Quote of the Day: David Foster Wallace on irony and melodrama

“You want to get laid by somebody that keeps saying ‘Here I am, laying you?’ Yes? No? No. Sure you don’t. I sure don’t. It’s a cold tease. No heart. Cruel. A story ought to lead you to bed with both hands.” – David Foster Wallace, Westward

Quote of the Day: Tucker Carlson on Failure

Tucker Carlson,* speaking at a book release party he hosted for Jack Abramoff:

“[I say this] as someone who’s philosophically committed to the truth that unless you fail — and I don’t mean in a minor I-didn’t-live-up-to-my-personal-expectations kind of way — but in a real way, where your neighbors avert their gaze when you pull into your driveway at night, when people think you’re a loser, if you haven’t had that experience, then you really don’t know yourself really well, you don’t know your limits, you don’t know what you’re capable of and more importantly, you don’t know what you’re not capable of,” Carlson said.

“I want to honor that, especially in a city that is given to quick and phony judgements about other people, the underlying point being ‘I’m better than him.’ I raise the middle finger to those people, and I raise a glass to Jack Abramoff and I’m proud to do so,” Carlson said.

*Full disclosure: Carlson is my boss.

The Dawning of the Day

My community college choir sang this song by Mary Fahl in 2003 or 2004. I can’t remember the year or the venue. I do remember the conductor leaning in and bringing the choir down to piano for the fourth verse. I had trouble keeping a steady voice. And after the final notes melted away there was no applause — only sniffles and slumped shoulders and bowed heads.

This morning early I walked on
while my darling was in a dream
The last sweet days of summer bloomed
and dressed the trees in green
Then soaring high in the gleaming sky
from far across the bay
came a fearsome roar from a distant shore
at the dawning of the day

Then I called my men to follow me
knowing well that the view was dim
Though tired and worn, how they fought all morn’
as time was closing in
And my heart was sad though sore with pride
for brave lads all were they
As the angels fly, how they climbed so high
on the dawning of the day

But the edge is moving nearer now
inside the fading sun
and calling, calling out to them
my brothers, one by one
But only dust silence sounds
The ashes float away
as the twilight ends and the night descends
’til the dawning of the day

Forgive me love, I’m going now
so very far away
When darkness falls, only think me near
and do not be afraid
And please don’t grieve when I am gone
Abide in what remains
’til the shadows end and we meet again
on the dawning of the day

For when shadows end,
we shall meet again
on the dawning of the day

Quote of the Day: Wild at Heart

“This whole world’s wild at heart and weird on top.”

Quote of the Day: Camus

“Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.”

- Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-42

Quote of the Day: Freedom Cow

“Yvonne’s urge to be free is strong – even for a cow. If we don’t disturb her, she will continue to live in her paradise world — a quick tour in the forest, and then over to the ripening cornfields. She also has enough water.”

- Quote from an NPR article about Yvonne, a German cow who escaped a trip to the abattoir to graze free in her bovine Elysium. May we all be so lucky.

Quote of the Day: Jack Shafer

“Farewell columns are bush league.”

- Jack Shafer, on whether he would write a “so long” column after being laid-off from Slate

Quote of the day: oddly prescient David Foster Wallace

From DFW’s Infinite Jest (pp. 440-441) published in 1996, oddly apropos:

TINE: Gentlemen, what the president is articulating is that what we face here is a microsmic exemplar of the infamous Democratic Triple Bind faced by visionarians from FDR and JFK on down. The American electorate, as is its every right, on one hand demands the sort of millennial statesmanship and vision — decisive action, tough choices, lots of programs and services — see for instance the Territorial Reconfiguration for example — that will lead a renewed community into a whole new era of interdependent choice and freedom.

[....]

Now, speaking in the very most general terms, if the presiden’ts vision dictates  the tough choice of cutting certain programs and services, our statistical people predict with reasonable inductive certainty that the American electorate will whinge.

VEAL: Whinge?

TINE: Sorry, Tom. Canadian idiom. Whinge. Complain. Petition for redress. Assemble. March in those five-abreast demonstrating lines. Shake upraised fists in unison. Whinge [indicating photos on easels behind him of various historical pressure- and advocacy groups whingeing].

SEC. TREAS.: And we already have an all-too-good idea of what will happen if we attempt any sort of conventional revenue enhancements.

SEC. STATE: Tax revolt.

SEC. H.E.W.: A whingeathon, Chief.

SEC. DEF.: Tea-party.

GENTLE: Bullseye. Whingeville. Political whingeocide. A serious drag-caliber lapse in mandate. [...]

TINE: So then a double bind, so far, with potential whingeing on both flanks.

The third bind in the triple-bind is, of course, that other countries and financial institutions require us to keep our financial house in order and keep the dollar stable. So outflow is required, inflow is restricted, but balance is expected. Why, it’s the sort of thing that could lead, say, a debt rating firm to lower the country’s credit rating.

Daily Broadside: A People’s History of Middle Earth

So today a guy I follow on Twitter was reflecting on how John McCain called the Tea Partiers “hobbits,” and then, not a day later, Democrats called them “terrorists” – a seemingly large jump, no? Which got me thinking: If you look at it from Sauron’s point of view, the Fellowship of the Ring was basically a terrorist cell. Those nasty hobbitses, sneaking into Mordor with their twisted ideology and bringing down … a tower, actually. Oh dear.

Which I suppose makes Gondor and Rohan the equivalent of, say, Afghanistan and Pakistan in terms of harboring evil-doers.

And then another person on Twitter sent this piece of brilliance from McSweeney’s my way, which made me see the hegemonic folly of my interpretation: Unused Audio Commentary By Howard Zinn And Noam Chomsky, Recorded Summer 2002 For The Fellowship Of The Ring (Platinum Series Extended Edition) Dvd. Part One.

Zinn: You view the conflict as being primarily about pipe-weed, do you not?

Chomsky: Well, what we see here, in Hobbiton, farmers tilling crops. The thing to remember is that the crop they are tilling is, in fact, pipe-weed, an addictive drug transported and sold throughout Middle Earth for great profit.

Zinn: This is absolutely established in the books. Pipe-weed is something all the Hobbits abuse. Gandalf is smoking it constantly. You are correct when you point out that Middle Earth depends on pipe-weed in some crucial sense, but I think you may be overstating its importance. Clearly the war is not based only on the Shire’s pipe-weed. Rohan and Gondor’s unceasing hunger for war is a larger culprit, I would say.

But and so, here’s what I wrote today:

• One social media analyst says Newt Gingrich’s Twitter followers aren’t real. Another says they are. Heidegger declares question irrelevant
• Tomorrow I have another piece coming out on my favorite federal agency, the Transportation Security Administration. Look out.

Miscellania:

• An eco-friendly guide to human sacrificing Ashton Kutcher – Matt Labash, The Daily Caller

 

Daily Broadside: No one wants a Hitler kitten

Instead of plastering my articles all over Facebook, which is annoying, I figured I would just start putting them up in one daily blog post. A broadside, if you will. How does that sound? Are you not entertained!? If not, I’ll just go back to putting them on Facebook.

But first, this: Gabrielle Giffords stuns Congress, returns to vote on debt deal, showered with applause, briefly makes everyone stop hating Congress.

OK, some things I wrote today:

• Harvard instructor under fire for anti-terrorism op-ed attacking Muslims; free speech still hell of a thing
• Congress may stop pointing fingers and end FAA shutdown after basically crapping the bed

Other miscellania:

• No one wants a kitten that looks like Hitler – Laura Donovan, The Daily Caller
• Why 9/11 art sucks a big one – Nick Gillespie, Reason
• Casey Anthoney’s Useful Idiots – Popehat