Get Lost: Francis Alÿs

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I feel most movies I see don’t take me seriously. It’s like they think I’m 16 or something. Or they don’t realize that I’m sitting in a movie theater and there’s nothing else going on. They don’t need to fight for my attention. They got my attention. They can be comfortable, it’s fine.

Pitchfork: Guest Lists: Kings of Convenience

This is where I note that West Virginia is West Virginia, it’s own state in its own right, because they were abolitionist, and dead-set against secession. Virginia is Confederacy - West Virginia is a solid, stout bulwark of the Union, as anti-slavery and pro-industrial as states come.

They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom.

Interracial couple denied marriage license in La. - Yahoo! News

Well, he’s unmarried. He still lives with his mother. He’s in therapy, and it doesn’t look like he’ll ever get out of therapy. And he didn’t go into literature.

nycgo / An Interview with Maurice Sendak

Do the marches on the streets of Pittsburgh belong in a time capsule of the past (protesters compared the police response to Kent State, though this time no one was shot or died), the present (this is what happens at G-anything conferences these days) or the future (police used a “sonic weapon” to disperse the crowd)? There was a glimpse, too, of crises yet to come, with Obama and other leaders responding to the news that Iran was building what the I.A.E.A. called a “semi-industrial enrichment fuel facility.”

On day two when I got reprimanded for saying “awesome” instead of “pawsome” and “very” instead of “beary” I knew I was in for a long summer.

The Worst Jobs I’ve Ever Had — The Bygone Bureau

The best thing I see about the current deep recession is that these damnable masters of the universe are no longer celebrities. I hope it lasts, and we make much of people who create something other than marketing campaigns and buy-out deals.

Seen Through a Glass: Hey, Mister Kiely: which of your kids do you like best? Huh? Which one?

We’re in a strange moment in American history when a mouse-eating barefoot survivalist in the mountains of Arizona makes more sense than the chief investment strategist of Merrill Lynch.

The Atlantic Online | May 2009 | Why I Fired My Broker | Jeffrey Goldberg

Why couldn’t a pop song also contain an enormous, barn-burning guitar solo? Why couldn’t a dance hit verge on Afropop? Why did a creamy ballad about human nature have to sound like humans were singing it? Pop has in no way exhausted all the questions he and Quincy posed.

Michael Died Today: Sasha Frere-Jones: Online Only: The New Yorker

This is where everyone I knew first saw the moonwalk, and if you weren’t there or didn’t watch it or maybe weren’t a kid at the time, you cannot imagine what a big deal it was. I was in middle school, and I think we all tried it. You can hear the crowd scream when he does it here — it’s not a scream of recognition, like it would be when he did it later. It’s a scream of shock.

NPR: Michael Jackson: The Moment That Made Him The King Of Pop

One obvious consequence of speaking such a language is that you have to stay oriented at all times, or else you cannot speak properly. The normal greeting in Kuuk Thaayorre is “Where are you going?” and the answer should be something like “Southsoutheast, in the middle distance.”

Edge: HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? By Lera Boroditsky, my new hero. I’ve long been fascinated by the question, but I had no idea there was a history of debate about this — I was plain shocked to learn that most people thought language does not affect the way we think. It just seems so obvious to me, and I love the research Lera Boroditsky has done to demonstrate the many ways it’s true. See also: NPR: Shakespeare Had Roses All Wrong.