February 2012
"Sit your ass down and watch some news."
If you grew up in the ’80s, John Williams wrote the soundtrack to pretty much every movie you saw in the summer. If you grew up in an NBC family, he wrote the notes that always make you think “news.” If you grew up in Boston he was the guy who replaced Arthur Fiedler. Anyway, composer/conductor (and, surprisingly, lyricist) John Williams turns 80 today.
Weirdest fortune cookie ever.
“Years later you will realize that Mike’s crazy girlfriend was a person just like you, and maybe the things that you and your group snickered about and gave Mike shit for were just signs that she was as damaged as everybody else and had the basic insecurities that we all do, and actually Mike was kind of a dick and may have exaggerated some of his stories for effect and she probably...
Happy Thursday! I wrote you a poem.
It’s called “I Should Be So Lucky” and it goes like this:
I’d like them to build me a lead-lined room
Lightproof, soundproof, kept reasonably cool
In fact, a kind of tomb made just for sleep.
A pillow on the floor where I would lay
Eyes closed, arms folded tight across my chest
While outside all would go on as before
People keeping on and growing old
Until all...
I UNDERSTAND! →
They all DO suppose what they want to suppose!
Another victim of cigarettes taken from us at the...
“Szymborska, a heavy smoker, died in her sleep of lung cancer Wednesday evening at her home in the southern city of Krakow, her personal secretary Michal Rusinek said.”
I am so sick of Em standing up for the patriarchy. →
Also "The Matrix." →
January 2012
He is a TOTAL otherist. →
"We should be ashamed; what we did to Black Kids... →
"Little did she know that one day her name would... →
I have no lie listened to this 37 times already... →
getthatlook:
Me: Rihanna and Justin Bieber need to STOP GETTING TATTOOS!
Coworkers: [Silence]
This ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
This does not necessarily refer to your email.
There needs to be a term to describe the condition where you keep an email unread in your box because you’re not prepared to deal with it yet, but then you start to hate and resent the person who sent it because it is the only unread email in your box and it sits there silently accusing you with its boldedness. Or maybe I am the only sufferer of said disease.
Listen
Maybe I've been reading the wrong news outlets.
“In fact, the portrayals of the first lady as angry, which were dominant early in the 2008 campaign — culminating in a satirical New Yorker cartoon depicting her as a militant black radical — have mostly subsided in the years since. She has assiduously crafted a benign image of herself as the ‘mom in chief,’ adopting non-controversial causes, such as fighting childhood...
Andrew should retire right here, because it's... →
In my defense, I will say that as an old person I...
The History Of Understanding
I always thought that there was one thing everyone else but I knew, as if I had missed a day of school in third grade when they handed out the instructions on how to handle life and then spent the rest of the time at a disadvantage without quite understanding what that one thing the rest of them had been told was. With every setback or disappointment I had an even more fervent belief that once I...
For everyone who has wondered what TOWIE is. →
Oh my god that squirrel is painting. PAINTING! →
Once again Choire Sicha's contribution to history... →
December 2011
The 15 Most Delightful Internet Films of 2011 →
spiegelman:
I want you all to know I take my year-end list duties very seriously, that it is actually a year-long effort involving a Google Doc with a title that’s search-optimized so I can always find it. But I do this [BLAH BLAH BLAH SOME NICE STUFF ABOUT CHOIRE AND CARRIE AND OUR CONTRIBUTORS. ANYWAY, CLICK THAT LINK, IT’S GOOD STUFF.]
You know what I'm talking about.
If we had been warned in advance that the price to pay for the pornification of American society would be a bunch of dorm room level intellectualizing about basic biological compulsions we probably all would have said “No thanks, keep your pubes on,” right?
Whoever this mysterious man is, I bet he's SUPER... →
For $5 I'll tell you who he's talking about. For... →
Congratulations to Edith Zimmerman for not being... →
Listen
1 tag
And that's when I clicked "close ears."
“That shit is slam.”
“What?”
“SLAM. Swag like a motherfucker.”
—Soon every word will mean the same thing as every other word and we will be forced to communicate our intentions through a series of nods and grunts, much like our caveman ancestors.
He's not kidding, he really wants all this. →
Books of the Year
Fiction: A Book About Baseball For People Who Think They Are Too Smart To Follow Baseball Plus I Jammed Some Gay Stuff In There
Nonfiction: Bad Thing Happens To Rich Lady
Poetry: Was there one that was just, like, rhymes? Nothing too arty, just a/b/a/b? If so, that one.
And that's when I knew I was old.
“Justin, the guy behind the Anti-Gravity Bunny blog, unveils his top drone recordings of 2011. The list looks quite good, but without anything by Bitchin Bajas (Cooper Crane of the Chicago band Cave), it cannot be considered definitive, in my highly biased view.”
Wow. →
!
emmagarman:
What with the sex scandals, the fondness for classical allusions, and the irrepressible wisecracking, Mayor Bloomberg’s London counterpart is what you might politely call a politico in the European tradition—so naturally it’s time for him to take his rightful place alongside Jordan et al in my Awl guide to the most important UK celebs.
Our Top 15 (16!) Longreads of 2011 →
theawl: