I'd rather be somewhere else.

bublog: Lil BUB and Jack McBrayer! Best combo ever. GOOD JOB...

Sun, 19 May 2013 23:08:15 -0700

Lil BUB and Jack McBrayer! Best combo ever.

GOOD JOB BUB. GOOD JOB KENNETH.

Catch BUB and Jack and all the funniest comedians kicking off Comedy Week LIVE tonight on YouTube’s The Big Live Comedy Show at 8pm EST/5pm PST.

Just go to YouTube’s home page, BUB will be there.

They’re so cute shut up

conniecann: [x]

Sun, 19 May 2013 22:00:46 -0700

conniecann:

[x]

fuckyeahdanielpinkwater: Daniel Pinkwater at Bard College in...

Sun, 19 May 2013 22:00:23 -0700

fuckyeahdanielpinkwater:

Daniel Pinkwater at Bard College in the 60s! LOOK AT THAT HAIR

dailymeh: This is a legendary, trilingual marvel of a sketch by...

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:00:25 -0700

dailymeh:

This is a legendary, trilingual marvel of a sketch by a trio of Norwegian comedians. A language, they say, is a dialect with an army and a navy, and that’s definitely true of the Scandinavian dialect continuum, which is mutually intelligible to such a degree that it makes no scientific sense to call it three separate languages—Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Danish is the odd one out when it comes to pronunciation, though, and Norwegians and Swedes love to joke that the language is completely incomprehensible. And so in this sketch, the joke is taken to its logical conclusion: meaning breaks down as the Danes themselves lose the ability to understand each other. This really is some excellent comedy of the absurd, as we witness two men desperately trying to conduct a business transaction using made-up words that sound roughly Danish, since neither one can actually understand the other. A third man, meanwhile, makes money off the situation by implying that any utterance—since every utterance is meaningless, every utterance means anything—somehow is a legally binding contract to buy loads of milk.

This stuff is funny in English, it’s funny in Danish, and it’s funny in Norwegian. But! This really, when you think about it, is some Sartre/Camus/Beckett theatre of the absurd shit. Life is meaningless! At one point, one of the men desperately tries to reach out to the other to acknowledge their failure of communication, grabbing him by his shirt and insisting: “Vi… forstår… hinanden… ikke!” WE DON’T UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER. But the other man is simply frightened. It’s like, bro, you broke the code. You said the unspeakable.

And probably because I spent Easter forced by university curricula to analyze 19th century Russian literature—and let me tell you, who needs lethal injection or the guillotine, just lock ‘em up with the Russian canon and a loaded gun, that stuff is beyond depressing—but sometimes I see this as a metaphor for daily life. There is only a thin veneer of meaning behind words, but really we’re just apes making noises at each other, living our internal lives pretending that our noises make impressions in other apes’ internal lives corresponding to our own, but actually all we do with our noises is acknowledge vaguely each others’ noise-making and its social purpose without in any way rearranging our internal worlds to try to form some kind of empathetic connection with other people. But we can’t actually acknowledge this failure, because the only way how, like in this video, is with an outburst of emotion whose only effect is to break a societal taboo, and we’re blind to the reason for the taboo, we see only that a taboo has been broken and recoil in terror—and so we go on living our lives inside our own heads—and this does not go for all of us, just possibly a substantial portion of the kind of “literary” introverted types who read lots of books and this kind of blog—and nothing ever comes of it.

This has been your daily existentialist bullshit.

Whenever I see stuff like this I think of Jake. Enjoy the daily existentialist BS.

"Librarians are out there making things just a little better one person at a time in the city around..."

Sun, 19 May 2013 11:00:24 -0700

“Librarians are out there making things just a little better one person at a time in the city around you. That is our service. You sleep easier at night knowing that the cops and firefighters are on the job, don’t you feel even a little better knowing librarians are working in your community as well? Nobody is suggesting that we risk our lives in the line of duty, we don’t. We are public servants like they are though and we do interact very directly with the public just as they do. Sometimes we have even more direct and frequent contact with the public than the siren services. In our quiet, anonymous way, we set our shoulder to the wheel of their problems and issues and we leverage all the knowledge and resources we can muster for them. We care, and that is why you should care.”

- Christian Zabriskie, “Libraries in New York City: Why We Give a Damn and Why You Should Too” (via thelifeguardlibrarian)

YEAH LIBRARIANS

Doin’ a little research today….

lesleyintheskywithdiamonds: ronswansonismymentor: Bill...

Sat, 18 May 2013 11:52:56 -0700

lesleyintheskywithdiamonds:

ronswansonismymentor:

Bill Murray in his prime, obv

<3 How did I forget he was in this.

oupacademic: “…[Song of Myself] opens with a celebration of the...

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:00:14 -0700

oupacademic:

“…[Song of Myself] opens with a celebration of the poet as representative of all humankind: “I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” As these lines suggest, Whitman was breaking not only poetic conventions but grammatical ones as well (with the use of an adjective for an adverb in the third line). He believed that poetry was no longer to be found only in palaces and universities but in the workplaces of America and in the vernacular of its common people.”

Read the full American National Biography entry on the life of Walt Whitman, made free until June in conjunction with Poetry By Heart.

Image credit: Walt Whitman, 1875 by Thomas Dewing. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

An excellent entry

…but can we also talk about the self-portrait in Leaves of Grass?

Just because…

Talented, self-published and foxy as hell.

rubbadub-rick: Tenaya Lake Sunset (Yosemite National Park,...

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:53:59 -0700

rubbadub-rick:

Tenaya Lake Sunset (Yosemite National Park, California) by Jeffrey Sullivan.

Yosemite reblog for Lesley. Also Tenaya is gorgeous.

marshmellowbunnies: 50 shades ah HELL NAHH

Fri, 17 May 2013 08:33:42 -0700

marshmellowbunnies:

50 shades ah HELL NAHH

theweekmagazine: thefader: DAFT PUNK GAP AD (2001) Never...

Thu, 16 May 2013 20:39:22 -0700

theweekmagazine:

thefader:

DAFT PUNK GAP AD (2001)

Never forget.

GIRL

I want this pattern on a shirt Or on a bag.

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:00:26 -0700

I want this pattern on a shirt

Or on a bag.

Burke museum today for science! This place is the shit.

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:46:00 -0700

Burke museum today for science!

This place is the shit.

"Spring weather was usually even more dismal than fall weather, only better lighted."

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:00:29 -0700

“Spring weather was usually even more dismal than fall weather, only better lighted.”

- Annie Dillard, The Living

"That plastic drift in the Pacific came to represent for me all that was wrong: thoughtless use of..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 20:57:29 -0700

“

That plastic drift in the Pacific came to represent for me all that was wrong: thoughtless use of disposable products, profit-driven mass manufacture of toxic goods, our inability to pick up our trash, technological innovation that had created problems beyond our ability to fix them. I began to reuse Ziplocs and carry cloth bags to the grocery market.

But here was the problem: although these actions made sense, they didn’t make me feel any less anxious, or more free. How many times have I stood at the kitchen sink paralyzed by a plastic baggie? If it were clean, having held, say, a sandwich, I’d simply rinse and reuse it. But this one is smeared with mustard and rancid cheese and even a bit of mold. My instinct is to throw it away. But as we have learned, there is no such place as ‘away.’ This plastic bag, if it doesn’t end up clogging the intestines of some albatross or dolphin, will swirl at sea for decades, and even after it breaks down into tiny pieces, it will never fully decompose: its toxic petrochemicals will haunt us forever.

But then I think: That’s ridiculous. It’s just one baggie. And the washing of it will not only be a singularly unpleasant use of my time, but won’t I be using precious water to wash it? And burning natural gas to heat that water. Not to mention the resource depletion and damage represented by the soap. And by now I’ve already wasted five minutes thinking about this, time that could have been better spent picking up plastic bags along the river.

So I chuck the thing in the trash, but the next day at breakfast it’s still there, peering up at me accusingly. And the gears of my mind spin. Eventually, one day in the future, I’m going to need a plastic sandwich baggie. And when I do, I’m going to buy a box of them, thus giving my hard-earned money to the Ziploc corporation, or whoever, who doubtlessly engages in all sorts of toxic practices to manufacture these things — I imagine a factory spewing brown sludge into a river, somewhere in the Rust Belt, or maybe China. And I’ll also be enabling my box of baggies to be hauled across the nation on gas-guzzling trucks that grind up the taxpayers-funded highways, which carve through the habitat of grizzlies and moose and antelope, driving them toward extinction, and so on.

Finally I had to ask a therapist about this, and he said, ‘Why don’t you try going outside and growing something?’

”

- Mark Sundeen, perfectly articulating my neuroses in The Man Who Quit Money (via lesleyintheskywithdiamonds)

flavorpill: Because we have a hard time letting go, here’s a A...

Tue, 14 May 2013 20:45:50 -0700

flavorpill:

Because we have a hard time letting go, here’s a A Treasury of ‘SNL’ Game Shows Hosted by Bill Hader

Babyyyyyyy

gregcohn: EFF: Who has your back? Good to know.

Tue, 14 May 2013 20:44:27 -0700

gregcohn:

EFF: Who has your back?

Good to know.

brandnewjones: all-about-male-privilege: sad-teeth: So today...

Tue, 14 May 2013 20:42:54 -0700

brandnewjones:

all-about-male-privilege:

sad-teeth:

So today Angelina Jolie had double mastectomy, which is the removal of one’s breasts, to prevent Breast cancer. So instead of praising Angelina on her bravery, men on Twitter decided to ridicule her, even calling her stupid for removing her breasts. For those of you on Tumblr that are attacking Feminists for being delusional about sexism against women and misogyny here’s your fucking proof that sexism and misogyny exists.

I bet these assholes wear those “Save the boobies!” bracelets.

jillthompson: im-a-kittycat: “So my amazing daughter, Emma,...

Tue, 14 May 2013 08:47:14 -0700

jillthompson:

im-a-kittycat:

“So my amazing daughter, Emma, turned 5 last month, and I had been searching everywhere for new-creative inspiration for her 5yr pictures. I noticed quite a pattern of so many young girls dressing up as beautiful Disney Princesses, no matter where I looked 95% of the “ideas” were the “How to’s” of how to dress your little girl like a Disney Princess…We chose 5 women (five amazing and strong women), as it was her 5th birthday but there are thousands of unbelievable women (and girls) who have beat the odds and fought (and still fight) for their equal rights all over the world”

- Jaime Moore, Not Just a Girl

This is awesome!

A+

motherjones: markcoatney: webbys: This past year marked the...

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:51:11 -0700

motherjones:

markcoatney:

webbys:

This past year marked the 25th Anniversary of the Graphics Interchange Format. From its humble beginnings at Netscape, to its current prominence in today’s Tumblr-driven culture, the GIF has come a long way, bb.

All this week, in honor of the Lifetime Achievement Award GIF inventor Steve Wilhite is receiving at this year’s Webbys we will be celebrating GIF WEEK. It’s like shark week but way, way better.

And FYI, it’s pronounced “jiff.” And that’s according to the guy who invented it. If you have any problems with that, take it up with this guy.

I’ll be cold and buried before I recognize the soft G.

We stand with Bugs.

An alarmingly important part of my vocabulary and pronunciation has been vindicated with this news.

Ãlafur Arnalds, Live In Concert : NPR

Sun, 12 May 2013 21:00:29 -0700

Ãlafur Arnalds, Live In Concert : NPR:

How can music be happy and sad at the same time? Listen to Arnalds’ work and you’ll hear it. This performance at New York City’s (Le) Poisson Rouge re-imagines the Icelandic musician’s magnificent work with a small orchestra: 28 musicians known as Ensemble LPR, along with guest singer Arnor Dan.

The cutest Icelandic composer under 30 I’ve ever seen.