the actual articulation of whatever

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!”

This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.

-Douglas Adams (via but does it float)

A public library is a little voyeuristic, a little romantic and intrinsically cinematic.

A personal library is different. Cleaning out an old house and discovering the book cases full of knick-knacks, old bottles and torn up books is something like reading an old note, a sincere will passing on who the owner was rather than what they owned. The note is vague to begin with and entire stretches of ink have been worn out by the air but important clues are still there. Each word underlined in a particularly worn hardcover and each little postcard used as a bookmark (“I’ll wait for you, my love” written above a tropical beach scene, skillfully painted in water colors by the author) is an hour or three spent wondering what it all meant.

And then the phone rings and you rush down two flights of creaky stairs, wondering the entire time how one person lived alone for so many years in this cavernous house. You miss the call but the answering machine records an old friend wanting to catch up, inviting the library’s owner to a small get-together. You pick up the phone and start dialing slowly, getting ready to inform the caller that Rose has died and does she know who the artist was who loved Rose, the one who was waiting for her on a beach in Florida? Why did Rose stay in New York City, alone for decades, in a cold decayed house that might have stood on the opposite end of existence?

A massive snowball fight in Times Square, photographed by Alanna Raben

via animal ny

Alexey-Titarenko via beautiful/decay

A friend of mine has a gut feeling that “the end times are near.” He has mentioned this to me before and, he says, now “the signs” are piling up. Without proselytizing, I tried to probe his beliefs (which I initially mistook for pessimism from a nostalgia-fetishist). My questioning him was an act of aimless exploration more than the opening of a debate. I’m not in the business of internet conversion, I’ll leave the crusaders in the YouTube comment area and Reddit to noble pursuits such as that.

As he cited evidence from scripture, it occurred to me that his conceit – and it is massively egotistical – was familiar and comfortable. His mixed belly ache about the imminent apocalypse (half fear-induced vomit, half heaven-anticipating butterflies) was here yesterday and will be here next week. He doesn’t know it but whenever anyone preaches that there will be no tomorrow, I smile, never having felt more sure that tomorrow will come and that it will not be too different from today.

Talking to people – religious or not – who think strongly that the world is going to end soon is a bizarre, totally fucking strange experience. It’s sometimes interesting but usually frustrating and not at all unlike talking to a snotty teenager. In the case that the world ends and a rapture goes right on and on, God will have a lot of snot fucking kids to deal with.

Alexey-Titarenko via beautiful/decay

On Sunday, January 9th, 1905, Tsar Nicholas II ordered trooops to fire on a peaceful procession of workers demonstrating in St. Petersburg, unleashing a storm of strikes, mutinies, violent uprisings, and brutal reprisals that raged across Russia for well over a year. Known collectively as the Revolution of 1905, these upheavals transformed the political landscape and set the stage for the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War that followed. Bloody Sunday also marked an important watershed for Russian graphic artists. With the momentary collapse of censorship, over 300 different satirical magazines were published during the Revolution of 1905, more than had seen the light of day in Russia during the entire nineteenth century. Most of them survived for only a few numbers before the censors caught up. Yet the ouput was impressive all the same. Rushing to fill the expressive void, artists and writers captured the events and personalities of the revolution with biting satire and aesthetic sophistication. While styles and subject matter varied, artists often chose to depict nightmarish scenes of bloodshed and repression, drawing on images of the macabre and the mystical that had already been in vogue in Symbolist circles across Europe at the turn of the century.

via yale’s library

After several dissatisfying teases, New York was finally hit with a pretty decent snow storm today. I’ve shoveled several times (as instructed, I was drunk) but it ain’t over yet. At about 3 pm, my father almost died when a tree bigger than a three-story house fell on him. It narrowly missed crushing him and the only telling sign that anything had happened was the coat of pine needles covering him for the next twenty minutes, unbeknownst to him. This was scary for a moment but no one is happier than a man who has just had a near death experience. He told all the neighbors and laughed his way from house to house, happily covered in needles and branches, pointing to his head the entire time as he retold the story of his lucky escape again and again.

Do you understand what I’m saying, Sir? (This is also a concert I’d like to go to).

I never knew this could happen to me. “Silent Shout” The Knife

This is the concert I’d like to see most right now.

Google is deleting mp3 blogs without stopping to wonder if the blogs had permission to post the apparently illegal mp3s. At least one notable blogger has produced e-mail evidence showing that she had written permission from labels and artists to post said mp3s.

It’s the DMCA, everyone! Applaud! Doing anything else may violate the law.

To the guy who requested it: Everyone I know is copying A Softer World.