Pop culture used to be like LSD – different, eye-opening and reasonably dangerous. It’s now like crack – isolating, wasteful and with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. —Peter Saville
Category
Art
It’s All Ball Bearings Nowadays
FLETCH: I’m gonna’ need some pliers, and a set of 30 weight ball bearings (it’s all ball bearings nowadays) And I’m gonna’ need about 10 quarts of antifreeze, preferably Prestone. No, make that Quaker State. Chevy Chase from the movie Fletch (1985)
Cassandre: Master of The Airbrush!
Cassandre combined Synthetism and lyricism to create a new form of image to exalt the product: L’Intransigeant was a paen to communications; Etoile du Nord and Nord Express to the railways; and Normandie to the great ocean liners. Master of the airbrush (a technique that enabled him to produce smooth gradations of colour), the use…
The Three Dominant Classes of Contemporary America
We have three dominant classes in contemporary America: We have the poor and outcast… We have a slipping working class that considers itself middle class. And we have powerful, and often greedy, Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats. Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats dominate our political, economic and cultural systems. Powerful words tweeted by…
Among these dark Satanic Mills? William Blake’s Jerusalem
JERUSALEM (from ‘Milton’) by: William Blake (1757-1827) And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my…
Only a weak, deficient being can love.
“…even if I were to possess all knowledge, without love I would be nothing, is not simple that with love, I am ‘something’—in love, I am also nothing but, as it were, a Nothing humbly aware of itself, a Nothing paradoxically made rich through the very awareness of its lack. Only a lacking, vulnerable being…
The Disease Was Life Itself
As a child, Wallace was forceful and imaginative. He frequently made his younger sister play audience to long, ad lib dramas populated by characters like Captain Phlegm and his sidekick Goat Bile. During adolescence, Wallace moved into the basement of the family’s Philo, Illinois home. He painted the walls black and hung cork tiles on…
A post about procrastination. Don’t wait, Read it now!
This is sometimes called present bias – being unable to grasp what you want will change over time, and what you want now isn’t the same thing you will want later. Present bias explains why you buy lettuce and bananas only to throw them out later when you forget to eat them. This is why…
A Precocious Autobiography by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
“My grandfather came into my room. I had already undressed and was lying in bed. He sat down on the edge of my bed. He had in his hands a box of liqueur-filled chocolates. His eyes, usually mischievous and smiling, that night looked at me from under his gray prickly crew-cut with a tired and…
The philosopher should not care about eating and drinking
The philosopher should not care about eating and drinking, but of course he should eat as much as is necessary; there is no suggestion of fasting. And we are told that Socrates, though indifferent to wine, could, on occasion, drink more than anybody else, without ever becoming intoxicated. It was not drinking that he condemned,…