“Too soon, too late, so many missed opportunities - you’ve got to recognize luck when you see it. He has a lot of friends who waste time waiting for a miracle that will redeem them, transform the life they perceive as a melancholy pencil sketch into a richly-hued oil painting, friends blind to moments of happiness while waiting for that miracle to arrive. What’s more, you’ve got to be able to stand being lucky. Many of his friends do everything they can to destroy it because they’re sure that fulfillment could be worse than failure. They’re driven by the conviction that nothing is more like hell than heaven, that heaven exists only until they get there, or comes into existence only once they’ve left. They’re not convinced that something was right until it’s over.” — A Happy Man by Hansjörg Schertenleib
“I can’t see how anybody who claims to love language can fail to marvel at the beautiful slipperiness of meaning that puns, like aquarium nets, momentarily catch and bring shimmering to the surface. Puns act to shatter or at least compromise meaning; a pun condenses unrelated, even opposing meanings, like a collapsing dwarf star, into a singularity. Maybe it’s this antisemantic vandalism that leads so many people to shun and revile them.” — Michael Chabon, ‘The Phantom Tollbooth’ and the Wonder of Words.
“If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.” — a Montesquieu quote in Is Facebook making us sad?
A Monday morning reminder from the HBR:
Worry isn’t work. Being stressed out isn’t work. Anxiety isn’t work. Entertaining a sense of impending doom isn’t work. Incessant internal verbal punishment isn’t work. Indulging the great unknown fear in your own mind isn’t work. Hating yourself isn’t work.
(via cubicle17)
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“Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.” — ~Jean Cocteau (via theimpossiblecool)
“To function efficiently as a writer, 95% of your brain has to teleport off into nowhere, taking its neuroses with it, leaving the confident, playful 5% alone to operate the controls. To put it another way: words are like cockroaches; only once the lights are off do they feel free to scuttle around on the kitchen floor.” — Charlie Brooker from Forget those creative writing workshops. If you want to write, get threatened.
Names blurred to protect the sycophantic innocent.
I miss these kids so much.
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The season finale of AMC’s brilliant Breaking Bad is tonight. The New Yorker recently had an article on La Familia Michoacana (subscribers only), a violent drug cartel that has captured parts of the state and the private sector in Mexico. The piece offers a fascinating look at the real world of drugs and violence that likely inspired the fictionalized turf across the border from Walter White’s Albuquerque. Much of the violence that once seemed sensational (such as what happens to Danny Trejo’s character) now appears grounded in a disturbing reality. If you have a subscription, I definitely recommend you read the article, however, the next best thing is this 16 minute interview with William Finnegan, the journalist who reported the story.
inky:
The glorious return of The Perry Bible Fellowship.
I don’t think I’ll ever tire of seeing Nicholas Gurewitch follow his cute premises to their hilariously dark conclusions.
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W. H. Auden, December 1940:
The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.
The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.
The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.
Much can be said for social savior-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.
A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.
From Vintage Seattle:
The night of Nov. 11, 1957, the largest and most expensive sewer collapse in the U.S. to that date occurred at Ravenna Boulevard between 16th and 17th Avenues NE. The hole was 60 feet deep but the sewer trunk in question is 145 feet below the street. Repairs took two years to complete, including first a sewer bypass through Ravenna Park, then stabilizing the broken trunk with a newly devised grout material and re-boring the tunnel.
Just to make a comparison, the now famous Guatemalan sinkhole is estimated to be 60 feet wide and 30 stories (approximately 300 feet) deep.