Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!

I’m not worried about anything.

I’m not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!

I just want to start over. My new Tumblr may be followed here, if you want.

Carl Wilson makes me want to read that Ellen Willis book people keep talking about:

But while there was sociology in Willis’s take, it was also self-reflexive and personal – her sense of what she was asking of Janis Joplin and what Janis Joplin reciprocally needed from her, or how she could appropriate the virile aggression of Mick Jagger as a fan and take on that erotic energy as subject rather than object. (So the Stones’ Under My Thumb is potentially more accommodating to a female point-of-view than Cat Stevens’ Wild World, because a hetero woman couldn’t easily picture herself passive-aggressively controlling an ex-lover by telling him he was too naive and delicate for the big bad world. Molly Templeton has astutely proposed that gender-flip question as Willis’s musical equivalent of the Bechdel Test.)

Please don’t cry, Beyonce. I hate to see you cry.

Wonkette owner/editor Ken Layne gchatted about quitting Wonkette and quitting the Internet:

We have a remarkable ability to know exactly what things we’re doing are harmful to us … and then we keep doing those things, until we decide to stop.

For anyone who feels this Internet emptiness chewing at them, I would say, do a little test. Go outside and take a 15-minute walk — around the block, through the park, just a short walk. While you’re doing this, clear your mind of work and of home. Just look at things, birds and cars and trees and the clouds and buildings and dumpsters, and when you think of something internal just say “Thinking” to yourself and go back to walking and breathing. Then return to your computer. Do the usual things you do on your computer, like check the news and your email and the blogs you read and whatever people post on Facebook and Twitter.

Do this second part, the computer-looking-at, for just 15 minutes. You can set one of those web timers … hang on, I have one in my bookmarks.

When this stopwatch beeps, honestly ask yourself how you feel. Compare this to how you felt at the end of your 15-minute walk. Ask yourself what, if anything, you learned during those 15 minutes of wasting time on the Internet. Did it help you in some way? Are you better off? This is a question often asked by political challengers: Are you better off than __ years ago? Well, are you better off than fifteen minutes ago? If not, don’t re-elect the Internet.

GM: That’s a slogan for our time!

KL: Yeah, a Cafe Press t-shirt!

Anyway, the answer is almost certainly going to be No, you’re not better off. But you’re going to be agitated now, both restless and slothful, and you’re either going to feel something negative about somebody you don’t even know or you’re going to want something you don’t need.

I like that Ken Layne cares deeply about shit, even if he seems scary and mean sometimes.

The point he makes here is becoming an oft-repeated one and will continue, I figure. It rings true for me. Blogs and social media and personal projections: agitated, restless, slothful, feeling something negative about somebody you don’t even know, wanting something you don’t need. Yep.

artchipel:

Pierre Soulages - Peinture, 200x162 cm, 14 mars 1960. Huile sur toile

[Tumblr Monday with yama-bato]

(Source: artchipel)

Did you know “Peanuts” was heavy?

3eanuts:

August 16, 1961 — see The Complete Peanuts 1959-1962

Casting was easy for The Taking of Pelham 123

Lambchop, “A Day Without Glasses”

The other day I didn’t wear my glasses all day, because I didn’t do anything or go anywhere that required them, and at the end of the day I sputtered, “Wow, a day without glasses!”, and then I thought, “Oh, that’s what the Lambchop song means.”

So sometimes when I post a song I want to post the lyrics along with it, for emphasis, as if that would compel anybody to pay attention to them. I fixate; in middle and high school I wrote lyrics in the margins of my textbooks. Maybe a kid who got my book learned to love Sebadoh during geometry class.

I love how slowly Kurt sings here:

It takes the sum of all the kindness
And the whole of all the guilt
I scramble our affection like some eggs

If I was in a band I’d be tempted to annotate the lyrics sheet. Like next to the end of this song I’d write: Hey did you notice this part is metaphorical, isn’t it good?

Let’s step out from the ghetto
Let’s stray too far from church
We should take this to the highest court in the land

This 32-oz. Slugger of Dr. Pepper supports a woman’s right to choose

Dionne Warwick, “Don’t Make Me Over”

Dionne’s voice used to be as clear as glass. Sometimes I listen to her early Bacharach songs and can eke out only a “Holy shit.” Did you know that her name is Dionne Warrick, but the record label misspelled it on this single as “Warwick,” so she just kept it? Yikes. Flexible metaphor.

Anyway, songs that are both a plea and a threat: “ACCEPT ME FOR WHAT I AM, ACCEPT FOR ME THE THINGS THAT I DO!”