Friday, September 18
Monday, August 3
The Hunter (excerpt)
From Richard Stark's THE HUNTER, the first novel about cold-blooded criminal Parker:
Office women in passing cars looked at him and felt vibrations above their nylons. He was big and shaggy, with flat square shoulders and arms too long in sleeves too short. He wore a gray suit, limp with age and no pressing. His shoes and socks were both black and both holey. The shoes were holey on the bottom, the socks were holey at heel and toe.
His hands, swinging curve-fingered at his sides, looked like they were molded of brown clay by a sculptor who thought big and liked veins. His hair was brown and dry and dead, blowing around his head like a poor toupee about to fly loose. His face was a chipped chunk of concrete, with eyes of flawed onyx. His mouth was a quick stroke, bloodless. His suit coat fluttered behind him, and his arms swung easily as he walked.
The office women looked at him and shivered. They knew he was a bastard, they knew his big hands were born to slap with, they knew his face would never break into a smile when he looked at a woman. They knew what he was, they thanked God for their husbands, and still they shivered. Because they knew how he would fall on a woman in the night. Like a tree.
Friday, July 24
Affluenza: July 24
Beautiful! (Those dinks in Vampire Weekend will be SO JEALOUS...)
Hilarious comic excursion to a housewares tradeshow.
Gizmodo gets in the Affluenza business...
Affluenza Approves:
It's A Branch You Idiots
It's A Plank You Idiots
It's A Stump You...whoa, these are actually really breathtakingly beautiful. (Four large, though.)
Gorgeous, of course. And note the blogger's intriguing coining of the adjective "shitful."
I know I've written before about the interesting life span these things have had--from goofy joke to useful accessory--and here's a place to get one. Forty bucks for a solid, good-sounding headset sounds like a STEAL to me.
The "Is this Time Cube or NotCot?" NotCot caption of the week:
"The transparent platelets have been planned in order to uniform diffuse the punctual bundle of the LED, that they represent between the more fascinating sources than light of the future, designed by Massimo Iosa Ghini." Of course.
Winner of this installment's prestigious Nacho Carbonell Award
The Onion gets into the Affluenza business...
Keep Diluting That Brand Presence!
Genius!
Leave it to French hipsters. (The original caption for this entry was "Tres sexy!" but I didn't trust some of you guys to realize I was being sarcastic...)
An Open Flame Is The New Bowl Of Rocks
I love the idea of upper-middles lining up to buy bedsheets that look like cardboard. (Also: the designer goes by the name "Snurk.")
I guarantee 85% of the people who saw this thought to themselves "Weekend project!" (Including myself.)
Affluenza's favorite new blog.
Two utterly gorgeous pieces of jewelry. (Be sure to click on Other Views at the Bubble Necklace link to see how great it looks in person.)
LINK OF THE WEEK
Sunday, July 12
The Law Of Fail
"Once a web community has decided to dislike a person, topic, or idea, the conversation will shift from criticizing the idea to become a competition about who can be most scathing in their condemnation." -Anil Dash
Friday, July 3
from DOG OF THE SOUTH, by Charles Portis
"The kind of people I know now don't have barbecues, Mama. They stand
up alone at nights in small rooms and eat cold weenies. My so-called
friends are bums. Many of them are nothing but rats. They spread T.B.
and use dirty language. Some of them can even move their ears. They're
wife-beaters and window peepers and night crawlers and dope fiends.
They have running sores on the backs of their hands that never heal.
They peer up from cracks in the floor with their small red eyes and
watch for chances."
up alone at nights in small rooms and eat cold weenies. My so-called
friends are bums. Many of them are nothing but rats. They spread T.B.
and use dirty language. Some of them can even move their ears. They're
wife-beaters and window peepers and night crawlers and dope fiends.
They have running sores on the backs of their hands that never heal.
They peer up from cracks in the floor with their small red eyes and
watch for chances."
Friday, June 12
How I would live without the human delicacy to which I am witness?
For one day, an Israeli newspaper replaced its journalists with novelists and poets:
Among those articles were gems like the stock market summary, by author Avri Herling. It went like this: "Everything's okay. Everything's like usual. Yesterday trading ended. Everything's okay. The economists went to their homes, the laundry is drying on the lines, dinners are waiting in place… Dow Jones traded steadily and closed with 8,761 points, Nasdaq added 0.9% to a level of 1,860 points…. The guy from the shakshuka [an Israeli egg-and-tomato dish] shop raised his prices again…." And the weather report was a poem by Roni Somek, titled "Summer Sonnet." ("Summer is the pencil/that is least sharp/in the seasons' pencil case.") News junkies might call this a postmodern farce, but considering that the stock market won't be soaring anytime soon, and that "hot" is really the only weather forecast there is during Israeli summers, who's to say these articles aren't factual?
Wednesday, June 10
Momma
Your mom has probably already sent you this video, and sure, it's cute, but what strikes me about it is how urgently the baby is trying to communicate something, and how frustrated she gets when her dad starts laughing at her. Look how serious she is!
Tuesday, June 9
Wednesday, June 3
Steampunk Cake was Blatantly Copied.
Steampunk Cake was Blatantly Copied. Bride fights are almost as funny as Wikipedia editor fights. (thanks, Molly!)
Wednesday, May 27
Kanye West
"Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-
absorbed. I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book's
autograph. . . . I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get
information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and
living real life."
absorbed. I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book's
autograph. . . . I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get
information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and
living real life."
Tuesday, May 26
from BODY COUNT, by Christian Jungerson
We all know that the bottle of wine we've drunk tonight could have
paid for vaccinating twenty kids and saving the life of at least one.
I very much hope that the world will become a better place. And if it
does, our grandchildren may look at us the way young people today
regard the generation who collaborated with the Nazis. They'll say, "I
do not understand you." We will explain that life simply was the way
it was. "Famines came and went and no one did anything about it.
People died of hunger to provide us with cheaper coffee." We'll have
to admit that we knew but chose to do nothing about it.
paid for vaccinating twenty kids and saving the life of at least one.
I very much hope that the world will become a better place. And if it
does, our grandchildren may look at us the way young people today
regard the generation who collaborated with the Nazis. They'll say, "I
do not understand you." We will explain that life simply was the way
it was. "Famines came and went and no one did anything about it.
People died of hunger to provide us with cheaper coffee." We'll have
to admit that we knew but chose to do nothing about it.
Thursday, May 21
heita3
To steal a line from Knocked Up: I wish I was as excited about anything in my life as this guy is about his musical instruments.
Wednesday, May 20
Tuesday, May 19
Scott Sternberg's Rules of Style
The Top Ten Rules of Style, by Band Of Outsiders head designer, Scott Sternberg.
Don't Wanna Be Alone...What For?
I think I understand why people in the 80s--Don Delilo, J.G. Ballard--felt like Western Culture was coming to end:
1985 Plymouth Duster Commercial
I hope one day we get a feature-length Boogie Nights-style biopic about the filming of this ad. (PS: Whatever you do, don't start clicking on Related Videos, because it will seriously eat up half your day.)
Sunday, May 17
Pevear and Volokhonsky really make the text come alive, don't they?
via Wikipedia and Waxy.org, the correct translation of Zero Wing's "All your base are belong to us" cutscene:
- AD 2101: War has begun.
- Captain: What was that?
- Engineer: Someone has planted a bomb on the ship!
- Communication operator: Captain! Receiving transmission!
- Captain: What?!
- Communication operator: Incoming visual on the main screen.
- Captain: Y...You!
- CATS: You look busy, gentlemen. With the help of the Federation Government forces, CATS has taken all of your bases. Your ship is about to meet its doom as well.
- Captain: This...this is ridiculous!
- CATS: We are grateful for your cooperation. Cherish these few remaining moments of your lives. Ha ha ha ha ha...
- Communication operator: Captain....
- Captain: I order you to launch all ZIG units! We have no choice but to entrust them with our hopes for our future. We're counting on you, ZIG!
We Don't Die, We Just Get High
We Are Supervision has an utterly fantastic gallery of business cards created by Chicago street gangs of the 70s.
Monday, May 11
"The TV shows of the Nineties have so much to offer style-wise."
BREAKING: This week's Teen Vogue Girl Of The Week from Estonia; Has picture taken in what I've always imagined all of Estonia looks like.
Thursday, May 7
Mynah Bird
An excerpt from Cecil and Jordan in New York: Stories by Gabrielle Bell. These frames are from the dream-like story "My Affliction." Our unnamed protagonist heroine has just been given a little wooden man named "Charlie" by her therapist, who tells her to try to fall in love with it. Then this happens:
Capitilization of Titles and Headlines: A Special Baby Ruthless Grammar Insert
This morning I had a question about whether a word in a headlines should be capitalized or not. So I looked up the Capitalization of Headlines and Titles section of the Chicago Manual of Style. I'd been meaning to do this for a while, and I figured today was the day.
The rules are pretty straightforward, so I thought I'd compile a cheat sheet for you guys to use. We'll deal with the words that have to be uppercase first, then the lowercase words.
Uppercase
First and last words of the title
Nouns
Pronouns
Adjectives
Verbs
Adverbs
Subordinating Conjuctions
Lowercase
Articles
Coordinating Conjuctions
Prepositions
That's it. This list seems pretty daunting, but it's really pretty easy. There are a bunch of little fiddly rules, but this should cover most of the capitalization questions you have.
The rules are pretty straightforward, so I thought I'd compile a cheat sheet for you guys to use. We'll deal with the words that have to be uppercase first, then the lowercase words.
Uppercase
First and last words of the title
- This rule supersedes all the others, so even if the word would otherwise be lowercase, if it's the first or last word of the title, it's always uppercase.
Nouns
Pronouns
- I, You, She, He, It, We, You, They
- Me, Her, Him, Us
- Mine, Yours, Hers, His, Its, Ours, Theirs
- This, That, These, Those
- Who, Whom, Which, What
- Whoever, Whomever, Whichever, Whatever
- All, Another, Any, Anybody, Anyone, Anything, Each, Everybody, Everyone, Everything, Few, Many, Nobody, None, One, Several, Some, Somebody, Someone
- Myself, Yourself, Herself, Himself, Itself, Ourselves, Yourselves, Themselves
Adjectives
Verbs
Adverbs
- Hint: if it ends in an -ly, it's probably an adverb. But there are other adverbs, too:
- Well, Fast, Slow, Late
- Too, Very, Really, Almost, Little, Much, Rather
- Perhaps
- Downstairs, Upstairs, There, Outside, Above, Away, Below, Down, Here, Inside, There, Up
- Always, Never, Sometimes
- However, Therefore, Also, Anyhow, Furthermore, Moreover, Otherwise, Still
- Early, Never, Now, Often, Soon, Then, Today, Tomorrow
- Why, Where, How, When
Subordinating Conjuctions
- Though, Although
- If, Unless
- Until, While, Before, After
- How, When, Whenever, Where, Wherever
- Since, Because, As
- Than, That
Lowercase
Articles
- a
- an
- the
Coordinating Conjuctions
- for
- and
- nor
- but
- or
- yet
- so
- (A good mnemonic device to remember coordinating conjuctions is FANBOYS)
Prepositions
- about, above, across, after, against, along, alongside, among, around, as, aside, at
- before, behind, below, beneath, beside, besides, between, beyond, but, by
- circa, concerning
- despite, down, during
- except
- failing, following, for, from
- given
- in, inside, into
- like
- near, next, notwithstanding
- of, off, on, onto, opposite, out, outside, over
- pace, past, per, plus
- regarding
- since
- than, through, throughout, to, toward, towards
- under, underneath, unlike, until, up, upon
- versus, via
- with, within, without, worth
That's it. This list seems pretty daunting, but it's really pretty easy. There are a bunch of little fiddly rules, but this should cover most of the capitalization questions you have.
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