Uncouth Reflections

Arizona Trails

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Sir Barken Hyena

Sir Barken Hyena writes:

Here’s a sampling of my Sunday drives in the great, and greatly maligned, state of Arizona. Note the “End The Fed” and Bitcoin bumperstickers. I often take my guitar with me, stopping midway to serenade the coyotes and rattlesnakes. They’re an uncomplaining audience.

Apache Trail

Box Canyon

Gila River Canyon

Superstition Mountains

Four Peaks

Tucson from the Rincon Mountains

Lower Salt River Canyon

Santa Catalinas

Galliuro Mountains

Posted in Photography, Travel | 3 Comments

Linkage

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

Lincoln: Saint who set free the black people, or dastardly creator of the suffocating, over-centralized modern state?
Love this Mickey Spillane paperback bookcover.
Some wonderful Japanese prints of nudes.
Russian women apparently enjoy being objectified. Imagine that.
Is there really such a thing as “porn addiction“?
Are the manosphere and the Dark Enlightenment friends or not?
A smart appreciation of the manosphere.
Steve Sailer recalls the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia.
“The country is approaching a percentage of foreign-born not seen since the late 1800s and early 1900s.”
Is Radio Shack in a death spiral?
Paleo/Primal guru Mark Sisson on getting the fitness results you want.
“So here’s the $10 question. Can a woman consent to sex when she’s been drinking? Universities have decided that the answer is no.” Link tks to Amy Alkon.
Why is it so hard for women to write about sex?
Sriracha, the movie.
Rod Dreher turns up some startlingly frank thoughts and words from Oscar winner John Ridley.
Randall Parker is digging Gregory Clark’s new book.
How to fake your way through the crisis in Ukraine.
Don’t forget to visit our very NSFW Tumblr blog, where some of us share the kinky and nutty things that stir our libidos.

Posted in Linkathons | Tagged art, gregory clark, John Ridley, Mark Sisson, politics, Radio Shack, Randall Parker, sex, The Dark Enlightenment, Ukraine | 6 Comments

“Carlos the Jackal”

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

In “Carlos the Jackal” Olivier Assayas trains his restless intelligence on the subject of international leftism. In its complete form the work is over five hours long, and though it’s split into three feature-length episodes, it retains a sprawling, decentralized quality that suits Assayas’ sensibilities, which have always favored entropy over the aesthetics of what I guess it’s still okay to call the “well-made film.” This has occasionally gotten Assayas into trouble: his 2002 “Demonlover,” which begins as a corporate thriller, ends in a gobbledygook of narrative noise that seems like a too-easy “FU” to genre considerations. But in “Carlos” the entropy is controlled, with peaks and valleys spread evenly throughout the film so that it becomes part of the texture rather than an end in itself. That texture is important: the entire picture is set in period, roughly the ’70s through the late ’80s, and it focuses on terrorists who, being constantly on the run, are without country, home, or center. These folks are like energized electrons blipping into and out of the orbits of various national and ideological nuclei. Assayas is trying to bring us into their unsettledness.

Continue reading →

Posted in Movies, Performers, Politics and Economics | Tagged Carlos the Jackal, Cold War, Edgar Ramirez, Film, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, leftism, movies, Olivier Assayas, terrorism | 12 Comments

Music Du Jour: James McMurtry

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

One of the commenters on the clip writes “Bo Diddley meets Bob Dylan,” and I certainly can’t do any better than that.

Related

I get more lit fict-style pleasure out of McMurtry’s music than I do out of most lit-fict books that I try. Is it purely a coincidence that McMurtry is the son of the renowned Texas novelist Larry McMurtry?
My favorite discs of McMurtry’s are this one and this one. Dig the excellent prices on those CDs.

Posted in Music | Tagged james mcmurtry, Music | 3 Comments

Architecture Du Jour: Berlin Details

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

A grab-bag of beautiful details from no-name buildings in Berlin:

When was the last time you ooh’d and aah’d over the details on a modernist building? Would modernists have us think that details and ornaments are unimportant? Yet they’re a big part of what transforms walking through a city, town or neighborhood into a pleasure rather than a chore.

Related

I compared bicycling in the U.S. to bicycling in Berlin.
Blowhard, Esq. took an epic look at bicycling in Long Beach, CA.

Posted in Architecture | Tagged architecture, Berlin, bicycling | 4 Comments

Linkage

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

Some people you’re allowed to compare to Nazis, some you’re not.
Judgy Bitch on Woody Allen.
Jake Thomas on the year in movies.
Academics need a special program to suss out “gobbledegook” papers.
Is studying anthropology a waste? (H/T West Hunter)
Can dogs feel shame?
Things are different in Uganda.
Yep, different.
Rush is Delaware’s most popular band. Why do I find this amusing?

Posted in Linkathons | Tagged anthropology, Delaware, global warming, Jake Thomas, Judgy Bitch, Rush, Woody Allen | 6 Comments

UR Redesign

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

All of us here at UR agree we’re wonderful, highly talented people who put out a superior product ~~day in and day out~~ whenever we feel like it. We’re like The Atlantic, Entertainment Weekly, and The New Yorker combined only funnier and with more bush.

Thus, at one of our weekly editorial meetings, Paleo Retiree went into full Perry White Mode and started griping about our subpar site design. To shut him up we decided an overhaul was due, so we pooled our funds and hired graphic design superstar Chip Kidd to reconceive everything from the ground up.

One of our many high-level meetings during which we strategized on corporate synergy

Thing is, Kidd demands a high five-figure salary and new pair of vintage granny glasses for such gigs and all we could offer was a dime bag of weed. Lucky for us, that’s enough for Sir Barken Hyena so he took a crack at sprucing things up. Much to everyone’s extreme shock, he actually did a great job. Clean, sharp, and slick without being too fussy. Dig the new drunken header image, too.

I hope you enjoy it. Maybe the rest of us will actually start trying harder.*

*Probably not, don’t hold your breath.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged blog news | 6 Comments

Quote Du Jour

Posted on March 2, 2014 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Chandler’s cameo in DOUBLE INDEMNITY

If you can go past those awful idiot faces on the bleachers outside the theater without a sense of the collapse of the human intelligence; if you can stand the hailstorm of flash bulbs popping at the poor patient actors who, like kings and queens, have never the right to look bored; if you can glance out over this gathered assemblage of what is supposed to be the elite of Hollywood and say to yourself without a sinking feeling, “In these hands lie the destinies of the only original art the modern world has conceived”; if you can laugh, and you probably will, at the cast-off jokes from the comedians on the stage, stuff that wasn’t good enough to use on their radio shows; if you can stand the fake sentimentality and the platitudes of the officials and the mincing elocution of the glamour queens (you ought to hear them with four martinis down the hatch); if you can do all these things with grace and pleasure, and not have a wild and forsaken horror at the thought that most of these people actually take this shoddy performance seriously; and if you can then go out into the night to see half the police force of Los Angeles gathered to protect the golden ones from the mob in the free seats but not from that awful moaning sound they give out, like destiny whistling through a hollow shell; if you can do all these things and still feel next morning that the picture business is worth the attention of one single intelligent, artistic mind, then in the picture business you certainly belong, because this sort of vulgarity is part of its inevitable price.

— Raymond Chandler, via Christa Faust