August 2009
15 posts
1 tag
The Autumn Of That Year
…and pt. 2. My...
Now It Makes Sense →
Beer was a big part of Engel’s relationship with political philosopher Karl Marx.
“They were both big drinkers,” [Author and historian Tristram] Hunt says. “Engels drank as a Teutonic, almost Prussian. Marx was an angrier, more depressive drinker. “
1 tag
Texas Twizzler
old songs for new friends…...
2 tags
Come With Me If You Want To Live
Despite their strong female characters, I’ve never been enamored of the Terminator movies. They were too comfortable with their violence, too pleased with Arnold’s sarcasm. To my mind they were complicit in the brainwashing that Rambo, the later Rocky movies, and other action franchises of the 1980s-90s worked on the American psyche. I think you can argue that certain casually bellicose...
Stranger Things Have Happened →
New fiction by Alix Ohlin:
On the day she discovered she was miserable, which is to say allowed herself to feel it, Kathleen was forty-nine years old and a tenured professor of American literature at a college in suburban Philadelphia.
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But Afterwards There Was Ice Cream
Oh, those unknown unknowns.
This morning was registration for graduate assistants, the first real event of my academic year. Since receiving my old-fashioned photocopy of the notice, I hadn’t reviewed it until last night after business hours—imprudently, as it turned out, because somehow I’d ended up with only the second of an unknown number of pages. So this morning I arrived knowing the time,...
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Healthy Ideas
An interesting take on the healthcare debate. If the congressional GOP truly stands for the free market, why aren’t they endorsing a plan along the lines of the Wyden-Bennett bill, or the Fuchs-Emanuel plan?
In the simplest version, families would receive a voucher worth as much as their employer spends on their health insurance. They would then buy an insurance plan on an “exchange”...
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Don't Let It Bring You Down
In his forward to the current summer issue of The Missouri Review, editor Speer Morgan recalls some notable rejections
from the publisher Alfred A. Knopf of works by authors who would later be famous. In several cases, if the submitter had read and taken seriously the readers’ reports from the august publishing house, they would have given up writing and found a more sensible profession. ...
I Would Take The Blue Pill, But my PPO Only Covers... →
This Pleases Me Far More Than It Should →
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Conjunction Injunction
My London Review of Books subscription is a gift, and a good deal of what powers me through from each TOC to the self-consciously raunchy personals is that it’s my sole means of acquaintance with most of the books and authors reviewed, and the sole reason I’ve given any thought over the last year to Tamerlane, the Royal Bank of Scotland or the late Roman Empire. So much for my...
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Guide Me, TimeOutNY
Do you belong in New York City? Yes, but sometimes you wish there were a better option. You do love New York, and you fit in here better than you have anywhere else. You’re committed to the city, and you take advantage of all of its amazing food, culture, nightlife and arts. But you have nagging doubts about this relationship. Spend your whole life here? Not sure about that. Sometimes you...
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Leaving For New England
When moving or leaving on a long-anticipated journey there comes a moment you expect to stand for the entire experience. If you’re leaving by car and leaving friends and family you roll down the window and wave to the people waving to you from the curb, all of you calling out dopey, necessary goodbye things; I’ll call when I get there; go safely, as if otherwise you would have gone dangerously...
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“The sensation of being highly stressed can rewire the brain in ways that promote its sinister persistence.
…chronically stressed rats lost their elastic rat cunning and instead fell back on familiar routines and rote responses, like compulsively pressing a bar for food pellets they had no intention of eating.”