Tuesday, July 30, 2013
The Enemy of Progress
I’ve become too obsessed with writing fully-formed things, and I owe you, dear reader, an apology, because that obsession has led to my lack of posting for a month.
It started with things getting busy, which led to making excuses, which led to stagnancy, which led to this post. I will, then, write myself out of it.
Nothing is ever fully formed, after all- least of all a work of art. Earth, art, people: all these things adapt and evolve over time, and yet I, when staring at a blinking cursor, too often think that the end result must be something that makes a reader jump out of her skin with excitement.
It need not be that way. Indeed, it can’t be that way. Art, life, love, and so much more arise only from exploration, both internal and external.
Explorers of the external world travel, study people, put entire cultures under a microscope, and the brilliance of the story that emerges is not due to the spinning of words on a page, but from the mere act of writing down the amazing things that are happening.
Explorers of the internal world dig deep into their own psyches, and merely transcribe the things that they find hidden there. The same thing is happening there, too: a mere transcription of the depths of the world.
Not everything that is churned out will be worthy even - especially - of my own standards, but that’s okay. It’s part of the exploration, of the process, of the organizing of information. One doesn’t strike gold with every thrust of the pick.
We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us.
~ Marcel Proust
Art is journey, and, to continue the metaphor, not every step is paved with gold. My aim, I think, will be to allow more of the process - the journey - to unfold publicly, rather than hiding the vast majority of the process, and only displaying the nuggets I’ve found.
So to hell with perfectionism.
Side note: to you readers who subscribe on the Kindle, I owe you big. You actually pay me every month to write something, and I’ve let you down this month. I’ll make it up to you. Promise.
Monday, July 29, 2013

‘Honeybee’ by Tom Petty
One of the few songs that made me actually scream “This is my jam!” when I was a kid. (Tom Petty’s ‘Honeybee’)
Sunday, July 28, 2013
…the nightly news broadcasts covered the royal family more than seven times as much as they covered climate change in 2012? What if I told you that the Kardashian family — who seem to amount to royalty in America these days — earned more than 40 times the coverage given to ocean acidification, often referred to as climate change’s “evil twin,” over a recent 18-month period?
Simply put, the press is falling down on the job. If we, as a people, continue to pay more attention to fairy tales than reality, it will spell our doom….
Saturday, July 27, 2013
A work of art is something produced by a person, but is not that person — it is of her, but is not her. It’s a reach, really — the artist is trying to inhabit, temporarily, a more compact, distilled, efficient, wittier, more true-seeing, precise version of herself — one that she can’t replicate in so-called ‘real’ life, no matter how hard she tries. That’s why she writes: to try and briefly be more than she truly is.

Chalkboard Pad - a bit steep, it seems, but fantastic nonetheless.
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Friday, July 26, 2013
Fear passes from man to man
Unknowing,
As one leaf passes its shudder
To another.All at once the whole tree is trembling,
And there is no sign of the wind.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
To lose one’s life is no great matter; when the time comes I’ll have the courage to lose mine. But what’s intolerable is to see one’s life being drained of meaning, to be told there’s no reason for existing. A man can’t live without some reason for living.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013

A candle that smells like books.
How novel.
That’s fucking romantic as hell.
If anyone gave this to me I would ugly cry tears of joy. Oh my god. Please? Someone. Anyone. Birthday present?
On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're An Advertiser: Native Advertising and Its Impact on the Web's Credibility | Dean Jayson
(via Instapaper)
On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're An Advertiser: Native Advertising and Its Impact on the Web's Credibility | Dean Jayson

‘Fell on Black Days’ by Soundgarden
Revisiting an old favorite. “Fell on Black Days” by Soundgarden is my new jam.

Kitschy Desk Accessories from Artori Design
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minimalist wood wallet by Dan Garfield | great gift for a guy
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Human, flawed, chaotic, raw, ugly, beautiful, wrong, right, emotional, argumentative, frustrating and deeply satisfying — that is what Twitter is. Just like the world it is supposed to mirror.
Monday, July 22, 2013
You deal with your shit in Zen by sitting with it. By breathing right into it. You don’t try and ignore it with pleasant thoughts or lofty ideas, and you don’t try and bury it with solutions. You deal with it, you work with it, one breath at a time.
For each person there is a sentence—a series of words—which has the power to destroy them.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Whatever can be the meaning of life? If we divide mankind into two large classes, we can say that one works for a living, and the other has no need to. But working for one’s living can’t be the meaning of life; to suppose that constantly procuring the conditions of life should be the answer to the meaning of what they make possible is a contradiction. Usually the lives of the other class have no meaning either, beyond that of consuming said conditions. To say that the meaning of life is to die is seems again to be a contradiction.
Kierkegaard called those who do not take risks cowards. Nietzsche called them slaves. How would the participants in those ancient festivals view us? How do the citizens of Amsterdam view us? We have become an anal country—trying desperately to protect ourselves from the accidents of life and the danger of death.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Monday, July 8, 2013
Americans, you need to watch this. #bradleymanning
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Rachel Maddow shares a clip from an Al Jazeera documentary featuring an Ohio State Legislator who is advocating extreme anti-abortion legislation.
Hey wow yeah all the anti-choice politicians summed up.
How do you NOT ask yourself that question…?
This is it.
Have books ‘happened’ to you? Unless your answer to that question is ‘yes,’ I’m unsure how to talk to you

‘I Can’t Dance’ by Genesis
*Still* so good: “I Can’t Dance” by Genesis is my new jam.
The macho pose, the loud talking, the insistence on violence as resolution, the boastfulness, marks the formative portion of my life. The men who participated in this behavior were no more sexist than the men I know now. But they lacked power. And they came from generations of men who lacked power. And they came up in society that claimed such power as the essence of manhood.
If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve people. And in order to improve people, you begin with only one thing: you can become better yourself.
Song: “better” by TEEN
Friday, July 5, 2013
McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero.
(via Instapaper)
McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four
hills and a cloud.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Monday, July 1, 2013

Industrial, minimal, rustic… this is perfect.

‘And Then You’ by Greg Laswell
This song is pure poetry.