GO IN PEACE. WE WERE BLESSED TO KNOW YOU.

I don't know, I have been hearing these sorts of things too much of late. 2013 was supposed to be the Year of Less Death but someone's not holding up their end of the bargain.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

“I’ve lived out my melancholy youth. I don’t give a fuck anymore what’s behind me, or what’s ahead of me. I’m healthy. Incurably healthy. No sorrows, no regrets. No past, no future. The present is enough for me. Day by day. Today!”

--Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (via)

KING OF THE BATHTUB

I was asked to blog about my thoughts or life, I think Ian covers both pretty well.

I was preparing to leave when I spotted an album with a wonderful title: "More Songs About Buildings and Food." You will probably already know who it was by--I didn't. The Talking Heads. As I stopped to admire it, I was gripped by melancholy, similar perhaps to the feeling a certain kind of man gets while sitting with his wife on a train platform as a beautiful girl--different in all aspects from his wife--walks by. There goes my other life. Is it too late to get into the Talking Heads? Do I have the time? What kind of person would I be if I knew this album at all, or well?

--Zadie Smith, My Epiphany About Joni Mitchell

BEHOLD, THE NEW JERUSALEM!

But make no mistake: Change is a motherfucker when you run from it. And right now, the conservative movement in America is fleeing from dramatic change that is certain and immutable. A man of color is president for the second time, and this happened despite a struggling economic climate and a national spirit of general discontent. He has been returned to office over the specific objections of the mass of white men. He has instead been re-elected by women, by people of color, by homosexuals, by people of varying religions or no religion whatsoever. Behold the New Jerusalem. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a white man, of course. There’s nothing wrong with being anything. That’s the point.

--David Simon, Inevitabilities and Barack Obama

“I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer,” he said in February 2000 in a rare public appearance. “And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession.” 

--Neil Armstrong Obituary

A LIST OF THINGS MY FAMILY SAYS SCARED ME AS A CHILD

1. E.T.
2. The Bert and Ernie segment in which mummies come back to life but only Ernie can tell
3. Fireworks
4. Trains
5. Balloons
6. Chuck-E-Cheese
7. An audiotape of "Humpty-Dumpty"