December 2009
37 posts
Don't procrastinate pleasure! →
katiebakes:
“Once you start procrastinating pleasure, it can become a self-perpetuating process if you fixate on some imagined nirvana. The longer you wait to open that prize bottle of wine, the more special the occasion has to be.”
(via lifeoflc)
And then...
aimee-b-loved:
Yeah this is totally rude I know, but whatevs. How old ARE you, actually?
I’m 24. I know that’s not old, TECHNICALLY. But I feel old. And part of that is because my darling mother keeps reminding me that I’m not hitting important (to her) life benchmarks - i.e. marriage and children and home ownership. But I like to think that I have a different path to travel.
Ask me...
“But much of what happened was not noteworthy for having happened, it was...”
– I loathe year-end retrospectives, and end-of-decade retros are even worse. (Especially when IT’S NOT REALLY THE END OF THE DECADE YET!) But this may be the most perfect summary of the past ten years, and is worth reading.
GO. VOTE. NOW. →
Of course, only if you’re voting for Choire&Balk. Or, as @attackerman put it:
While anything published by Mediaite is only slightly better than brain cancer, vote for @choire & @alexbalk here
STRONGLY AGREE, on both counts.
One of these things is not like the others
choire:
misterhippity:
“James Cameron’s Avatar is the most beautiful film I’ve seen in years.” — David Denby, The New Yorker
“An extraordinary film.” — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“It extends the possibilities of what movies can do.” — Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
“Evolutionarily speaking, it is cladogenesis in a thunderclap.” — Mary HK Choi, The Awl
Exhibit A in the...
OMG I can’t believe I almost forgot something... →
In today’s installment of Cooking With the Awl, Doree tells us how to make latkes.
The Shadow Editors link I should've included in... →
I have no idea why Tumblr’s “chat post” won’t let you embed an HTML link as well.
Once again, "The Shadow Editors" just GETS IT.
Choire: Allow me to blather on for a bit!
Tom: Yes?
Choire: May we return to Clark Hoyt’s November 1 column?
Choire: Then, he wrote: “Now, with an around-the-clock news cycle, reporters file throughout the day, and copy can be edited over a smoother cycle, she said. That is the goal, but the editing staff is dealing with much more copy than before, some online articles are now read by a single editor instead of four or five, and I hear regularly from readers complaining about errors in grammar, spelling and word usage.”
Choire: That Hoyt reduces the serious changes in workload and workflow that have been going on at the paper over the last three years to complaints about grammar is absurd, if not wrong. What he addresses in this column today, though he doesn’t mention it, are the real effects of what he wrote about on Nov 1.
Tom: Yes. This freelancer shouldn’t have written about her boyfriend’s restaurant, but she did tell them about it. She just mistook their inability to pay attention for permission to go ahead.
Choire: So, as you say, these instances of editors being too busy, or overworked, or ding-batty, or whatever they were, to pay attention to minor bad-goings-on, and therefore making some dumb mistakes are, at best, just a symptom of what’s going on at the Times (which is what’s going on everywhere else). This is a newspaper that, as we all know, is losing 100 staffers more right now. That means: more unread emails by editors in the case of the bad-choosing-girlfriend-freelancer, or more bad shoe-horned-in columns by a coworker who can’t bother to get to the airport more than 30 minutes before his flight and then actually gets lawyery over it. That Hoyt is unable to make these connections, and that is his job, I think, is terrible.
If I were graduating high school this year, I have no doubt 17-year-old me would’ve chosen this as my yearbook quote. And 34-year-old me would totally regret that.
“To me, religion is like Paul Rudd. I see the appeal, and I would never take it away from anyone. But I also would never stand in line for it.”
-Joel McHale on this week’s “Community”
What it feels like to take a sucker punch to the...
natashavc:
Been thinking about Snooks.
I got cold-clocked in the face by an overheated, muscly, swarthy stranger when I was 16. There is a FANTASTIC story behind but that’s an IRL sort of affair (filled with elaborate pantomiming and lurid examples of suburban-spawned vandalism). The punch which was delivered rapidly and close fisted split my lip. But have you ever been socked in the face? It...
Treatise on Eating a Dick*
natashavc:
The first time I heard this phrase was in a recap of a bad break up between two friends. After a 6 hour phone fight that ended a 4 year relash the conversation ended like this:
Vanessa: I love you so much and I really hope we can be friends. And stay in each other’s lives. You mean so much to me and I would hate to lose you.
Mike: Uh-huh. Yeah. Thanks, Vanessa. Eat a dick.
CLICK!
...
“We think http://bit.ly/b3HYB is written by a woman (64%).”
– Tom Scocca, using genderanalyzer.com to send Balk into yet another spasm of soul-searching.
Pilgrim's Progress Report, Week 3 or 4 or...
choire:
I largely can’t tell when people on Tumblr are joking or angry or serious.
But worse, I can never tell when they’re drunk or high, or just pretending to be drunk or high, or just wishing they were drunk or high.
People sure do talk about drugs and alcohol a lot.
One result: it’s near-impossible to distinguish a suicidal plan being blogged from a tipsy in-joke.
For the most part, this...
Do you ever wish you went to the bathroom and... →
Google Goggles. →
Because I’ve tried it and it’s a pretty nifty app, and also because it’s a terrible name, but mostly because I can’t stand staring at this brand new, empty Tumblr any goddamn longer.
