George Eliot

It was one of those grey mornings after light rains, which become delicious about twelve o’clock, when the clouds part a little, and the scent of the earth is sweet along the lanes and by the hedgerows.

-- “Middlemarch” by George Eliot

a weekender

Looking into the bathroom mirror, combing my short but still unmanageable hair...

Fuck, I was going to shower and shave last night! That was the plan. To take advantage of Pop being gone for another weekender. But I forgot. It's been a while since we have had a weekender. I am off routine. You know how I am when I am off routine. I get confused and lost.

Dowding Obama

Maureen Dowd is usually good for giving us some inside scuttlebut or very generalized political discussion, but in today's column, she gives us a rather penetrating political analysis of the Obama administration, as it fails to deliver on tighter gun regulations. We'll take the column in full.

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losing that beautiful cool weather

Funny. When Pop returns from his weekender, I begin to notice that we are losing that beautiful cool weather that came with the rains. Now we have the greater intimations of summer and its rolling heatwaves.

barbecue again

Pop wants to barbecue again. Since it's only us, at least it won't be as big a deal. He hankers for ribs. It's like his country music; I don't get it. I assume this is the stuff of his childhood. I asked for a steak this time. I am so full of chicken, I am afraid that I'm going to get sick of the stuff, and then where will I be? I obviously need a bigger menu, maybe even something healthy, but I cannot imagine what. And it is kind of late in the game.

Reese Witherspoon

Reese Witherspoon and her husband, CAA agent James Toth, were arrested and briefly jailed early Friday morning in Atlanta, Ga., after he was pulled over under suspicion of driving while intoxicated, confirmed an official at the city’s Dept. of Corrections.

While Toth is facing a DUI charge after driving in the wrong lane, Witherspoon was also arrested on a disorderly conduct charge according to a police report obtained by Variety. She was handcuffed after disobeying repeated instruction from the arresting officer, with whom she verbally sparred, to stay inside the vehicle.

-- ONTD

Bad boys, bad boys what you gonna do... I guess Reese has a little fight in her. She rings some bells for me because of that movie "Freeway" which was like a revelation to me. Yeah, I should see that again. Maybe get the DVD.

Amanda Palmer

Amanda Palmer is penned a provocative poem that seems to be sympathetic to the surviving Boston bomber. Interestingly, there is no mention in this news item that she is Neil Gaiman's wife. She's not exactly endorsing terrorism or supporting his crime, but it is risky.

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you don’t know how it felt to be in the womb but it must have been at least a little warmer than this.

you don’t know how intimately they’re recording your every move on closed-circuit cameras until you see your face reflected back at you through through the pulp.

you don’t know how to stop picking at your fingers.

you don’t know how little you’ve been paying attention until you look down at your legs again.

you don’t know how many times you can say you’re coming until they just stop believing you.

you don’t know how orgasmic the act of taking in a lungful of oxygen is until they hold your head under the water.

you don’t know how many vietnamese soft rolls to order.

you don’t know how convinced your parents were that having children would be, absolutely, without question, the correct thing to do.

you don’t know how precious your iphone battery time was until you’re hiding in the bottom of the boat.

you don’t know how to get away from your fucking parents.

you don’t know how it’s possible to feel total compassion in one moment and total disconnection in the next moment.

you don’t know how things could change so incredibly fast.

you don’t know how to make something, but the instructions are on the internet.

you don’t know how to make sense of this massive parade.

you don’t know how to believe anyone anymore.

you don’t know how to tell the girl in the chair next to you that you’ve been peeking at her dissertation draft and there’s a grammatical typo in the actual file name.

you don’t know how to explain yourself.

you don’t want two percent but it’s all they have.

you don’t know how claustrophobic your house is until you can’t leave it.

you don’t know why you let that guy go without shooting him dead and stuffing him in some bushes between cambridge and watertown.

you don’t know where your friends went.

you don’t know how to dance but you give it a shot anyway.

you don’t know how your life managed to move twenty six miles forward and twenty eight miles back.

you don’t know how to pay your debts.

you don’t know how to separate from this partnership to escape and finally breathe.

you don’t know how come people run their goddamn knees into the ground anyway.

you don’t know how to measure the value of the twenty dollar bill clutched in your hurting hand.

you don’t know how you walked into this trap so obliviously.

you don’t know how to adjust the rearview mirror.

you don’t know how to mourn your dead brother.

you don’t know how to drive this car.

you don’t know the way to new york.

you don’t know the way to new york.

you don’t know the way to new york.

you don’t know the way to new york.

-- Amanda Palmer

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James Wood, Book Critic

A book critic tells tales of his career and why he takes it easy on first-time novelists. Who would've thought these guys had hearts?

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I pretty much started my career at The Guardian – it wasn’t the very first review I wrote but it was probably the first that made a name for me: a cruel review of a debut novelist, actually. And I think I was so young, and so ambitious myself to write, that it didn’t register that this was a first-time novelist. It was a first novel, and a pretty terrible novel and I was horrible about it. And who cares, really? Both the review and the novel have been long forgotten, but a few weeks later someone told me that the review had come out on the day of the author’s book launch, that she was in tears, and that it ruined the party. That’s a pretty horrible thing to hear. Nobody wants to be that person, and ever since it’s made me very wary. All the firepower has been concentrated on big names. Delillo’s strong enough to take it: Updike, Pynchon, Auster… I’ve always been tender on first time novelists.

-- James Wood

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Paul Little, Max Hardcore

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

The Boston Bombing and the Immigration Debate

But of course the Red State reply would be: "If we can stop just one terrorist incident!"


[ONTD]

Daily Fun

I think Princess is dying. She is over 20, but we do not know how much over. So old, and cranky to the end.

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