JESSIE. IS . A . ROBOT

nprfreshair: If you haven’t read it yet, we highly recommend that you check out Patton Oswalt’s awesome essay about plagiarism in comedy, heckling, rape jokes, and the limitations of individual perception. It is brave and honest and oh-so-very-very-smart. Here’s a sampling from the section in which he grapples with the latest Internet controversy over a comedian’s rape joke: In this past week of re-reading the blogs, going through the comment threads, and re-scrolling the Twitter arguments, I haven’t once found a single statement, feminist or otherwise, saying that rape shouldn’t be joked under any circumstance, regardless of context.  Not one example of this. In fact, every viewpoint I’ve read on this, especially from feminists, is simply asking to kick upward, to think twice about who is the target of the punchline, and make sure it isn’t the victim. And now you can go listen to an interview with Oswalt here. Image via SubPop a wonderful essay, indeed! Go Read It! View Larger

nprfreshair:

If you haven’t read it yet, we highly recommend that you check out Patton Oswalt’s awesome essay about plagiarism in comedy, heckling, rape jokes, and the limitations of individual perception. It is brave and honest and oh-so-very-very-smart. Here’s a sampling from the section in which he grapples with the latest Internet controversy over a comedian’s rape joke:

In this past week of re-reading the blogs, going through the comment threads, and re-scrolling the Twitter arguments, I haven’t once found a single statement, feminist or otherwise, saying that rape shouldn’t be joked under any circumstance, regardless of context.  Not one example of this.

In fact, every viewpoint I’ve read on this, especially from feminists, is simply asking to kick upward, to think twice about who is the target of the punchline, and make sure it isn’t the victim.

And now you can go listen to an interview with Oswalt here.

Image via SubPop

a wonderful essay, indeed! Go Read It!

Reblogged 1 day ago from nprfreshair 628 notes
youmightfindyourself: Tim Parks’s books on Italy have been hailed as “so vivid, so packed with delectable details, [they] serve as a more than decent substitute for the real thing” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, in his first Italian travelogue in a decade, he delivers a charming and funny portrait of Italian ways by riding its trains from Verona to Milan, Rome to Palermo, and right down to the heel of Italy. Parks begins as any traveler might: “A train is a train is a train, isn’t it?” But soon he turns his novelist’s eye to the details, and as he journeys through majestic Milano Centrale station or on the newest high-speed rail line, he delivers a uniquely insightful portrait of Italy. Through memorable encounters with ordinary Italians—conductors and ticket collectors, priests and prostitutes, scholars and lovers, gypsies and immigrants—Parks captures what makes Italian life distinctive: an obsession with speed but an acceptance of slower, older ways; a blind eye toward brutal architecture amid grand monuments; and an undying love of a good argument and the perfect cappuccino. Italian Ways also explores how trains helped build Italy and how their development reflects Italians’ sense of themselves from Garibaldi to Mussolini to Berlusconi and beyond. Most of all, Italian Ways is an entertaining attempt to capture the essence of modern Italy. As Parks writes, “To see the country by train is to consider the crux of the essential Italian dilemma: Is Italy part of the modern world, or not?” Italian Ways by Tim Parks “To see the country by train is to consider the crux of the essential Italian dilemma: Is Italy part of the modern world, or not?” View Larger

youmightfindyourself:

Tim Parks’s books on Italy have been hailed as “so vivid, so packed with delectable details, [they] serve as a more than decent substitute for the real thing” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, in his first Italian travelogue in a decade, he delivers a charming and funny portrait of Italian ways by riding its trains from Verona to Milan, Rome to Palermo, and right down to the heel of Italy. Parks begins as any traveler might: “A train is a train is a train, isn’t it?” But soon he turns his novelist’s eye to the details, and as he journeys through majestic Milano Centrale station or on the newest high-speed rail line, he delivers a uniquely insightful portrait of Italy. Through memorable encounters with ordinary Italians—conductors and ticket collectors, priests and prostitutes, scholars and lovers, gypsies and immigrants—Parks captures what makes Italian life distinctive: an obsession with speed but an acceptance of slower, older ways; a blind eye toward brutal architecture amid grand monuments; and an undying love of a good argument and the perfect cappuccino. Italian Ways also explores how trains helped build Italy and how their development reflects Italians’ sense of themselves from Garibaldi to Mussolini to Berlusconi and beyond. Most of all, Italian Ways is an entertaining attempt to capture the essence of modern Italy. As Parks writes, “To see the country by train is to consider the crux of the essential Italian dilemma: Is Italy part of the modern world, or not?”

Italian Ways by Tim Parks

“To see the country by train is to consider the crux of the essential Italian dilemma: Is Italy part of the modern world, or not?”

Reblogged 2 days ago from youmightfindyourself 62 notes
So the universe is not quite as you thought it was.
You’d better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can’t rearrange the universe.

—

Isaac Asimov (via we-are-star-stuff)

That’s the thing about the universe, it’s never the way we think it is, and when we get to know it, we realize ten more things we didn’t know.

(via jtotheizzoe)

(Source: goodreads.com)

Reblogged 2 days ago from oliveargyle (Originally from a-phorist) 5,165 notes