Auto-Fun Archive: Novemeber

11.30.07
quote: Love is not/enough. We die and are put into the earth forever./We should insist while there is still time. We must/eat through the wildness of her sweet body already/in our bed to reach the body within the body.
(from "Tear it Down," Jack Gilbert)
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link: Everybody Needs Writers (The Guardian Books), Gifts You Give Yourself (Nico Muhly)


11.29.07
quote: "Harry, you're going to have to try and find a way of not expressing every feeling that you have every moment that you have one." (When Harry Met Sally)
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link: New AutoStraddle, w/Vlogs!, FourFour's ANTM recap


11.28.07
quote: "Why not make your life easier? I mean, life is so fucking hard, even when it's easy." (Margaret, Six Feet Under)
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link: This Always Makes Me Happy, (DD), Full Throttle (SFU), Dance With Me (Angels in America), Brenda Dickinson: Welcome to My Home.


11.27.07
quote: "But there come times--perhaps this is one of them when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die; when we have to pull back from the incantations, rhythms we've moved to thoughtlessly--" (Adrienne Rich)
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link: Calling All Angels (SFU)


11.26.07
quote: "For the explosive word /falls harmlessly/eternal through/the compact generations/and except for you/nothing/denotates/its sweet-scented dynamite."
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link: Subject, Verb, Object (poem @ The New Yorker)


11.24.07
quote: Occasionally something will give pleasure, will actually charm or divert or entertain, will, to use that terrifying word, disarm. Insofar as our fearful, compulsive, rigid natures allow, I think we should welcome what follows, since for natures of this kind, there is no embrace until one has been disarmed. (Louise Gluck, "Fear of Happiness," The Michigan Quarterly Review)
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link: 100 Notable Books of The Year @ The NY Times, A Few Words With Chevy Chase @ NY Mag, Have Mercy! A "Full House" Marathon @ EW's PopWatch.


11.23.07
quote: "These subversive characters [Huck Finn and Jim], like Ellison's Invisible Man, Fitzgerald's Gatsby, Hurston's Janine -- all outcasts who refuse to comply -- are part of a tradition in American fiction. Like Huck, they risk hell but trust their own instincts and experiences above static convention. They are thoughtful and reflect upon these experiences; they are critical not just of others but of themselves, and they act upon their reflections. This is the American idea I would like to return to: a slight subversion, an instinctive urge to do the right thing, which, in the eyes of the "correct" world, might seem to be exactly the wrong thing." (Azar Nafisi, on "The American Idea" in The Atlantic Monthly)
*
link: Ali Smith's "Literary Top Ten" (pulp net)
"Things I've Bought That I Love" (Office writer Mindy Kaling's blog, hilarious)


11.22.07
quote: "Happy Thanksgiving! The Apple Store has my computer for 3-5 days, I am obvs dying a slow and painful death. Luckily, I'm using Hav's laptop right now, and there will be a Vlog." (Riese, "Haviland's MacBook")
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link: Johnny McGovern's Plymouth Rock Band Gay Pimpin' Thanksgivin' (LogoOnline/Carly's hot editing skills, holla!)


11.21.07
quote: "A woman with desperately bony calves, made stark by her big high heels, grinned at someone across the room, her grin a signal of deep things inside both of them that nobody else could see. Sometimes I saw the goodwill and the deep things and longed to know them. Sometimes I saw the thrusting jaw and the bony calves and thurst up my nose. Because I could never fully have either feeling, I stayed detached. It was as if I were seventeen again and longing to live inside a world described by music-- a world that was sad at being turned into a machine, but ecstatic, too, singing on the surface of its human heart as the machine spread through its tissues and silenced the flow of its blood. In this world, there were n good things, no vulgar goodwill, only rigorous form and beauty, and even songs about mass death could be sung on the light and playful surface of the heart." (Mary Gaitskill, Veronica)
*
(NY Times NEA report goes here)
Four Four's ANTM Recap


11.20.07
quote: "It is worse even than you expected, stepping out into the morning. The glare is like a mother's reproach. the sidewalk sparkles cruelly. Visibility unlimited. the downtown warehouses look serene and resetful in this beveled light ... You know for a fact that if you go out into the morning alone, without even your sunglasses--which you have neglected to bring, because who, after all, plans on these travesties?--the harsh, angling light will turn you to flesh and bone. Mortality will pierce you through the retina." (Jay McInerney, "Bright Lights Big City")
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link: Watch Bad Girls video recaps on Logo [edited by Carlytron!]


11.19.07
TEGAN AND SARA CONCERT DAY
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quote: "You're always sort of on the edge of life when everything could end. Obviously not everyone feels that way, but certainly for me, I feel like nothing lasts forever. I'd like everything to last forever, but it doesn't necessarily. So I always feel like I'm on guard, and I'm always on edge. That song is sort of like a reminder to be caught up in the moment and a reminder that we are right next to each other and feel very different." (Tegan)
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links: Tegan and Sara fan-site, Tegan & Sara cover "Umbrella", music video of "The Con," "Back in Your Head," playing "I Know I Know I Know," playing "Dancing in the Dark" at a radio station interview.


11.18.07
quote: (riese get with it)
link: Everybody is Happy Now - Margaret Atwood on "A Brave New World" @ The Guardian

11.16.07
quote: "Have you grown any this year? I've hardly grown at all. Not up and not out, either. But I have learned a lot." (Judy Blume, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself)
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link: Salon's Sexiest Men Living (includes Ira Glass, Strongbad, Kanye West and Junot Diaz. Holla.)


11.15.07
quote: "I love the good home/cliches can find in an authentic voice." (Stephen Dunn, "Loves")
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link: The New Online Star System: complete guide to what web video is worth a click (New York Magazine), Join the Auto-Win/Straddle Facebook Club NOW


11.14.07
quote: "Whenever in my dreams, I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of mine they never knew. They sit apart, frowning at the floor, as if death were a dark taint, a shameful family secret. It is certainly not then — not in dreams — but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle-tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction." (Vladimir Nabakov)
*
links:-I Wrote This In 1999 About my Dad
-FourFour's Recap of America's Next Top Model: "Fat Chance."
-Join the Auto-Win/Straddle Facebook Club NOW


11.13.07
quote: And we turn him into an anecdote, with no teeth, and a punchline you'll tell for years to come: "Oh, that reminds me of the time the imposter came into our house." "Oh! Tell the one about that boy." And we become these human jukeboxes spitting out these anecdotes to dine out on like we're doing right now. Well I will not turn him into an anecdote, it was an experience. How do we hold onto the experience? (Ouisa, from John Guare's "Six Degrees of Separation")
**
Nerve Film Lounge: Five Conversations about Fast Times at Ridgemont High
link: The entire lesbian storyline of British series "Sugar Rush" on youtube.


11.11.07
quote: "What makes humans human is precisely that they do not know the future. That is why they do the fateful and amusing things they do: who can say how anything will turn out? Therein lies the only hope for redemption, discovery, and--let's be frank--fun, fun, fun! There might be things people will get away with. And not just motel towels. There might be great illicit loves, enduring joy, faith-shaking accidents with farm machinery. But you have to not know in order to see what stories your life's efforts bring you. The mystery is all." ("People Like That Are The Only People Here," Lorrie Moore)
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link:The entire lesbian storyline of British series "Sugar Rush" on youtube.
The Way We Eat: The Hollywood Diet @ NY Times.


11.10.07
quote: "In one of the dialogues," I said, "Phaedrus asks Socrates whether it's better to spend your life with someone who you're compatible with, like a friend, or someone who you're crazy for, someone who'll make your life a living hell."
"And what does Socrates say?" Henry said.
"He says you should be with someone you can get along with, and he spends thirty pages proving it ... logically ... like a theorem." I watched the shadow of relief cross the faces of both men.
"Then," I said, "he changes his mind."
"And says you should be with the person who makes your life a living hell," Henry said.
"What he says," I said, "is that when we fall full tilt in love with somebody, it's because our soul recognizes another soul that it was mingled with on some previous plane."
"Socrates says full tilt?" Carter said.
"He says, but what is man's logical reasoning, compared to the power of divine madness?"
[from "The Moon is a Woman's First Husband," by Pam Houston]
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link: FIRED! by Annabelle Gurwitch


11.9.07
quote: "For the explosive word/falls harmlessly/eternal through/the compact generations
and except for you
nothing/denotates"
-[from "preamble," cocteau]
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link: Alison MacLeod's Top 10 Short Stories [The Guardian Unlimited Books]


11.8.07
If you & I were talking right now and I said "happy birthday!" and you said "It's your mom's birthday!" I'd be like, "IT TOTALLY IS."
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quote: "Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private. " [Allen Ginsberg]
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link: BIG NEWS YOU GUYS: Haviland has redesigned her website. No more scrolling. Word up to a;ex vega and stef. I wrote the bio, obvs.


11.7.07
quote: "Human flesh needs human flesh. Because only flesh is value," R continued, "I'm increasing my suffering 'cause I have to be stronger to be a writer. I'm training myself." Humans always look for a reason for their suffering. (Kathy Acker)
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link: "Flying to America" by Donald Barthelme reviewed by Sam Anderson [New York Magazine] (he said "totes"!)


11.6.07
quote: "Night is longing, longing, longing, beyond all endurance." (Henry Miller)
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link: fourfour's Recap of the ANTM clip show (he said "true story"!!)
Playboy Blog - How Dirty Are You? (I'm totally quoted!!)


11.5.07
quote: "From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality. That is why you write and for no other reason that you know of. But what about all the reasons that no one knows?" (Ernest Hemmingway, The Paris Review Interviews)
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link: The Autumn of the Multitaskers [The Atlantic]


11.4.07
quote:
Lester Burnham: You don't think it's kinda weird & fascist?
Carolyn Burnham: Possibly, but you don't want to be unemployed.
Lester Burnham: Oh well, all right, let's all sell our souls and work for Satan because it's more convenient that way.
(American Beauty)
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link:"The Accidental Plagiarist" Virginia Quarterly


11.03.2007
quote:"Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed— would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper— the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever." [George Orwell, 1984]
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link: Frederick Seidel : The Motorcycle Diarist [New York Times]


11.02.2007
quote: "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." (George Orwell)
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link: "How to be a Writer" by Lorrie Moore (New York Times, 1998)


11.1.07
quote:
"In Manhattan, I learned a public kindness
was a triumph
over the push of money, the constrictions
of fear. If it occurred it came
from some deep
primal memory, almost entirely lost --
Here, let me help you, then you me,
otherwise we'll die."
(From "Kindness," by Stephen Dunn)
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links:
"Consolation and the Order of the World," by Charles Wright
"The Great Novel I Never Read," Slate Magazine, [Writers Confess What They Haven't Read]