great white shark

It’s been a while. I guess I took a break from tumblr because a) I wanted to redesign my...

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:29:58 -0400

It’s been a while. I guess I took a break from tumblr because a) I wanted to redesign my tumblr and was too lazy/unoriginal to come up with anything and b) I was spending a lot of time on the site (it was getting in the way of my playing The Sims 2).

But now I think I’ll come back for a while, especially since I have a desk job for the summer so, you know, I’ve got that whole plight of the working gal Perez Hilton complex all of a sudden. Okay, part-time job. Okay, paid internship. Whatever. There’s still a desk.

Things: - Playing Trivial Pursuit last night with roommate, her mom, and her boyfriend was fun. We (me and her mom on a team) were so making a come back when we decided to call it quits. - Looking at letters from prisoners John reads at his internship… (this sentence doesn’t need finishing) - Dad wanting to give away all of mom’s old clothes… (neither does this) - Being too depressed to move, shower, or restrain myself from ordering Chinese from campusfood.com… - Trying to get myself back on track. - (In a related story) I need to get in better shape. Just, for my own sanity.

Have you read those books or are you just trying to appear smart?

Wed, 21 May 2008 12:36:00 -0400

missbrightside:jeralyndwile: noraleah:

Below is a list of 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing users. They sit on their shelf, perhaps to make their owner feel smart or well-rounded.

The meme comes with these instructions: Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish. And I’ve added one more level: I’ve **starred the ones I highly recommend.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Reflections: Except for Salughterhouse-five, which I bought and am waiting for John to finish reading, I don’t want to read most of these. Well, a couple — but not that many.

The Cure: In Between Days Sometimes simple lyrics are just what...

Tue, 20 May 2008 12:24:59 -0400

The Cure: In Between Days

Sometimes simple lyrics are just what I need. Come back, come back, come back to me.

Brilliant Peanut Butter Jar Design

Mon, 19 May 2008 14:54:32 -0400

Brilliant Peanut Butter Jar Design: (via pterodactyls)

"Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then..."

Mon, 19 May 2008 14:54:20 -0400

“Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.”

- Moliere (via lifeasart)

This is almost as funny as the Japanese Laverne and Shirley SNL...

Mon, 19 May 2008 14:49:00 -0400

This is almost as funny as the Japanese Laverne and Shirley SNL did once.

Abduzeedo - graphic design: Video of the Week #9

Thu, 15 May 2008 18:23:33 -0400

Abduzeedo - graphic design: Video of the Week #9: Stop-motion awesomeness.

jessicagoldharalson: My husband Tony Stark Robert Downey Jr is...

Wed, 14 May 2008 18:28:58 -0400

jessicagoldharalson:

My husband ~~Tony Stark~~ Robert Downey Jr is hot even when carrying a man-purse.

And ginormous pant cuffs. But oh my god I love him.

playing with layout, shh.

Wed, 14 May 2008 18:14:15 -0400

playing with layout, shh.

Chris Knox - “It’s Love” From that Heineken...

Wed, 14 May 2008 16:37:55 -0400

Chris Knox - “It’s Love”

From that Heineken commercial you love.

“Dancing In The Moonlight” by Toploader (via missbrightside,...

Wed, 14 May 2008 16:18:02 -0400

“Dancing In The Moonlight” by Toploader (via missbrightside, briantan, xcelsior)

claudia: seriouslythough: We all know my obsession with...

Wed, 14 May 2008 16:09:31 -0400

claudia:

seriouslythough:

We all know my obsession with libraries, and now I can smell like one. In the Library perfume smells like “a signed first edition of a favorite novel, Russian and Moroccan leather bindings, worn cloth and a hint of wood polish.”
Want.

I want to spritz this on my neck and dance around to Cake — “You think she’s an open book but you don’t know which page to turn to, do you?”

sharingtime: I once read somewhere that if you’re sufficiently tired, it’s almost the equivalent...

Wed, 14 May 2008 16:05:53 -0400

sharingtime:

I once read somewhere that if you’re sufficiently tired, it’s almost the equivalent of being drunk.

I am fucked up right now.

I know people say that about driving, but I’m pretty sure the same goes for decision-making in general. I’ve made some of my worst decisions while hopped-up on 20+ hours.

I really don’t want to write this paper. I’m going to be churning it out — words...

Mon, 12 May 2008 13:58:58 -0400

I really don’t want to write this paper. I’m going to be churning it out — words shouldn’t be treated that way.

Luckily, tumblr has provided fun songs for me to listen to whilst I toil: 1, 2, 3.

Give the graphic designer some credit

Mon, 12 May 2008 13:50:54 -0400

marco:

bencrossley:

Ever noticed the buttons at the top of the Tumblr dashboard, how the icon tears actually match up from one button to the next?

Now that’s attention to detail. ;)

The credit for that goes entirely to the buttons’ excellent designer, Bobby Andersen.

It took me a while to figure out what he was talking about — but wow, that’s cool.

jennabee: This really is the best tattoo of all time. Via...

Mon, 12 May 2008 13:47:46 -0400

jennabee:

This really is the best tattoo of all time. Via Radar.

LAST POST OF THE DAY I SWEAR I REALLY NEED TO DO THIS PAPER.

Wow. I need paid bodyguards surrounding me at all times with this on each of their arms. Also omg Tolstoy paper. My last. I will explode.

Novelties: When Specialty Plates Go Hilariously Wrong (via...

Mon, 12 May 2008 13:44:00 -0400

Novelties: When Specialty Plates Go Hilariously Wrong (via carlovely, theoriginaljoefisher)

books.

Sun, 11 May 2008 17:53:01 -0400

Also I read two books: The Andromeda Strain (Michael Crichton) and The Doctor’s Wife (Elizabeth Brundage).

AS: His first big novel. Abrupt ending and not that well written, but really interesting and a fast read.

DW: Her first novel. Very very very good and enthralling, covering topics like religion, abortion, and infidelity. Seriously, read it.

Actually, both of these were pretty fast reads. I can’t stress enough how important it is for books to be readable. Most of my favorite authors, actually, write the kind of books you have to wade through for months, maybe start several times. But my goal, as a writer, is to combine the readability of Crichton with the depth of, say, Ken Kesey. You shouldn’t have to choose.

Now I’m reading Body Surfing by Anita Shreeve because my mom lent it to me. I go through phases of reading a lot — this is one of them.

pittsburgh.

Sun, 11 May 2008 17:46:47 -0400

My city of academia didn’t let me down — it was raining when I got here.

Highlights from the trip to my mom’s (in NJ, near the shore):

Lots of sleeping, not-showering
Arrested Development
Juno for the second time, and the deleted scenes, and then both with commentary
I decided (based on a suggestion in the commentary) that dressing up as Juno and Paulie Bleeker will be the best Halloween costume ever — I’ve already enlisted John.
My grandpa lectured me on how 400-something alternating current power is better than 60-something — as if the government put me in charge. Also, way to zone in on the part of physics I hate the most.
I tried to set up my aunt’s router with her Window’s 98 computer.
I failed.
Well, I didn’t fail — I gave up because I realized her laptop wasn’t working (an independent problem) so there was no reason for her to have wireless anyway.

Episode 3: The Wreck of the Old '97

Sun, 11 May 2008 17:34:36 -0400

Episode 3: The Wreck of the Old '97:

nostrich:

Just posted episode 3 of the Tuneage podcast — a little earlier than usual, because I’ll be busy tomorrow.

One of us was out of town this week, so it might not be as polished as in previous weeks.

This is a lie. I’ve edited the podcast alone since the beginning, and awfulness is purely my fault, and no one else’s. But I had to make some sort of excuse.

“It’s not that bad” reblogs are encouraged.

It’s not that bad. :) I enjoyed it, especially Mates of State, Marcy Playground, and (new to me) Fine China.