[From Sea to Shining Sea] Ioway to Go

09Jan12

via my Brother

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Tags: iowa

[Arts & Rec] 2010 in One Photo

04Jan12

By Eirik So, via PetaPixel

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Tags: photography

[Arts & Recreation] Poetry for Winter by Blok

31Dec11

Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека,

Бессмысленный и тусклый свет.

Живи еще хоть четверть века -

Все будет так. Исхода нет.

-

Умрешь – начнешь опять сначала,

И повторится все, как встарь,

Ночь, ледяная рябь канала,

Аптека, улица, фонарь.

- Александр Блок

Картина от  Suhanova3887 

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Tags: alexander blok, ночь улица фонарь аптека

[Glossolalia] No More Norman Conquest

26Dec11

In 1066, the Normans crossed the English Channel and invaded Hastings on the Southern English coast. The Norman king, William I, won the battle, killing the English king, Harold II, in the process. Despite winning the battle, the Normans were sick, tired and ready to be done. William I waited in Hastings for the English to submit and when that didn’t happen he took his men riding toward London and destroying much of everything in his path. His attack was halted when he was recognized as king and finally crowned on Christmas Day, 1066 at Westminster Abbey.

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Tags: 1066, anglish, anglo-saxon lingusitic purism, battle of hastings, great vowel shift, history of english language, linguistics, norman conquest, old english

[Glossolalia] “Toska”

22Dec11

Тоска

(English translit. “toska”)

“No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.” – Vladimir Nabokov

From a list of 20 untranslatable words. You can find the full list [here].

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[Fit to Print] Where Have All My Dictators Gone?

20Dec11

RIP Kim Jong Il

Father, Dear Leader, Friend, Sunglass Designer, Inventor of the Cheeseburger, Opera Composer, Fashion Designer, Controller of Weather, Resident of Central Luxury House

I am not going to hide my grieving, I will miss Kim Jong Il. It is no secret that I love dictators, I mean, not so much the cruelty they impose on their subjects, but more the fact you can’t have a full-blown personality cult without being a dictator. To me, there is a big difference between dictators. There are boring dictators like President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and then there are really fun ones, like Qaddafi and Turkmenbashi. However, they are now both recently deceased and sadly no one can ever fill those shoes. BuzzFeed and The Telegraph tried to compile all the zany things Kim Jong Il has done in his life and each one is more magical than the next. With Turkmenbashi, Qaddafi and now Kim Jong Il gone, who will build a militia of lady assassins? or design their own haircut? or just babble on and on at the UN General Assembly (I guess we still have Ahmadinejad, but it’s not the same)? With the recent death of Kim Jong Il, I am left with only one living, zany dictator, and even then, he’s pretty boring. Nevertheless, he’s our only hope.

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Tags: belarus, dictator, kim jong il, lukashenko, nazarbayev, qaddafi, turkmenbashi, zombie kim jong il

Five Zany Christmas Traditions

16Dec11

Since Christmas isn’t really more than an appropriated version of pagan solstice celebrations, it makes sense that some of the traditions associated with the holiday are akin to something from Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Here are some of the most interesting:

1. Catalonian Christmas
Definitely the weirdest Christmas on Earth, I am not even sure where to start with this one. I have to say that seeing this thing on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations Holiday Special is what made me start thinking about all this in the first place (although #4, Zwarte Piet, really made me write a post.). It begins in Catalonia, where they have a christmas log (“Tió de Nadal“). On Christmas, they put the log into the fireplace and tell it to take a shit, and to encourage the activity, they begin beating him with the log stick. The log then craps out candies and nuts as the family hits it with a stick and sings a song like the one from No Reservations below. And let’s not forget about El Caganer (“The Pooper”) who craps on a log at the periphery of the nativity scene.

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Tags: catalonia, christmas, el caganer, krampus, no reservations, olentzero, zwarte piet

[I Like to Watch] Zut Galores by D Chun

30Dec10

In case you missed it, the audio-visual musings of David Saehoon Chun:

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Tags: comedy, videos

[Grape Stomp] Whalebone Winery

30Dec10

Somehow I always find myself wandering through Paso Robles around the holidays. There are definitely worse places that I could find myself. With the luck of having a friend whose parents own a beautiful tucked away retreat in the hills of Paso Robles, I get to enjoy the city from time to time. And enjoying Paso means drinking wine. It just so happens the house is right off Peachy Canyon Road: a great home to many wineries.

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Tags: bob wine, paso robles, red wine, whalebone, wineries

Arts & Recreation: Lee Friedlander

09Nov10

Went to the Fraenkel Gallery with my brother for his birthday and had the pleasure of looking at a remarkable collection of Lee Friedlander’s work. Friedlander has a gift at capturing complex messages of urban life and synthesizing entire experiences in beautiful American settings.

More photos after the jump…

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Tags: friedlander, lee friedlander, photography