Roman Candles
This is my philosophy on life.
(via meredithnyc)
“I started writing when I was a kid — I got a typewriter for my sixth or seventh birthday,” says Darnielle. “I just write. Sometimes songs. Sometimes criticism. Sometimes recipes!”
John Darnielle in a Ithaca Times Arts Blog interview
This is a great picture. And I want a Pinklon Thomas shirt.
Listening to The Life of the World to Come is like cracking a code and its depth and quality combine to make it one of the Mountain Goats’ finest releases to date. But when I put it to Darnielle that his religious zeal may alienate some of his fanbase, he laughs. “Believe it or not, I don’t have any faith. I think that this, the guy talking to you today, is it. After I die, that’s it. But I’m sort of the opposite of most people who don’t have faith in that I think it would be awesome to have it. You have people like Christopher Hitchens who are happy to share his atheism, and that’s cool for him. But I remember the morning that kids came into my Catholic school telling me that they’d figured out that there was no Santa Claus. I knew, but didn’t wanna know. I was like: “Guys, it’s way more fun if there is a Santa!”
It is definitely more fun if there’s a Santa.
Today, nearly 3 million users access Netflix’s instant streaming service, watching an estimated 5 million movies and TV shows every week on their PCs or living room sets. They get it through Roku’s player, which was successfully launched in May 2008. (The Roku now also offers more than 45,000 movies and TV shows on demand through Amazon.com and, since August, live and archived Major League Baseball games.) They get it through their Xbox 360s—Microsoft added Netflix to its Xbox Live service last fall. They get it through LG and Samsung Blu-ray players. They get it through their TiVos and new flatscreen TVs. By the end of 2009, nearly 10 million Netflix-equipped gadgets will be hanging on walls and sitting in entertainment centers. And Hastings says this is just the beginning: “It’s possible that within a few years, nearly all Internet-connected consumer electronics devices will include Netflix.” And the devices won’t just be streaming remaindered basic-cable or art-house fare: Already, Netflix customers can call up just about any episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, The IT Crowd, or Lost whenever they like. They can watch recent releases like WALL-E and Pineapple Express. In other words, they can get unlimited access to the kinds of programming that previously required a cable subscription. (One visitor to the Netflix blog was particularly pleased to see that they could stream old episodes of Dora the Explorer: “We couldn’t cancel cable until more kids’ shows were available to watch instantly. Thanks for saving us another $400/year.”) Netflix has taken the boldest step yet toward a world in which consumers, not programmers, determine not only what they watch but when, where, and how. The dream of routing around cable companies just may be in sight.
I, as of now, believe I will never pay for cable.
Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties — all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name’s Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion — these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.
David Foster Wallace (via tmblg) (via markn) (via synecdoche) (via ofbirds) (via dilaudid) (via unicornology) (via cargohoo)
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Blues & Roots is my favorite Mingus record. Run-around-the-room indeed
“Moanin’” by Charles Mingus from Blues & Roots (1960).
“Good jazz is when the leader jumps on the piano, waves his arms, and yells. Fine jazz is when a tenorman lifts his foot in the air. Great jazz is when he heaves a piercing note for 32 bars and collapses on his hands and knees. A pure genius of jazz is manifested when he and the rest of the orchestra run around the room while the rhythm section grimaces and dances around their instruments.” — Charles Mingus
This is some run-around-the-room music.
Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov was a Buryat Buddhist lama of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, best known for the lifelike state of his body, which is not subject to decay.Wow.
(via thegrandarchives)
