February 2012
2 posts
1 tag
Thought Catalog: 1998’s Primetime TV Listings As... →
A brilliant amalgam of two cultural touchstones by Ted Pillow:
Sister, Sister 8:00 – 8:30 Tia and Tamera come to grips with the realization that their twinship is not a playful flourish from the idiosyncratic hand of God, but merely a production error from the mechanized assembly chain of creation.
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Return of the Herculoids - a 1-Page Hip-Hop RPG →
My buddy Dan, maybe the only person in the world with the broad cultural cachet necessary to bridge the gap between traditional game design and the decades-long history of a musical genre’s evolution, was hanging out in class one day and thought it’d be way more interesting to develop a ruleset for a hip-hop RPG than to pay attention.
It is the year 3030, and The Herculoids have...
January 2012
1 post
5 tags
December 2011
1 post
4 tags
October 2011
1 post
3 tags
September 2011
2 posts
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An Open Letter to Writers of Open Letters to...
Dear Writers of Open Letters to Concepts, Places, Theories and Inanimate Objects,
Please cut that shit out.
Thanks,
Nick
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Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis in brief
What time is it?
Oh shit, I’m a bug
Hope they don’t miss me at work today
Man, whatever — my job sucks
Wait, Mom! Don’t come in here! Goddd
My boss is pissed; guess I’ll get up
Oh, right — I’m a bug
Suddenly feeling apathetic
Opening a door with insect apparatus sure is tough
Mom, goddd, it’s just a phase; you act like you’ve ever seen a bug...
August 2011
7 posts
3 tags
Why No One Is Getting Laid →
Maybe Facebook and texting has turned us into a bunch of judgmental jerks who would say no to sex just because someone uses an emoticon or lists Dave Matthews Band under their favorite music. “Ugh, total dealbreaker!” Really? Well, have fun sleeping alone tonight next to your cool Beach House poster.
An awkward response to a reasonable question by Ryan O’Connell.
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“You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for...”
– Steve Jobs, Stanford University class of 2005 commencement speech (YouTube)
More thoughts at my blog over here.
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A Fat, Mad Baby →
The Economist:
America is a scooter-bound glutton who, when its continuously increasing mass finally overwhelms the doughtiest scooter’s capacities, shakes its fat fists like a mad baby and demands deliverance from the laws of physics. America needs an extreme makeover, a heavy dose of tough love. America needs to grow up and get real. But our politicians always only tell us how beautiful...
“I know you’re scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes,...”
– The inauguration speech Barack Obama needed to give on January 20, 2009, as imagined by Drew Westen. Read his entire opinion piece here — it’s excellent.
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“I’d like to dedicate that song of homoerotic love between soldiers to that...”
– The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy at the Newport Folk Festival after the band played “The Soldiering Life.” Listen to the show here.
July 2011
5 posts
1 tag
Our Bloodstained Roof →
2 tags
Never Date a Writer →
“How can I let the introvert in my life know that I support him and respect his...”
– “Caring for Your Introvert” by Jonathan Rauch for The Atlantic.
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June 2011
2 posts
5 tags
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May 2011
1 post
6 tags
February 2011
1 post
“[We are] a generation of incurable romantics incapable of love, revolutionaries...”
– Spencer Tordoff / @ozkfodrotski
Well. Um, yeah. I guess that actually sums it up nicely.
January 2011
2 posts
2 tags
December 2010
6 posts
6 tags
@Discographies on discographies
The as-yet-unnamed author of what I consider to be the best new Twitter persona of 2010 explains why discographies are the new unit-of-measure for people’s exposure to musicians (emphasis mine):
It’s become a cliché that nowadays the dominant mode of music consumption is not the album but the song. And maybe that’s true if you’re still in the business of trying to sell...
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The locked doors
I’m currently reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals, which I received as a gift from a good friend. I am not currently a vegetarian, although it’s something I’ve wrestled with over the last few years. In recent months, however, I’ve realized I need to make a change to put my conscience at ease.
But I’m not writing to proselytize. I just wanted to talk...
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“Stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or...”
– Stephen King, On Writing
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Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity | Video... →
Recommended to me by a friend when I was feeling at my absolute lowest.
Creative types: If you’re feeling like you’re losing it (whatever “it” is) and like your greatest strength is fucking things up, it’s absolutely essential to realize that it’s not your fault. Don’t blame yourself when your work is kind of shitty; you did what you could, and it’s...
November 2010
2 posts
2 tags
Water Tower Bucket Boys / “Los...
October 2010
4 posts
4 tags
“Treat living abroad as if it were a now-or-never choice, because it often is.”
– Colleen Kinder, “Delaying the Real World”
The Year We Blew Up the Whale—Florence, Oregon →
September 2010
1 post
August 2010
5 posts
WatchGlen Hansard and Markéta Irglová (the duo from Once, now performing as The Swell Season) play a phenomenal cover of Neutral Milk Hotel’s “Two-Headed Boy.”
(Via @Casey_Malone)
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July 2010
3 posts
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Tying up loose ends
Everyone wants moving to be as painless as possible. I’ve got a crazy-huge checklist of things I’d like to get done by the end of the month so I can move quickly and cleanly out of Eugene in both a physical and metaphysical sense.
According to my checklist in Things, there are about 92 loose ends left to wrap up, and (this is embarrassing) half of those are just old video games and...
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June 2010
1 post
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Infinite Summer →
Force yourself through David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” for bragging rights and the always-fashionable case of severe eyestrain.
The book retails for about $12 online, or you can grab it on Kindle or iBooks for around $10.