Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise
David Foster Wallace’s intensely magniloquent and eccentric piece on his week-long luxury cruise “vacation” is pure brilliance. Every one of his quirky narrative detours and rambling footnotes—of which there are many—is absolutely wonderful, so I had little trouble following along with his supposition that the indulgent pampering and hands-off, blissed-out environment afforded by ultra-luxury cruises is actually soul-deadening and horrifying to experience. At least as an outsider looking in, which is exactly DFW’s whole thing.
And just so you know, I tried my very hardest to summarize this essay in a way that would do it justice, but come on—it’s David Foster Wallace.
(Source: kottke.org)
Popular pickup lines used by serial killers
If I said you had a beautiful body would you stop screaming?
You look at me like you’ve never seen a neo-hipster before.
If I could just get Tumblr to automatically post everything published on McSweeney’s to my blog; it would save me so much time.
Another quote from the same article:
It’s not so much that I despised Windows PCs, but that it felt like Microsoft and the PC makers despised them, like they all have no respect for their own platform.
An Open Letter to All the Politicians Talking About Whether or Not Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan Is a Lesbian
And frankly, President Obama, I’m looking at you, too. I’m hoping that you’re a brilliant strategist, and that nominating a liberal lesbian to the Supreme Court is part of your master plan to get gays equal rights in the long run. Just like I’m trusting that Damon Lindelof and Cartlon Cuse will answer all eleven trillion unanswered question in the LOST finale. But if you don’t do anything, Mr. President—if you don’t repeal DADT or DOMA while in office—I swear to god, I am never going to have an explicit sex dream about you and your wife again. Because I can only be so patient.
The kind of rant that can only be found on a tumblelog. So good.
(via jacob bijani » themadeshop)
The Days of Miracles and Wonder
“AAAAAaaaaaagh!”
“Please calm down. Breathe deeply. Anxiety is a normal part of the temporal displacement field. It will pass quickly. OK. OK? OK. Now: Hello. I am you, from the year 2010, two decades in the future.”
Somewhere along the way, we forgot how to be happy. We stopped being impressed with anything and became the generation of ‘meh’ and ‘fail’. We lost that childhood sense of wonder and amazement at how incredibly lucky and prosperous we are. We can fly through the air like a bird, we can hold thousands of songs in a device that can be clipped to a sweater, we can friggin’ access and communicate with the entire world from a half-inch thin tablet in our laps.
From Conan O’Brien’s closing monologue:
To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism—it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere.
The Office ‘Murder’ Q&A with writer Danny Chun
Hilarious and interesting look at the writing process for one of the best Office episodes so far.
Q. Did you guys come up with names for all of the characters in the game or just the ones we heard?
A. Originally, I only came up with names for a few characters. But the props dept. wanted to make character cards for every actor, so I wrote up some other Southern pun names of which I am both proud and ashamed. They are:
Dick Seeland (Kevin)
Chad Anooga (Oscar)
Jeeves Julep (Dwight)
Barbie Cue (I forget)
George Apeach (Jim)
Paul Metto (BJ)
Connie Federate (Meredith)
Carl Erdgreens (I forget)
Your Mother and I Will Enjoy a Lovely Night Without You
McSweeney’s at its very finest. Just… wow.
