Marilyn

“Oh yes, there is something there - a beautiful child, really - I don’t think she’s an actress at all - certainly not in a traditional sense. What she has is this presence, a certain luminosity, a flickering intelligence. These marvelous traits could not be captured on stage because they are too subtle, too fragile. Her wonder can only be caused by the camera. It’s like a hummingbird in flight. Only a camera can freeze the poetry of it. But anyone who thinks this girl is simply another Harlow or harlot or whatever, is mad. I hope, I really pray that she survives long enough to free the strange lovely talent that’s wandering through her like a jailed spirit.”

-- Constance Collier, actress and Marilyn’s acting coach

This quote too comes from Darwin Porter’s book but it is perhaps more reliable, since he ostensibly conned it from Truman Capote’s work.




Marilyn Monroe in a promotional photo for Love Happy, 1949.

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the deluge

Last night was the deluge. A hard, sustained rain. The back yard is a pond. It was great for some late-night reading, with "The Devil and Me", but I sure hope that the cats can stand being cooped up a good while longer, because I don't think we are even out of the rainy spell yet.

xnxx got a new source of videos

Wow, it looks like xnxx got a new source of videos, and these videos have pumped up the rapey elements. Harder stuff!

Despite my age, I think I shall make good use of these. Oh, Internet, what a gift you have been!

God, I wince at the idea of never getting on the Internet and still sifting through porn magazines at the convenience store, or being limited to the super-vanilla videos that are available in the mainstream market.

Not to mention the little e-friendships I was happy to know during my first years on the Net. As I have said, on perhaps a few occasions, I seriously doubt that I would still be around but for this new window unto the world.

Global Warming

The numbers are in: 2012, the year of a surreal March heat wave, a severe drought in the Corn Belt and a huge storm that caused broad devastation in the Middle Atlantic States, turns out to have been the hottest year ever recorded in the contiguous United States.

-- New York Times

Andrea Mitchell opened her news segment with the question: is this the wake-up call for climate change?

You have to laugh. Wake-up call? How many times have we hit the snooze-button already? I think we blew past the wake-up call a couple of decades ago. Now it's just a question of sitting back and watching the world burn.

Pessoa

My gaze is clear like a sunflower.
It is my custom to walk the roads
Looking right and left
And sometimes looking behind me,
And what I see at each moment
Is what I never saw before,
And I’m very good at noticing things.
I’m capable of feeling the same wonder
A newborn child would feel
If he noticed that he’d really and truly been born.
I feel at each moment that I’ve just been born
Into a completely new world...

-- Fernando Pessoa, “A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems”

Daily Fun

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