Would the last one out turn off the lights?
No offense intended to Emma, but these are seventeen of the most chilling words I’ve ever read:
Emma, did you see the sample text from the Garfield movie novelization before Amazon took it down?
Though if you scroll upthread a bit, you’ll see Mr. Ford plying what he plies best, so all is perhaps not lost. (The ostensible subject is also worth your while, though its ostensible subject is not, which, I suppose, is the point, really.)
Thoughtfully, he sipped the hot, bitter liquid.
There’s a “Lyttle Lytton” contest! —Since 1983, the “official” Bulwer-Lytton contest has been awarding prizes for the best first sentences of the worst (thankfully nonexistent) novels imaginable, and while I still doff my hat in awe at the majesty of the very first winner:
The camel died quite suddenly on the second day, and Selena fretted sulkily and, buffing her already impeccable nails—not for the first time since the journey began—pondered snidely if this would dissolve into a vignette of minor inconveniences like all the other holidays spent with Basil.
—I think I’m starting to agree with Mr. Cadre: they’re really starting to go on too long. Granted, the ur-sentence is guilty as charged:
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
—but recent winners in their flabbiness are nonetheless violating the spirit of the thing, all-too-consciously setting up tics to be mocked rather than aped, or devolving into the sorts of puns that are grounds for manslaughter in 17 states:
The corpse exuded the irresistible aroma of a piquant, ancho chili glaze enticingly enhanced with a hint of fresh cilantro as it lay before him, coyly garnished by a garland of variegated radicchio and caramelized onions, and impishly drizzled with glistening rivulets of vintage balsamic vinegar and roasted garlic oil; yes, as he surveyed the body of the slain food critic slumped on the floor of the cozy, but nearly empty, bistro, a quick inventory of his senses told corpulent Inspector Moreau that this was, in all likelihood, an inside job.
—as a for instance, or:
Paul Revere had just discovered that someone in Boston was a spy for the British, and when he saw the young woman believed to be the spy’s girlfriend in an Italian restaurant he said to the waiter, “Hold the spumoni—I’m going to follow the chick an’ catch a Tory.”
Ack. Please. (Though 2000’s grand prize winner is quite good: “The heather-encrusted Headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded pub, hunched precariously over the moors, their rocky elbows slipping off land’s end, their bulbous, craggy noses thrust into the thick foam of the North Sea like bearded old men falling asleep in their pints.”) But! I, for one, applaud the Lyttle Lytton’s stern but fair restriction: craft the best first sentence for the worst novel imaginable in 25 words or less. You’ve got to admire the economy of the Lyttle Lytton sample sentence:
Jennifer stood there, quietly ovulating.
Tennis being much more fun with a net. —The bad news, I’m afraid, is that the cut-off for participating in 2004’s contest was midnight on Wednesday. The good news is the winners have been posted. Those who’ve heard me rant about my writing peeves will a) recognize the title of this entry and b) understand why I wish the grand prize had gone to this particular contestant:
“Tasty waffle?” Jim suggested alluringly, prodding me with the aforementioned breakfast food.
Glorious, ennit?
300 pieces of a certain length, loosely joined.
If you aren’t reading Snarkout every time Steve Cook posts a new entry, well: his archives now have a nice round 300 link-rich essaylettes on the unexpected origins of the seemingly mundane and the tantalizingly abstruse, and the surprising connections between them. What are you waiting for?
Congratulations, Mr. Cook—now get back to work.
Here when I passed the night on the slope of volcano during the eruption, here this was terribly! It is terribly gay and it is beautiful!
Yes, it’s one of those “which X are you” quizzes. But it’s about the characters from Tove Jansson’s beautiful Moomintroll books, and it was originally written in Russian, which means Babelfish’s translation engine renders it in an evanescent English that haphazardly tumbles fractured questions and answers together like some strange game of Exquisite Corpse, which all ends up fitting just so with Jansson’s air of impishly serious whimsy. It’s the most poetic thing I’ve done all morning—and I’m not going to dispute the results:
Yes you – Snusmumrik!!
Eternal wanderer and the uncorrectable romantic. You beckons entire unknown beautiful. For you always better place, where you are not. But you will look, can, where you already there is, it is much better?
Well, except we call him Snufkin in English. But other than that.
Who are you in the Mumi- portion?
—via sara
Memery.
- Grab the nearest book.
- Open the book to page 23.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
All right then:
And tell me whether any literary work whatsoever is compatible with states of this kind.
Context:
...the whole problem: to have within oneself the inseparable reality and the physical clarity of a feeling, to have it to such a degree that it is impossible for it not to be expressed, to have a wealth of words, of acquired turns of phrase capable of joining the dance, coming into play; and the moment the soul is preparing to organize its wealth, its discoveries, this revelation, at that unconscious moment when the thing is on the point of coming forth, a superior and evil will attacks the soul like a poison, attacks the mass consisting of word and image, attacks the mass of feeling, and leaves me panting as if at the very door of life.
And now suppose that I feel this will physically passing through me, that it jolts me with a sudden and unexpected electricity, a repeated electricity. Suppose that each of my thinking moments is on certain days shaken by these profound tempests which nothing outside betrays. And tell me whether any literary work whatsoever is compatible with states of this kind.
That is the twenty-seven–year–old Artaud writing to the editor of the prestigious Nouvelle Revue Française, the well-known poet Jacques Rivière, ten years Artaud’s senior. It is also the clearest presentation of the problem’s core we have from Artaud himself.
—“Wagner/Artaud,” from Samuel Delany’s Longer Views; meme via Elkins
Your assignment.
Nathan Newman’s “where I am and how I came to be here” post is the must-read of the day.
Other than that, I suppose, you could kick superheroes around over at Barry’s place. —Me, I’ll be back in a bit.
Oh, wait, just one more.
Early November we got back the blague.
As a religious practice, blogging acquired the same status as begging. Many theories have been offered to explain the phenomenon. It has been interpreted as a beating out of evil spirits, as beautification, and even—erroneously—as buffoonery. Sacred blogs were recorded on people’s backs or on animal skins. Blog-bearers were now called bloggellants. Consumption of animal blogs was thought to unite the devot with his godhead. The ceremony was often accompanied by ecstatic blog revisions and, not infrequently, by falling to bloggerheads. Arguments over blog exegesis were the major cause of schism.
In antiquity and among primitive peoples, ceremonial bloggings were primarily concerned with the writs of initiation, purification and fertility. Bloggings might or might not be self-inflicted. Those administered by masked inbloggators are a feature of many Nordic tribloggers. Ritual blogging was also known in classical antiquity in Blogygia and around the Straits of Blogforus. A sacred alphabet, Blogham, composed of 21 characters (blogletters) equally dates to that period. There are many myths, or bloths, related to blogging. One of them tells of Blog, the king of Blashan and an antediluvian giant, who was saved from the flood by his illiteracy: he floated on a blog with sacred inscriptions which otherwise he would not have touched. Another legend reports that Blog owned a big blogstead, wrought in iron, 9 cubits oblong and 4 cubits broad (Deut. 3:11). It will be noted that the Biblical account of Blog and Mablog is a corruption of the original tale.
—“On Blogging,” by Ela Kotkowska, via wood s lot
©
J. Pinkham, Kevin Moore’s new co-blogger over at blargblog, asked Pizzicato Pizza about acquiring one of their advertising posters. The response he got opens up a brand new frontier in our understanding of the nuances of copyright.
If, if they take his stapler, he will, he will set this building on fire.
INT. CLARKE’S APARTMENT—NIGHT
CLARKE is sitting glumly on his couch, watching CNN. Suddenly a voice, that of former president BILL CLINTON, booms through the wall.
CLINTON (offscreen): Hey, check it out, Clarke, man, Juliet Huddy’s on “Fox and Friends” and she’s got her high-beams on, man!
CLARKE: (rolls his eyes) Bill, I already told you, if you want to talk, just come over!
CLINTON (offscreen): Oh! Sorry, man!
Within seconds, CLARKE’s front door opens and in walks CLINTON, who takes a seat on the couch next to CLARKE.
CLINTON: What’s wrong, Clarke, man?
CLARKE: Bill, when you were on Capitol Hill, trying to drum up support for a bill or something like that, and you weren’t making a lot of progress, did anyone ever tell you it looked like you had a case of the Mondays?
CLINTON: A case of the Mondays? Hell no, man. Hell no. Matter of fact, I think I’d kick somebody’s ass for saying something like that, man.
CLARKE: Now let me ask you this—what would you do if you had a billion dollars?
CLINTON: A billion dollars? Tell you what I’d do, man—two interns at the same time.
CLARKE: That’s it? Two interns at the same time?
CLINTON: Yeah. Man, I’d hire Pamela Anderson for one of them and Carmen Electra for the other. Always wanted to do that, man. And I figure if I had a billion dollars I could hook that up, ’cause chicks dig a dude with money.
CLARKE: Well, not all chicks, Bill.
CLINTON: Well, the kinda chicks that’d double up on a dude like me do.
CLARKE: Good point.
CLINTON: What about you, man?
CLARKE: Besides two interns at the same time? I would do nothing.
CLINTON: Nothing?
CLARKE: Yeah. I’d just sit on my ass all day and do nothing.
CLINTON: Well, hell, man, you don’t need a billion dollars to do that. Look at Jeb Bush, his state’s broke, he don’t do shit.
Oval Office Space. Damn, I’m still giggling. (Via My Whim Is Law.)
Oh, thank God.
Python’s stepping up. (It’s not only their best and most great-hearted flick, but it’s also probably the most historically accurate movie ever made about the period and the region and the politics. —So what if they used Latin, too? At least Brian wasn’t a fecking robot.)
Pullet Surprise.
I’ve always thought the Onion’s coverage of God’s post-9/11 press conference was a shining moment—a bracing blast of righteous fury tempered with bleak humor that has you smiling at the audacity instead of the funny and fully intends there to be nothing but crickets heard at the punchline. Whenever a joke goes on too long these days, or an Area Man story gets recycled, I think of it, and I forgive them, for they are mighty. They did the impossible.
And, apparently, it almost got them nominated for a Pulitzer.
Juping the Man.
There’s a lot to love in this traveller’s sketch of script-kiddie culture: insight into the hows and whys, ruefully funny anecdotes, a new word (juped), and the general cultural vertigo of peering over the edge of something you knew was there but never really looked at and finding its as complex as just about everything else. —Plus, paranoiac fretting! (Not that there isn’t one hell of a lot to be paranoid about, here:
Roblimo: How wise do you think law enforcement is to any of this?
Andy: The general answer I’ve gotten is, “We don’t have the time or resources to have our agents monitor IRC.” They know, but they’ve adamantly got their fingers in their ears whistling loudly.
Roblimo: And yet, you’re telling me attacks on DoD and other critical networks are often coordinated on IRC.
Andy: Of course, Department of Homeland Security is barely off the ground. They’re starting to come around. Al Qaida, or whoever, with enough money could buy these kids, have them phonephreak 911 facilities, packet government mail and web servers, attack Department of Energy facilities and local and state government for large cities and states. Even if nothing really serious happened the effect on our economy, since the FBI and DHS’s answer has to be “Well, umm, we’ve been ignoring this entirely actually,” wouldn’t be fun to watch.
(Sleep tight, y’all.)
Sweet luvvin’ update.
Steve Lieber has unearthed a whole passel of people who intend to get busy with all manner of things once the bedrock of marriage is destroyed by those icky, icky gays. To quote the ink-stain’d wretch: “Remember, an elected official has made it clear that if you can marry someone with the same bathroom parts, you can marry anything.” So! Get with it, people! You’d better start snapping up your future spouses now, or when that blessed day arrives, you’ll be left out in the cold!
Those Bush ads.
Thanks to the Spouse, I’ve seen a still from the Bush ads crassly capitalizing on the pain and horror of 9/11. —Frankly, I think they could’ve been a wee bit more tasteful.
You break it, you bought it.
An article on the Fashion page on Tuesday about the British designer Alexander McQueen misstated a phrase from his remarks on the common professional desire to create a signature product. He said, “And you’ve just got to keep on striving until one day you’re waking up, having your marmalade on toast, doodling on a cigarette package—and bingo, Bob’s your uncle”—not “you bought an uncle.” (The slang expression means, roughly, “You’ve got it made.”)
—The New York Times correction page, via The Minor Fall, the Major Lift.
Oh, hell, while we’re on about uncles: Chris Bertram linked a wickedly funny piss-take on evolutionary psychology over at Crooked Timber.
[H]ere’s Pinker on why we like fiction: “Fictional narratives supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcomes of strategies we could deploy in them. What are the options if I were to suspect that my uncle killed my father, took his position, and married my mother?” Good question. Or what if it turns out that, having just used the ring that I got by kidnapping a dwarf to pay off the giants who built me my new castle, I should discover that it is the very ring that I need in order to continue to be immortal and rule the world? It’s important to think out the options betimes, because a thing like that could happen to anyone and you can never have too much insurance.
(Of course, Pinker’s original example has a po-faced absurdity all its own: just ask these gentlemen.)
Gimme that sky back, you gao yang zhong de gu yang!
“Houston, Serenity is go. Repeat, Serenity is go.” (I found the motherless goat thanks to this site, a “pinyinary” of the various Chinese curses scattered throughout the original television show.)
