“The sadistic female usually treats crime more lightly than the male. The most serious and dastardly crime is treated with cold disdain. It is characteristic of such women when cornered to try to shift the blame entirely on their lovers or some member of the family. She is cunning and conniving, excessively neurotic and fickle. There is a lack of maternal feeling and a streak of masculine virility in the structure of her personality. She is overly conscious of material things, such as money and finery. She is desolate and wanton. Her sexual nature, which may be heightened during this time, turns to acts of perversion. Revenge, hatred, and jealousy are the very essence of her soul. The female sadist will often exercise an excessive amount of patience in the perpetration of the crime. Frustration and inhibitions forced upon them by others preventing them from achieving a desired goal or from securing monetary gain, may serve as a springboard for a life of crime and may fan the spark of hatred into flaming outbursts of sadistic rage.”
How to take this as anything but parody? Someone should write a screenplay about a down-on-his luck male writer who finds success posting wild feminist screeds on the internet. It’ll be like “Tootsie” for the 21st century.
I’ve always considered “the great American novel” to be a BS phrase that critics throw around when they want to call attention to themselves. So I guess this means that critics aren’t interested in over-praising women authors? Or something?
Nice collection of Gene Mack’s ballpark drawings from the ’30s and ’40s. They’re done in a cartoon style, yet for me they have a soaked-in-experience realism, one that comes through in quirks and minute details. I’m reminded of the paintings of the Northern Renaissance with their “realism of particulars” as opposed to Italy’s realism of perspective and anatomy.
Mark Dice’s petition pranks are great arguments against democracy.
Question: Does it matter that they were just capitalizing on a fad? That they wanted to be called the Pendeltones (after the Pendelton shirts in style at the time), but the record label thought “Beach Boys” would help them catch the surf music wave? That they crammed this album with surf instrumentals?
Answer: No, or, better yet, who cares what their motives were? The language of the surfers allowed them to give voice to breathtakingly beautiful existential angst. “The lonely sea, the lonely sea/It never stops for you or me/It moves along from day to day/That’s why my love/You’ll never stay.” This is the first great Brian Wilson (as opposed to Beach Boys) song:
And maybe the question to begin with is missing something major. Maybe surfing isn’t a fad, or doesn’t have to be a fad. Maybe it can be an ethos, a way of life?
And isn’t that what artists do? Take the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life and mold them into an idealized image of the world. Like turning a traveling salesman’s joke into a story of melancholy longing:
A short q&a with the very reasonable and intelligent architecture critic and historian Witold Rybczynski. Fun quote: “Since historic revivals have occurred regularly over the ages, there’s no reason to expect that they won’t continue.” Note the interviewer’s horror. I’m looking forward to Rybczynski’s new book.
What allows the managerial liberal regime to function are habits of loyalty and sacrifice, and understandings of natural goods and purposes, which it continually undermines and cannot justify or explain.
Back at my old blog I did a long q&a with Jim: Part One, Part Two, Part Three. He’s very smart and many of his views are startling — please give the interview a try.
Now how cool is this? You’re looking at a celestial scene that is located about 8,000 light years distance from earth within our own galaxy. But keep looking. See that big star in the lower central area of the big blob of cosmic dust? From one side of that hollowed out “niche” to the other is a distance of TEN light years. That big star in the middle has simply eaten out that hollow space over the eons. The distance between that star and the surrounding cosmic dust is about FIVE light years. That’s a greater distance than that which lies between our sun and its closest neighboring star, Alpha Centauri. Your task, Mr. Phelps, should you choose to accept this assignment, is to wrap your brain around that fact. This message will self-destruct in about a billion years.
This is the New Journalism: they are reporters; they are actors. They catalog the rituals of Early 1960’s Southern California Teenage Life; they tell us where it’s at: “At Rincon they’re walking the nose.”
And because it is still that specific, still that tied down to that time and place and people, it can still speak its mysteries to us now: “Any time the surf is up/The time is right.”
And they sing about four speed dual quad posi-traction and make whatever that is seem as important as true love:
As they sing, this time and place and people are in the process of being mythicized, but they haven’t yet frozen into the cheap myth of nostalgia. This is all still happening in the present tense:
Wandering around the streets of NYC often leaves me marveling at the variety of what’s available for purchase. Just yesterday I enjoyed a visit to Sakaya, a store in the East Village that sells nothing but sake.
Couldn’t resist the siren call and treated myself to a high-end bottle of unfiltered sake. It was delicious: far more complex (in texture as well as flavor) than what I usually wind up drinking at sushi joints.
“The sadistic female usually treats crime more lightly than the male. The most serious and dastardly crime is treated with cold disdain. It is characteristic of such women when cornered to try to shift the blame entirely on their lovers or some member of the family. She is cunning and conniving, excessively neurotic and fickle. There is a lack of maternal feeling and a streak of masculine virility in the structure of her personality. She is overly conscious of material things, such as money and finery. She is desolate and wanton. Her sexual nature, which may be heightened during this time, turns to acts of perversion. Revenge, hatred, and jealousy are the very essence of her soul. The female sadist will often exercise an excessive amount of patience in the perpetration of the crime. Frustration and inhibitions forced upon them by others preventing them from achieving a desired goal or from securing monetary gain, may serve as a springboard for a life of crime and may fan the spark of hatred into flaming outbursts of sadistic rage.”
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 