LEAPFROG THAT PROBLEM! FIND THE REAL PROBLEM!

Afterward, when most of the students had left, he was franker with the few who hung around to talk. “You’re still not really getting it,” he said gloomily. “You’re thinking in terms of ideas. I don’t care about ideas. Find a problem, not an idea. Then solve the problem. Somebody had an idea to help stores in India so the food touched by untouchables didn’t have to be thrown away. No—leapfrog that problem! Find the real problem! Forget about the thrown-away food—make it possible for the untouchables to be touchable! It’s all about empathy! Right now you’re attempting small things. I want something fantastic. Not something good, not even something great—something fantastic. Find a problem so outrageous in its scope that it’s probably impossible. Start on it right away—next class. You have only seven more weeks in the semester.”

--Ian Frazier, Form and Fungus

I transferred this blog to Tumblr. But I dunno, this format has been treating me well for four years. We shall see.

Horned lizards shoot jets of blood from their eyes for distances of up to five feet. I don’t know why they do this because whenever I reach the phrase “shoot jets of blood from their eyes” in an article I just stop there and stare at it until I need to lie down.

 --What If? (via)

Once I wanted to be the greatest
two fists of solid rock
with brains that could explain
any feeling

--Cat Power, The Greatest

What we were arguing about that night--and it was late, very late, 3:10 A.M. by my watch--was something that had happened nearly twelve hours earlier. A small thing, really, but by this time it had grown all out of proportion and poisoned everything we said, as if we didn't have enough problems already. Mallory was relentless. And I was feeling defensive and maybe more than a little paranoid. We were both drunk. Or, if not drunk, at least loosened up by what we'd consumed at Chris Wright's place in the wake of the incident and then at dinner after and the bar after that. I could smell the nighttime stink of the river. I looked up and watched the sky expand overhead and then shrink down to fit me like a safety helmet. A truck went blatting by on the interstate, and then it was silent, but for the mosquitoes singing their blood song, while the rest of the insect world screeched either in protest or accord, I couldn't tell which, thrumming and thrumming, until the night felt as if it were going to burst open and leave us shattered in the grass.

--T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Night of the Satellite

This is such a good way to start a story. This is such a good story.

ON A YA FICTION KICK, FEELIN GOOD

Sandy said, "Why does Meg always exaggerate everything? Why does she have to be so cosmic? What's for dessert?"

--Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door

A day after I got my eye cut out, Gus showed up at the hospital. I was blind and heartbroken and didn't want to do anything and Gus burst into my room and shouted, 'I have wonderful news!' And I was like, 'I don't really want to hear wonderful news right now,' and Gus said, 'This is wonderful news you want to hear,' and I asked him, 'Fine, what is it?' and he said, 'You are going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments you cannot even imagine yet!'

--John Green, The Fault in Our Stars