no. 377

"I see the glass half full…

but of poison."

Woody Allen

no. 376

"It reminds me of the “bike to work” movement. That is also portrayed as white, but in my city more than half of the people on bike are not white. I was once talking to a white activist who was photographing “bike commuters” and had only pictures of white people with the occasional “black professional” I asked her why she didn’t photograph the delivery people, construction workers etc. … ie. the black and Hispanic and Asian people… and she mumbled something about trying to “improve the image of biking” then admitted that she didn’t really see them as part of the “green movement” since they “probably have no choice” –

I was so mad I wanted to quit working on the project she and I were collaborating on.

So, in the same way when people in a poor neighborhood grow food in their yards … it’s just being poor– but when white people do it they are saving the earth or something."

comment left on the Racialious blog post "Sustainable Food & Priviledge: Why is Green always White (and Male and Upper-Class)"


via

no. 375

What men mean when they talk about their “crazy” ex-girlfriend is often that she was someone who cried a lot, or texted too often, or had an eating disorder, or wanted too much/too little sex, or generally felt anything beyond the realm of emotionally undemanding agreement. That does not make these women crazy. That makes those women human beings, who have flaws, and emotional weak spots. However, deciding that any behavior that he does not like must be insane– well, that does make a man a jerk.

And when men do this on a regular basis, remember that, if you are a woman, you are not the exception. You are not so cool and fabulous and levelheaded that they will totally get where you are coming from when you show emotions other than “pleasant agreement.”

When men say “most women are crazy, but not you, you’re so cool” the subtext is not, “I love you, be the mother to my children.” The subtext is “do not step out of line, here.” If you get close enough to the men who say things like this, eventually, you will do something that they do not find pleasant. They will decide you are crazy, because this is something they have already decided about women in general.

Lady, You Really Aren’t “Crazy”


via

no. 374

"Since I don’t smoke, I decided to grow a mustache - it is better for the health. However, I always carried a jewel-studded cigarette case in which, instead of tobacco, were carefully placed several mustaches, Adolphe Menjou style. I offered them politely to my friends: “Mustache? Mustache? Mustache?”
Nobody dared to touch them. This was my test regarding the sacred aspect of mustaches."

Salvador Dali


via

I really want this quote to be true, but I dont care if it isnt.

no. 373

"When you start to really know someone, all their physical characteristics start to disappear. You begin to dwell in their energy, recognize the scent of their skin. You see only the essence of the person, not the shell. That’s why you can’t fall in love with beauty. You can lust after it, be infatuated by it, want to own it. You can love it with your eyes and body but not your heart. And that’s why, when you really connect with a person’s inner self, any physical imperfections disappear, become irrelevant."

Lisa Unger


via

no. 372

"Bodies have their own light which they consume to live: they burn, they are not lit from the outside."

Egon Schiele

no. 371

"I interviewed a young anthropologist working with women in Mali, a country in Africa where women go around with bare breasts. They’re always feeding their babies. And when she told them that in our culture men are fascinated with breasts there was an instant of shock. The women burst out laughing. They laughed so hard, they fell on the floor.

They said, “You mean, men act like babies?”"

Carolyn Latteier, Breasts, the women’s perspective on an American obsession

via

no. 370

"Those who cannot conceive of Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend."

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, “Friendship”


Further comment by Fatima (I think):

"Even C.S. Lewis thinks the FriendZone is an idiotic concept."

no. 369

There is immeasurably more left inside than what comes out in words.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

no. 368

“This is the rule I always give myself: that nothing new can come from a situation that involves being free or that doesn’t involve suffering.”

Rei Kawakubo

no. 367

"Act my age?
What the fuck is that, “act my age”?
What do I care how old I am?
The Ocean is old as fuck.
It will still drown your ass with vigor."

Stimie

no. 366

"Don't talk to me about digital. I've got Hypo in my veins. The stains you see on my shirt are Dektol. I like the Darkroom, the radio, the yellow light glowing. I rip the printing paper into quarters. One square is swimming in the Dektol. Through the clear brown liquid, I see my work emerging-my picture. Then I take it, the little piece, and give it away, a gift, to the person pictured in it, a return for what they have given me. Thirty years past. People die. Children grow old. They keep the little piece, stuck on the walls with thumbtacks, creased and stained: themselves, young and alive, forever. That is photography."

Danny Lyon

no. 365

"If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience."

Woodrow Wilson

no. 364

“I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.”

Robin Williams

no. 363

Susan Sontag on literature and freedom.

via

no. 362

"This is a generation that sees everything they do wrong as someone else's fault but everything that happens to other people as a matter of personal responsibility. Reading a tale of hard working, well intentioned people getting reamed by a corrupt system even as they work themselves to literal death might be an eye-opener. Sure, it will sail right over the heads of some of them. I feel, though, that the understanding that the world is not fair, life is hard, and getting by is often a tremendous struggle is a necessary precondition to having meaningful political attitudes. The idea that everything that happens to individuals in our society is their own fault poisons our entire culture, from our politics to our communities. People like Sinclair saw through this over a century ago, but somewhere along the way we chose to forget."

Ed, at Gin And Tacos, from the article "The Hand of Fate".

no. 361

"We meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it."

Peteski on This Isn't Happiness

no. 360

“ Childhood is still running along beside us like a little dog who used to be a merry companion, but who now requires our care and splints, and myriad medicines, to prevent him from promptly passing on. ”

Thomas Bernhard


via

no. 359

"I love this country," [Al] Franken says. "But you have to love your country like an adult loves somebody, not like a child loves its Mommy. And right-wing Republicans tend to love America like a child loves its Mommy, where everything Mommy does is okay. But adult love means you're not in denial, and you want the loved one to be the best they can be."

no. 358

David Mitchell

via

no. 356

"We are homesick most for the places we have never known."

Carson McCullers

via

no. 355

“ I wasn’t sure what day it was because life is meaningless. Turns out it’s Thursday. The thing about life still applies. ”

Friedrice Nietzsche


Yeesh. What a grump.



via

no. 354

“ It took him a while to realize that what he thought of as ‘acting like a jerk’ was what other people called ‘being a jerk.’ ”

Magnificent Ruin

via

no. 353

Robin Williams on Canada

via

no. 352

no. 351

no. 350

"I think there’s a lot to be said for the JudeoChristian idea of absolute good and evil. But sometimes it’s just easier to believe, as the ancient Greeks did, that this universe is being run by drunken, skirt-chasing, egotistical morons."

this guy's English professor

no. 349

“In an era when things are going better than ever, we all assume it’s about to fall apart. … And I think it’s bullshit. I think you could have made a much better case for impending Armageddon 100 years ago (1913 — the brink of World War I!) or 100 years before that (1813 — the entire world at war, thanks to the man many believed to be the Antichrist, Napoleon!). Shit, go all the way back to 1363 and you find the Black Death, a plague that killed 75 million fucking people. A dude walking around back then with a sandwich board proclaiming the end times would have been impossible to argue with. Yet, 650 years later, here we still are, bitch.

So, with all due respect, fuck the apocalypse and everyone who believes in it. Let’s try to fix the world instead.”

David Wong

no.348

“Men grow up expecting to be the hero of their own story. Women grow up expecting to be the supporting actress in somebody else’s… I refuse to burn my energy adding extra magic and sparkle to other people’s lives to get them to love me. I’m busy casting spells for myself.”

Laurie Penny in her excellent article I was a Manic Pixie Dream Girl