Tags
bolaño
“For a while all I heard was the noise Arturo made as he drank his tea, muffled sounds from the street, the elevator going up and down a few times. And suddenly, when I wasn’t thinking or hearing anything anymore, I heard him repeat that a critic was going to trounce him. It doesn’t really matter, I...
“He was laughing at me, but I didn’t mind. In fact, I liked to see him laugh. Around that time he met a famous film and theatre director. A fellow Chilean. Sometimes he would talk to me about him, telling me how he’d approached him at the door to the theatre where one of the director’s plays about H...
"At the time I was beginning to make new friends at the university and I saw Arturo and his friends less and less. I think the only one I called or went out with occasionally was Maria, but even my friendship with Maria began to cool. Still, I always more or less kept track of what Arturo was doing,...
borges
In the 1978 edition of “The Aleph and Other Stories,” written by Jorge Luis Borges, edited and translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni, there’s a throwaway line in the final section titled “An Autobiographical Essay” :
classic-lj
“For a while all I heard was the noise Arturo made as he drank his tea, muffled sounds from the street, the elevator going up and down a few times. And suddenly, when I wasn’t thinking or hearing anything anymore, I heard him repeat that a critic was going to trounce him. It doesn’t really matter, I...
“He was laughing at me, but I didn’t mind. In fact, I liked to see him laugh. Around that time he met a famous film and theatre director. A fellow Chilean. Sometimes he would talk to me about him, telling me how he’d approached him at the door to the theatre where one of the director’s plays about H...
"At the time I was beginning to make new friends at the university and I saw Arturo and his friends less and less. I think the only one I called or went out with occasionally was Maria, but even my friendship with Maria began to cool. Still, I always more or less kept track of what Arturo was doing,...
His last phrase, sour smelling as the smoke of charcoal and disheartening, excited Stephen’s brain, over which its fumes seemed to brood.
Chance Meetings
The Cabinetmaker
Hovagim Saroyan
Lucy Garoghlanian by William Saroyan
"And so I know that certain things which I have pained in words are true and imperishable, and what happened to me the man or to her the woman in actuality, is of little importance. Something felt, something stated – something recorded in truth for eternity, that is what matters. Sometimes in the re...
"If you could take a penny from your pocket and balance the books you would do so. But you are no longer dealing with actual pennies. There is no machine clever enough to devise, to counterfeit, this penny which does not exist. The world of real and counterfeit is behind us. Out of the tangible we h...
Stephen’s mother and his brother and one of his cousins waited at the corner of quiet Foster Place while he and his father went up the steps and along the colonnade where the highland sentry was parading. When they had passed into the great hall and stood at the counter Stephen drew forth his orders...
Who wrote this? Charms and invocations of the most blessed abbot Peter Salanka to all true believers divulged. As good as any other abbot’s charms, as mumbling Joachim’s. Down, baldynoddle, or we’ll wool your wool.
7 [63]
The day wore on like that, with lots to eat and drink, the sun out strong, a car to tote us around, cigars in between, dozing a little on the beach studying the cunts passing by, talking, laughing, singing a bit too - one of many, many days I spent like that with MacGregor. Days like that really see...
Because even office cubicles Still have windows
…is just a dream within a dream…
don't ever forget life
Jon Yu was the one who got me tuned into The Chris Gethard Show with a humble tweet:
"And so I know that certain things which I have pained in words are true and imperishable, and what happened to me the man or to her the woman in actuality, is of little importance. Something felt, something stated – something recorded in truth for eternity, that is what matters. Sometimes in the re...
Because even office cubicles Still have windows
future
Because even office cubicles Still have windows
joyce
There’s a petition being passed around amongst people working in the tech industry, http://neveragain.tech/ , which aims to ensure that any signer vows to resist designing systems that would “facilitate ethnic or religious targeting”. Such a collection of information would allow nefarious powers to...
His last phrase, sour smelling as the smoke of charcoal and disheartening, excited Stephen’s brain, over which its fumes seemed to brood.
Stephen’s mother and his brother and one of his cousins waited at the corner of quiet Foster Place while he and his father went up the steps and along the colonnade where the highland sentry was parading. When they had passed into the great hall and stood at the counter Stephen drew forth his orders...
Who wrote this? Charms and invocations of the most blessed abbot Peter Salanka to all true believers divulged. As good as any other abbot’s charms, as mumbling Joachim’s. Down, baldynoddle, or we’ll wool your wool.
london
I can tell you with excruciatingly embarrassing details how I became interested in Japan as a teenager. But after I was a Japanophile, I was an Anglophile. And I don’t remember how I became interested in England at all. Maybe I was trying to impress someone. Maybe it was the least foreign foreign co...
miller
"And so I know that certain things which I have pained in words are true and imperishable, and what happened to me the man or to her the woman in actuality, is of little importance. Something felt, something stated – something recorded in truth for eternity, that is what matters. Sometimes in the re...
"If you could take a penny from your pocket and balance the books you would do so. But you are no longer dealing with actual pennies. There is no machine clever enough to devise, to counterfeit, this penny which does not exist. The world of real and counterfeit is behind us. Out of the tangible we h...
The day wore on like that, with lots to eat and drink, the sun out strong, a car to tote us around, cigars in between, dozing a little on the beach studying the cunts passing by, talking, laughing, singing a bit too - one of many, many days I spent like that with MacGregor. Days like that really see...
new york city
Jon Yu was the one who got me tuned into The Chris Gethard Show with a humble tweet:
pessoa
Who wrote this? Charms and invocations of the most blessed abbot Peter Salanka to all true believers divulged. As good as any other abbot’s charms, as mumbling Joachim’s. Down, baldynoddle, or we’ll wool your wool.
7 [63]
politics
I often think of this essay by Baudrillard, and always have a hard time finding it. It’s from Screened Out , first published by Verso in 2002, translated by Chris Turner. The book itself was first published as Ecran total , by Editions Galilee, in 2000.
For as long as I’ve been able to vote, I’ve lived in the blue parts of California. Regardless of who I ended up casting a ballot for, my counties, cities, and state have almost always swing to the Democratic Party. There have been a few exceptions to that–we did elect Schwarzenegger after all.
san-francisco
About a week ago, I moved to San Francisco ten years ago. I didn’t intend to make a big deal out of it—it’s a random day in a random year that happens to coincide with the moment when I got an opportunity to move—but the concept of 2006 San Francisco is so bizarre to outsiders that I felt the urge t...
saroyan
In the 1978 edition of “The Aleph and Other Stories,” written by Jorge Luis Borges, edited and translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni, there’s a throwaway line in the final section titled “An Autobiographical Essay” :
About a week ago, I moved to San Francisco ten years ago. I didn’t intend to make a big deal out of it—it’s a random day in a random year that happens to coincide with the moment when I got an opportunity to move—but the concept of 2006 San Francisco is so bizarre to outsiders that I felt the urge t...
Chance Meetings
The Cabinetmaker
Hovagim Saroyan
Lucy Garoghlanian by William Saroyan
tech
When drafting a new blog post after some years, it’s mandatory to begin it with some form of mea culpa . I actually made a New Year’s resolution to start writing more blog posts; after the dissolution of my company last year, my head was stuffed with all sorts of technical knowledge I needed to shar...
There’s a theory called linguistic relativity which postulates that the language you speak modifies your comprehension of the world. That a word does not exist in a language does not mean that the concept itself doesn’t exist; only that it is harder to express, and therefore, a source of potential b...
On May 25, 2016, around 8am PST, tired and bored, I bought a Super Nintendo console from eBay, with the explicit intent of coming up with some kind of art project for it. When it arrived, I opened the case up, got an idea for something to build, then made absolutely no progress.
By all accounts, 2016 was an absolute mess of a year. The deaths of David Bowie and Carrie Fisher bookended a long stream of miserable events, not the least of which being that the US elected a fascist and my seven-year relationship was ending. In comparison, 2017 fared marginally better: I made a c...
I have been looking for an excuse to learn Rust for some time now. Although I had read several tutorials and ran through the Exercism.io problems , I am incapable of learning anything new unless I actually get a chance to build something with it. But I didn’t have any good ideas!
There’s a petition being passed around amongst people working in the tech industry, http://neveragain.tech/ , which aims to ensure that any signer vows to resist designing systems that would “facilitate ethnic or religious targeting”. Such a collection of information would allow nefarious powers to...
television
Jon Yu was the one who got me tuned into The Chris Gethard Show with a humble tweet:
translation
From a tweetstorm !
tweetstorm
From a tweetstorm !
unrecallable-alleys
Two years after I first heard about it during my Bolaño craze, I have finally started Javier Marías’ “Dark Back of Time.”
It’s not a city of lost souls. It’s not a place where the hopeless end up. From its origins San Francisco has always been a city for the certain few who know that life can be lived in better ways. The early settlers panned for gold, hoping to establish their security through labor and luck; for them...
“I say this not to deny my debts to him, which are many, but to lead you back, and to lead myself back, to a principle that I think is fundamental for all those who have taken part in this conference, certainly for me, and certainly for Borges: this most important point is that books talk to each ot...
"I think about forgotten gestures, the multiple signals and words of grandparents, lost little by little, not inherited, fallen one after the other off the tree of time. Tonight I found a candle on a table, and as a game I lit it and walked along the corridor with it. The breeze stirred up by my mot...
Nicodemus the poet, the youngest of the elders in the Sanhedrim On fools and jugglers
writing
Who wrote this? Charms and invocations of the most blessed abbot Peter Salanka to all true believers divulged. As good as any other abbot’s charms, as mumbling Joachim’s. Down, baldynoddle, or we’ll wool your wool.