"Is this thought experiment monstrous? Would it be monstrous to refer to the 40,000-plus domestic highway deaths we accept each year because the mobility and autonomy of the car are evidently worth that high price?" In 2007 David Foster Wallace invited readers to a series of thought experiments in a short piece.
[more inside]
posted by fantodstic
on Sep 12, 2010 -
92 comments
...[Change of scene. We are looking out of a car window; it is raining, or has recently rained. Shops go by.] I treated myself to a taxi. I rode home through the city streets! There wasn't a street--there wasn't a building--that wasn't connected to some memory in my mind. There I was buying a suit with my father. There I was having an ice-cream soda after school. When I finally came in, Debby was home from work. And I told her everything about my dinner with André
And here is
Sergio Leone and the Inside Fly Rule's meditation on the only possible other candidate for
Best.Movie.Ever. [more inside]
posted by y2karl
on Apr 3, 2009 -
52 comments
Mike Wallace interviews Rod Serling in 1959, discussing timidity and censorship in television programming, and Serling's upcoming series
The Twilight Zone.
Part one.
Part two.
Part three. (TouTube links)
posted by Astro Zombie
on Nov 14, 2008 -
13 comments
This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.
First reported by
an anonymous tip to a blog, the
Los Angeles Times has confirmed that
David Foster Wallace has hung himself.
posted by gerryblog
on Sep 13, 2008 -
483 comments
Keith Olbermann's Edward R. Murrow
* moment:
A Textbook Definition of Cowardice. MSNBC's host excoriates Bush, FOX News host Chris Wallace, and the media for its response to former president Clinton's "
tantrum" [still being discussed
here].
Note: Don't just read the transcript. Watch the video, because Olbermann's use of visuals adds greatly to the power of his presentation. No matter which side of the red/blue-state divide you're on, students of politics and media will be reviewing this clip for years to come as a little cultural watershed -- if only a consummate example of "Democrat" angerTM.
posted by digaman
on Sep 26, 2006 -
169 comments
Classic Aardman (of Wallace and Gromit fame) animation stuff up in
flames
posted by magullo
on Oct 11, 2005 -
21 comments
Wallace and Gromit fans can now download one of ten short films from the
BBC website. There are
low (1.38 meg),
medium (2.59 meg) and
high (4.3 meg) quality versions available. To save, right click on the links and select "save as".
posted by ralawrence
on Oct 15, 2002 -
17 comments
