An Untenanted Bicycle Rolls Into View...

I've been watching readings of Edward Gorey stories on Youtube today.   They are sometimes a bit dark and absurd, but that's half the fun right there.   Here's a reading of "The Epiplectic Bicycle":

The Wearisome Machine

Just finished reading an interesting short story ("The Machine Stops...") written by E.M. Forster in 1909.     Some of what he describes is uncomfortably close to reality today.    Here is a link to the full text, and below are some quotes I thought were particularly good:

"Man must be adapted to his surroundings, must he not? In the dawn of the world our weakly must be exposed on Mount Taygetus, in its twilight our strong will suffer euthanasia, that the Machine may progress [...]"

~ · ~ 

"I want to see you not through the Machine," said Kuno. "I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine."

~ · ~ 

"[S]he did not notice the noise, for she had been born with it in her ears." 

~ · ~ 

"[She] was seized with the terrors of direct experience." 

~ · ~ 

"What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Peking? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul."

~ · ~ 

"Rather did they yield to some invincible pressure, which came no one knew whither, and which, when gratified, was succeeded by some new pressure equally invincible. To such a state of affairs it is convenient to give the name of progress." 

~ · ~ 

"[B]ehind all the uproar was silence - the silence which is the voice of the earth and of the generations who have gone."

Do-it-yourself Culture

Shea Hembrey at TED on how he invented 100 different artists and their works:

Q177: Etgar Keret

Just finished reading Four Stories, a small collection of writings by Etgar Keret.   If you haven't read anything by him, I'd encourage you to find some of his work — it's available at different places around the Web.    Here are a few quotes:


"[...] a great work of art is often just residual evidence of a great human soul.  [...]  what we call 'craft' is really just the means by which the writer manages to give clear passage to these positive virtues."

— George Saunders, from the introduction

"There is not one emotion that I have that you don't share with me.   What it means to be afraid or cold or hungry — maybe I felt it ten thousand times more than you'll ever do.  But you can understand it, for sure.   And it's your duty to try and understand it.  You cannot be excused from that."

— Keret, quoting his father

"But you don't always have to understand to learn from something."

— Keret

The book also contained the (extremely) short work called "Asthma Attack", which summarizes Keret's philosophy of writing.   It's like a one-paragraph writing seminar.    Here's a link to a copy online...

A Baby Sermon

"A Baby Sermon" - George MacDonald


The lightning and thunder
They go and they come:
But the stars and the stillness
Are always at home.

Poor Substitute

"What is love?  What is love in the time of ecstasy? 
[...] Don't tell me that he died for that."

—  from "Love In the Time of Ecstasy", by Withered Hand (Dan Wilson)

Q176: The minority that matters

"One of the great strengths of common law has been its general antipathy toward group rights, because the ultimate minority, the minority that matters, is the individual.   The minute you have collective rights, you require dramatically enhanced state power to mediate the hierarchy of different victim groups."

— Mark Steyn

Q175: No limit

"[T]here is no form of government more fundamentally anti-Christian than a government that recognizes, in principle, no limit to what it can require."

— Douglas Wilson  

Repetitio mater memoriae

ht: Gregory Williams

Q174: Story Time

"Practice reading stories, because that is what your life is."

— Douglas Wilson