I blockquoted these for you

Here is a new MC feature called Letting Things Speak for Themselves (it is the blogging equivalent of pointing at something, or photography, or blogging). This one, a poem from the latest New Yorker, was inspired by National Poetry Month, and by this funny post on Videogum, and by Nick’s very own poetry submission to the New Yorker.

Here Name Your
by Dora Malech

My friend spends all summer
mending fence for the elk to blunder

back down and the cows to drag
the wires and the snow to sit and sag

on, so all the twist and hammer and tauten
and prop amounts at last to nought, knot, tangle.

The next year he picks
up his pliers and fixes

the odds all over again. There are no
grownups, and I think that all of us children know

and play some variation on this theme, the game of all join
hands so that someone can run them open.

Then war whoops, shrieks, and laughter
and regather together

as if any arms might ever really hold.
I’m trying to finger the source—pleasure of or need

for—these enactments of resistance, if Resistance
is indeed their name. I’m trying to walk the parallels to terminus—

call them lickety-split over rickety bridge,
tightrope, railroad tie, or plank as you see fit—

trying to admit to seeing double,
innumerable,

to finding myself beset by myself
on all sides, my heart forced by itself,

for itself, to learn not only mine
but all the lines—

crow’s flight, crow’s-feet, enemy, party, picket,
throwaway, high tide, and horizon—to wait

in the shadows of scrim each night
and whisper the scene. Always, some part

of the heart must root for the pliers, some
part for the snow’s steep slope.

LOVE. IT. I’m so glad that took up space in a magazine that I pay money to receive. My favorite part was either the enjambment in the fourth stanza or the part about fingering.

Anyway, two cheers for contemporary poetry. And two cheers for blogging!

That brings me to a debate Nick and I have had many times: Which number is the funniest?

a) 2
b) -1
c) 5 or so
d) 100
e) millions

I uploaded these for you

So good.


FRIGGIN MERLOT!

Like "Mathnet"

STOP THE PRESSES...MATH IS COOL! Here's a cool new math discovery from Discovery News:

"Earth-like planets have relatively short windows of opportunity for life to evolve, making it highly doubtful intelligent beings exist elsewhere in the universe, according to newly published research based on a mathematical probability model."

Then just do P.E.R.M.D.A.S.

"Earthlings overcame horrendous odds -- Watson pegs it at less than 0.01 percent over 4 billion years -- to achieve life. The harsh reality is that we don't have much time left."

"Wow, Math. Thanks. That's so cool how you can...thanks...wow..."
-Everyone

Everyone after Math leaves the room:












nothing.

Happy 420

youtube proves everyone loves weed: officially published: officially true


even that guy!


<3s it. <===========3s it. Sorry you <3 weed so much you old bag!!!

writing a novel

This was featured on YouTube yesterday. It's called "we write a novel together..."

you're supposed to respond by posting your own video of the next part of the novel.

America responded:


"we're writing a novel!"


"can you shut up, we're trying to write a novel"


"I'm writing 100 Years of Solitude"


"One novel, comin' up"


"we know what a novel is and we're reading it as a couple"


but since the 4 people who read this study novels at Harvard, I'll also say that he has a point in a novel being quietly saying something about trees, your father being killed be the first car, and being a Jew from a European country that's boring.

and since one of those people is my friend who will remember, remember when I got stoned at your house and wrote this poem for the New Yorker:

"I am
from
eastern europe or something.
all of my family is dead."

Breathe a little easier

my understanding of life just got a cool new support system

"In 1995, 56-year-old Sonny Graham was dying of congestive heart failure and needed a heart.
Terry Cottle, a 33-year-old laborer from Summerville, SC, had just shot himself in the head.
Graham received Cottle's heart, recovered and eventually sought out Cottle's wife, Cheryl, to thank her for the gift of life.
From the moment Sonny Graham first laid eyes on Cheryl, he felt like he had known her for years.
"She gave me this big smile, and I couldn't keep my eyes off her," he told the Island Packet newspaper in December 2006.
Graham left his wife of 35 years and married Cheryl.
Then, last week, he shot himself in the head almost exactly as Terry Cottle had.
After receiving his donor's heart, friends and family say, Graham in some ways became him.
He married the same woman, started drinking the same beer - though he'd never been a beer drinker - and ended his life the same way."

In other news:
cats are dogs, God is real, I don't understand anything, and I'm never going to stop crying.

That's all crochet!

Here’s an early 420 gift to you, readers (you can’t say I don’t care):





That’s all crochet! For realsies.

It's part of this "crochet coral reef project," which is my new boyfriend. I know it looks a little bit like an Anthropologie catalogue, but if you ask me there's nothing better than art that takes old-fashioned mimesis, filters it through an abstract principle, and then turns out to be about saving the planet! (Hence my closet full of holographic Humani-tees.) Also, I like art that doesn't have its effect until you say something like "that's all crochet!"

Anyway, this makes me want to learn handicraft. Or basic geometry. Or to appreciate the natural environment.

Here's my impression of the coral reef project artists:

You're gonna love this

This is the post with guest star Marlee Matlin where she plays our deaf girlfriend.




We run all over the internet trying to book tickets to the concert before we realize how stupid we are, but it turns out she's cool with it and we learn that just because you're deaf doesn't mean you can't hear music (you can hear it with your whole body! Sometimes our deaf girlfriend (Marlee Matlin) thinks she can hear it better than people who can hear!) and we've never had more fun at a concert!


Don't forget to join us for our next post where we will have forgotten all about the time we had a deaf girlfriend and the impact that made on our lives.

Great News for Baseball Card Fans

Omigodyouguysdidyouhear? It’s time to throw out your internet, or put it in the old box in the attic where you store your video cassettes, laser discs, landlines, 3D printers, and bicycles.

From the people who brought you the internet comes [drumroll]… The Grid! [triumphant cymbal clash]

What, you ask, is The Grid?
It’s basically just the internet, only faster.
[feeble cymbal clash]

No, just playin’. I am seriously already in love with The Grid. It had me at “could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images.”

Remember when this was like, “Aaaah! So amazing":


Ten years from now, the Internet will seem like a giant Magic Eye.
Because we will all be totally cool with THIS:


Me in the Future: "I'm totally cool with you, hologram man. I'm just snacking on some future-cheetos as we sit here in separate corners of the earth multiverse, shooting the breeze, one hologram to another. Has anyone ever told you you look like Alec Baldwin?"

I bow down before you, mighty Grid.