"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.
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posted by fantodstic
on Sep 12, 2010 -
92 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
Got My Mojo Working was written by the little-known
Preston Foster and
first recorded in 1956 by the only slightly better-known
Ann Cole. It was, of course,
the Muddy Waters version that became the hit and a signature song for him: he sang it throughout his
entire career, and it has become one of the best-known blues standards of all time. The song itself just has a lot of mojo, you know, so naturally plenty of others have covered it through the years: a small sampling from the YouTubes would include
Carl Perkins,
Willie Dixon,
Elvis Presley,
Clarence Gatemouth Brown,
JJ Cale,
Pinetop Perkins and
Louis Jordan. Hell, even
Bobby Darin couldn't resist the mojo!.
NOTE: Check hoverovers for link descriptions. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Jan 6, 2008 -
19 comments
Steven Foster is the perfect bartender. He wants to share his
ontology,
his reflections on what it means to be happy,
bird aquariums,
how to make margarita mix from scratch, solutions to the world's five most pressing problems [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5, or just read the summary on every page towards the bottom], and more drink recipes than you can shake a stick at. This man delivers.
posted by trinarian
on Oct 12, 2006 -
20 comments
Did the blue dress ever exist? Regina Louise had a miserable childhood, shuttled from foster home to foster home, at best ignored at best and at worst abused. There was only one happy memory from her childhood: the time she spent with the sole foster mother to ever show her love. But that woman had vanished from Louise's life years ago, and it seemed unlikely they'd ever meet again... (Warning: this newspaper article may make you cry.)
posted by yankeefog
on Dec 31, 2005 -
46 comments
