“To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication.”
— Huff Po (via rachelfershleiser) [Send her an e-mail telling her she’s great.]
(via isabelthespy)
8:54 pm • 30 January 2012 • 8,313 notes
“When Dostoevsky met Dickens in 1862 — a meeting that is hard to imagine — Dickens explained that there were two people inside him, ‘one who feels as he ought to feel and one who feels the opposite.’ […] Out of these two people he constructed his universe of characters, good and evil. Dostoevsky’s comment is laconic and ambiguous. ‘Only two people?’ he asked.”
— Verlyn Klinkenborg, “The Whirling Sound of Planet Dickens” (via fwriction)
(via laphamsquarterly)
4:17 pm • 15 January 2012 • 1,000 notes
“The bad lover, like the bad poet, perhaps because of a preoccupation with self, is essentially inattentive, doesn’t listen, doesn’t anticipate. Or, just as bad, proceeds by rote, first this thing and then the next, and therefore leaves no opportunity for discovery, or departure. Form to me implies an alertness to the demands of your material and an orchestration of effects. It is some happy combination of the poet’s intent and the poem’s esprit and the necessary compromises between the two. We can’t be too willful, but we must have things in mind. We don’t want to be the wimps of our own poems, but we’d be happy to be led into some lovely places. And we’d like to have some control after we lose control, at least enough to throw light on what has just happened, perhaps even to articulate what it has meant to us. And of course there are moments when we’d be better off being appreciatively silent.”
— Stephen Dunn, Walking Light: Essays and Memoirs (via wwnorton)
7:38 pm • 5 January 2012 • 159 notes
Interview with Andrew Potter: Travel and the Search for Authenticity - World Hum
I think we need to keep in mind that the backpackers you’re talking about, who go to new areas and beat new paths by living close to the people and close to the earth and so on, they are in a sense—and this isn’t my line, this is from an old book I came across—the shock troops of the mass tourism industry. They’re the ones who go into a place that has no infrastructure for tourism and basically create the market for other people to come in behind them. And that may or may not be a bad thing. But we need to be aware that that’s actually what’s going on.
(Source: mlarson)
3:08 pm • 2 January 2012 • 9 notes
scopophilian:
don’t ask why, but i’ve recently become obsessed with live cam free previews on porn sites where you can watch the performers try to entice perverts into purchasing a private show. voyeurism, exploitation, loud wallpaper, sexuality, desperation, a glimpse into the human condition — it’s basically gesamkunstwerk. i made a blog chronicling the weird and wonderful lives (and amazing bedrooms) of live cam models. nsfw!
this is a brilliant thing.
(Source: candidcamraw, via litechoking)
12:11 pm • 2 January 2012 • 15 notes
