his soul like how the ancients thought bad breath was...
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Springtime in Centretown
Pour la dame noire douce qui est venu en retard pour la messe du dimanche, qui n’avait pas changé l’heure sur sa montre. J’aimerais vous rencontrer à nouveau et aller à la messe ensemble. S’il vous plaît dites-moi le nom de l’église. Je parle l’anglais aussi.
[For the sweet black lady who was late for Mass on Sunday, who hadn’t changed the time on her...
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Amanda Palmer covering Nick Cave’s...
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mythologyofblue:
“God’s brightness was the light, and He had horns / coming out of His hand.”
-Habakkuk 3:4
[Habakkuk is unique among the prophets in that he openly questions the wisdom of God.]
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Oh, the Vulgate. Good times. The “horns” thing is a fun mistranslation on Jerome’s part, so notable that it even comes up in a Cracked article, serendipitous in that it led to...
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This is what happens when you take JSTOR away from...
I was driving myself crazy last night because I remembered (or thought I remembered) an amusing wrinkle from Roman mythology: a race of thumb-sized men with penis heads who arose from the earth, perhaps after the ground was scattered with semen or blood or something else likely to cause spontaneous generation. I think I can be forgiven for assuming this was an indigenous Roman creation—it...
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New Tlingit encyclopedia baffling to scholars,... →
The Hlingit Word Encyclopedia is the second of nine volumes planned by Lambert. Her first work, a dictionary of Maori, was published a few years ago.
Lambert was born in New Zealand, but grew up in Samoa, where she developed an aptitude for language. Lambert turned her attention to Tlingit when she acquired a copy of a book by the late 19th/early 20th century ethnographer J. R. Swanton.
“I...
February 2012
14 posts
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“A hater he came and sat by a ditch,
And he took an old cracked lute;
And he...”
– Percy Bysshe Shelley, “A Hate-Song”
Haters really ARE gonna hate.
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Eugenio Montale, "Satura"
History isn’t the devastating bulldozer they say it is. It leaves underpasses, crypts, holes and hiding places. There are survivors. History’s also benevolent: destroys as much as it can: overdoing it, sure, would be better, but history’s short of news, doesn’t carry out all its vendettas. History scrapes the bottom like a drag net with a few rips and more than one fish...
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This recording and post is because I wanted to...
“Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster, both...”
– (via thedailyvictorian)
This has sort of been my philosophy lately but the school doesn’t agree with the cranky-Yankee wisdom of Mr. Thoreau.
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