The tumblelog of an ["independent scholar" and "student of the world" (i.e. a confessed lifelong lit. nerd taking time off from school)] undergraduate currently attending university and residing in the Pacific Northwest, USA.
Interests include: Classics (i.e. ancient Greek and Latin), Shakespeare, American History, Continental Philosophy, Modernist poetry, Historical Linguistics (of the Proto-Indo-European variety), Literary Criticism and Theory, mysticism, Fine Art, Anglicanism and Catholicism, Technology, Baroque music, drinking coffee/tea/wine/scotch, wasting time online, and making stupid jokes. Pipes and tobacco are delightful too. Apparently I have a thing for gals reading but hey, that's cool.
You'll here mostly find links to news articles. Occasionally a pretty picture. Sometimes an inebriated anecdote. Read, enjoy. Feel free to leave comments (via disqus).
I also do the Tweet thing: www.twitter.com/wordsasthoughts
Some of this is maybe a little iffy, but hey I’m all about spreading the Latin love (plus, sources, so go argue those instead of fun little infographs, I say).
When André was 12, he was already over 6 feet tall and weighed 240 pounds. He was too big to fit on the local school bus and his family didn’t have the money to buy a car that could deal with his weight if it drove him to and from school.
Samuel Beckett, Nobel Prize winner (literature) and esteemed playwright, probably most noted for Waiting for Godot, bought some land in 1953 near a hamlet around forty miles northeast of Paris and built a cottage for himself with the help of some locals. One of the locals that helped him build the cottage was a Bulgarian-born farmer named Boris Rousimoff, who Beckett befriended and would sometimes play cards with. As you might’ve been able to guess, Rousimoff’s son was André the Giant, and when Beckett found out that Rousimoff was having trouble getting his son to school, Beckett offered to drive André to school in his truck — a vehicle that could fit André — to repay Rousimoff for helping to build Beckett’s cottage. Adorably, when André recounted the drives with Beckett, he revealed they rarely talked about anything other than cricket.
Well, alright.
npr:
The Seattle Public Library launched the 2013 Summer Reading Program by trying to set a new world record for the longest book domino chain. Read more about it here. — heidi
Seattle! Books!
Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden.
— The Broom of the System (1987), D. Foster Wallace
One of the best lines. I could analyze it all day.
If there ever was tragically visceral evidence of how remix culture fuels creativity and copyright hinders it, it is this: Despite – or perhaps because of – millions of views in less than a week, The David Foster Wallace Literary Trust has filed a copyright claim against the wildly popular YouTube version of the wonderful short film adaptation of Wallace’s timeless 2005 commencement address, This Is Water. (Luckily, you can still watch the film on Vimeo – but that’s beside the point.)
Here is an example of a project made out of love, the existence of which harms the estate in no way, financial or otherwise, but serves the public good by way of cultural preservation and celebration of Wallace’s spirit and legacy, extending his message and allowing it to touch more lives. That the estate finds any of this harmful is gobsmacking, at once an aberration of the law and a complete failure of cultural duty.
Yeah, This is Terrible, as it were.
Nostalgia writing: http://powells.us/12skvEO
Also: Great Books of the Western World! I wanna snap that up for the low low price of 75 greenbacks.
Here’s today’s Daily GIF!
I have no idea what this means, but I love it (or: tumblr in a nutshell).
This is lovely – Diego Stocco makes music from leaves and a turntable.
Some fresh beats
THERE’S SO MUCH GOD DAMN SPINACH in this shit even Popeye can’t hate. Yeah spinach makes you swoll as fuck, we know that. But did you know just one cup of spinach is over 300% of your daily recommended Vitamin A? Sweet fuck. You worried about acne? Wrinkles? Any other skin shit? Spinach to the mother fucking rescue. That shit keeps your skin looking so fresh and so clean, not to mention helping to prevent skin cancer. Spinach has these plant-based compounds called “flavonoids” that not only repair damaged skin but also fight multiple types of cancer. Everybody knows I ain’t even fucking playing when it comes to dick cancer, I gotta have my shit in tact.
IF YOU SMOKE cigarettes (tumblr crew I’m looking at you), DO NOT take any Vitamin A or beta carotene supplements. Studies have shown that combining those supplements with tobacco drastically increases your risk for lung cancer. But then again, smoking drastically increases your risk for lung cancer. So quit that shit.
You want to make this shit at home and tell Jamba Juice they can go fuck themselves by not paying for their high calorie sugary shit? Recipe below for a Thug Kitchen Original:
SPINACH COOLER
Ectoplasm free and Dr. Venkman approved
- 2 handfuls of spinach (about 2 cups)
- 2 frozen bananas
- 1 cup chopped and skinned cucumber
- 4 medium chunks of pineapple
- 1 cup coconut water or tap
- 1/4 cup orange juice
- 1 tablespoon flax oil (optional)
- 6-8 mint leaves (optional, but I dig that shit)
- yields ~20 ounces
Toss that shit in a blender and zap it. If you prefer it a little sweeter, add some more pineapple to that shit. DRINK UP, CHAMP.
Seriously though, fuck Jamba Juice. Only they could make smoothies as unhealthy as McDonald’s made oatmeal.
Smoothies are the shit, real talk.
NYTimes article on Perique
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/us/tobacco-lovers-discover-mystique-of-perique.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0
