Dave Segal lists a "rogues' gallery of singers he wish would just quit singing.

"Humans tend to think of their lives as progressing towards some kind of eventual fulfilment; when this is not forthcoming they seek satisfaction or distraction in anything that is new or different. This human search for happiness is 'regressive and futile', for each valuable moment slips away in the pursuit of others and they are all swallowed up ( Read more... )

Maybe it's just me, but i feel as though as something is missing in the contemporary art i've seen lately. (This just days after attending a high-profile but ultimately underwhelming contemporary art show.)

It just seems as though all the work i see is largely distant and disconnected from the issues and problems of society. As if the artists are ( Read more... )

It was black, tiny yet monstrous. It skittered from beneath the table and disappeared under the oven. What it was, i don't know. It moved too fast -- it could've been a rat or a roach. If it was a roach, it was by far the biggest roach i've ever seen.

I don't fear roaches, though i hate them. I do fear rats. And i fear this tiny horror, whatever it ( Read more... )

It's stuff like this that makes Topless Robot probably my favorite blog on these interwebz:

Let us imagine that Luke Skywalker is trying to tell you his plan to rescue Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt.

Luke: “Okay so, first we get Lando Calrissian posing as a guard inside Jabba’s Palace.”

You: “How do we do that?”

Luke: “We just get him a costume and ( Read more... )

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"Does God have a good reason for designating certain acts as moral and others as immoral? If not - if his dictates are divine whims - why should we take them seriously? Suppose that God commanded us to torture a child. Would that make it all right, or would some other standard give us reasons to resist? And if, on the other hand, God was forced by ( Read more... )

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Variety is reporting that French-Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung is set to make a film based on Norwegian Wood by acclaimed Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. The film is to be released in 2010.

Norwegian Wood is one of my all-time favorite books, and while i cannot imagine how any film can do proper justice to the novel, i am still looking ( Read more... )

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

My camera was stolen. At the beginning and the end, that is the heart of the story. Which is to say that in this, as in almost all things in life, everything boils down to practical considerations.

It was like losing a limb. ( Read more... )