Auto-Fun Archive: December

12.31.2007
quote: ""We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come." (Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being)
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link: The Golden Suicides (@Vanity Fair), 2007: The Year in Pictures (@The New York Times), The Books of The Year 2007 (@Guardian Unlimited Books)
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12.30.2007
quote: "What I've learned about comedy people is that they are define by the harshest level they've been to, their personal Aushwitz." (Bob Saget, Esquire, "What I've Learned")
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link: The Amateurs' Hour: Is the Internet destroying our culture, or is it just annoying our snobs? (@Reason Magazine)
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12.29.2007
quote:'They always say how mean I am. But let me tell you, the smart ones get it. When I took out the jokes about Cher, she said, "Why am I not in your act anymore?" (Joan Rivers)
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links: "I Did it for Science: Jen Miller's Sex & The City Endurance Post" (@nerve) "Inside Apple Stores, A Certain Aura Enchants the Faithful" (@NY Times), Lozo's Year-End Wrap-Up Post

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12.28.2007
quote: "Here I sat on a boulder by the winter-streaming river and put my head in my hands and considered time--which is next to nothing, merely what vanishes, and yet can make one's elbows nearly pierce one's thighs." (Galway Kinnell, "The Road Between Here and There")
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link: Vulture Celebrates the Year in Vulture (@nymag), The Trouble With Mary: Beyond Belief (@The National Post)
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12.27.2007
quote: "And how else should an angel land on earth but with the utmost difficulty? If we are to be visited by angels we will have to call them down with sweat and strain, we will have to drag them out of the skies, and the efforts we expend to draw the heavens to an earthly place may well leave us too exhausted to appreciate the fruits of our labors: an angel, even with torn robes, and ruffled feathers, is in our midst." (Tony Kushner, on a letter tacked to the backstage bulletin board for the cast & crew of Angels in America)
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link: The Guardian's 2007 in Books Quiz, "Alma" by Junot Diaz (@ The New Yorker)
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12.26.2007
quote: "God, there is so much emotion to navigate where family's concerned. Vicodin, anyone?" (Aunt Sarah, Six Feet Under)
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link: What's Wrong With the American Essay (Cristina Nehring @truthdig)
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12.25.2007
quote: "Jesus' words have become so perverted over time -- it's been like a game of telephone. If he existed he would fuckin' kill himself." (Sarah Silverman)
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"For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might
be saved." (John 3:17)
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links: Sedaris and Crumpet the Elf: A Holiday Tradition (@NPR), Buzzwords 2007: All We Are Saying (@NYTimes)
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12.24.2007
quote: "This house is so full of people it makes me sick. When I grow up and get married, I'm living alone." (Kevin McAllister, Home Alone)
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link: You Are What You Read (NY Times), Sacha Baron Cohen: Killing Off Borat (@Daily Telegraph), Auto Apparel Store obvs (!!)
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12.23.2007
quote: "I'm very sane about how crazy I am." (Carrie Fisher)
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link: Sacha Baron Cohen: Killing Off Borat, Auto Apparel Store obvs (!!), Reasons to Love New York (@NY Mag), Esquire's 10th Anniversary 'What I've Learned' (@Esquire)
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12.22.2007
quote: "Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers." (Rainer Maria Rilke)
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links:The Twilight of the Books: What Will Life Be Like If People Stop Reading (@The New Yorker), Bonfire of the Disney Princesses (by Barbara Ehreich @The Nation), Year in Review (@NY Magazine)
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12.21.2007
quote: "Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy." (Abraham Heschel)
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link: "One Day" (Poem, Grace Paley) (@The New Yorker)
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12.20.2007
quote: (from Our Town, Thornton Wilder)
Emily: Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anyone to realize you. [she looks toward the stage manager and asks abruptly, through her tears:] Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?--every, every minute?
Stage Manager: No. [pause] The saints and poets, maybe -- they do some.
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links: Are We Not Men? Down the Ladder From Playboy to Maxim (@The Atlantic), The Hollywood Guide to Drinking (@nerve.com)
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12.19.07:
quote: "Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy." (Abraham Heschel)
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link: "One Day" (Poem, Grace Paley) (@The New Yorker)
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12.18.07:
quote: "I have asked my mother if she regrets her marriage, her choices, and she has told me it is pointless to regret. That she did what she could do. What more can we ask of ourselves? I want to tell her, but do not, that we must ask for so much more, for everything, for love and tenderness and decency and courage. That we must be much more than comfortable, that we must be better than we think we can be, so if in some foreign tongue, we are confronted with those childhood questions -- "Qui etes-vous? Qui suis-je?" --we will not be afraid to answer." (E.J Levy, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," Salmagundi '05)
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link: Next Stop, Never-Never Land: ANTM Finale Recap (@fourfour), We Need to Talk About Pecan: Three brilliant novelists on Christmas Cooking (@The Guardian UK), The Etiquette of Telecommunications (@The Economist)
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12.17.07:
quote: Sooner or later you have a finished manuscript more or less. People look at it ina a vaguely troubled sort of way and say, "I'll bet becoming a writer was always a fantasy of yours, wasn't it?" Your lips dry to salt. Say that of all the fantasies possible in the world, you can't imagine being a writer even making the top twenty. Tell them you were going to be a child psychology major. "I bet," they always sigh, "you'd be great with kids." Scowl fiercely. Tell them you're a walking blade. (Lorrie Moore, 'How to be a Writer')
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link: An Exhaustive List of Links to Every Year-End List(@Filmalicious),On Facebook, Scholars Link Up with Social Data (@NY Times), Turning Free Web Work Into Real Book Sales (@NY Times)
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12.16.07:
quote:"Sometimes I see myself fine, sometimes I need a witness and I like the whole truth, but there are nights I only need forgiveness. Sometimes they say "I don't know who you are but let me walk with you some" And I say "I am alone, that's all, you can't save me from all the wrong I've done." But they're waiting just the same with their flashlights and their semaphores, and I'll act like I have faith and like that faith never ends, but I really just have friends." (Dar Williams)
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links: Gone Wild and Gone All Wrong: Joe Francis in Jail, holla (@NY Times), When the Bullies Turned Faceless: Cellphone cameras and text messages, social networking websites, e-mail and IM, all give teenagers more ways to play tricks on one another. (@NYTimes), Every Loo Must Have One: Bathroom Books (@Guardian UK)
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12.15.2007
quote: "We don't know what humans are like. And the ground is not economics; it's not like people do everything they do for economic reasons. You've got to look at the imagination; you've got to look at sex. We have no way of describing these things using the language we have." (Kathy Acker)
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links: The Hate That Hate Doesn't Produce: "Fall From Grace") (@fourfour), Nancy Redd Sees Vulva Everywhere: "Body Drama" (@New York Mag)
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12.14.2007
quote: "For somewhere there is an ancient enmity between our daily life and the great work. Help me, in saying it, to understand it." (from Rilke, "Requiem for a Friend")
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links:Kids Say the Most Homophobic Things (@youtube), NY Magazine's Best of 2007 (@NY Mag), Feministing Holiday Gift Guide (@feministing), Nerve.com Holiday Gift Guide (@nerve)
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12.13.07
quote: "This happens. This is something that happens." (Stanley, Magnolia)
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links: "Bill and Hillary Clinton's Pitch in Iowa: 'I Love the 90's'" (@NY Times), Lily Allen Joins Orange Prize Judges(@Guardian UK)
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12.12.07: DO THIS "Listen, my truest love ..." (Stephen Dunn)
links: The Charity Buzz Auctions Benefiting the Paris Review, Listening to Films, Radar Reviews "Helevectia"
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12.10.2007
quote: "Well, you and I have different management styles. I believe work should be fun, and you try to crush people's spirits. What's next, Michael? Are you going to make dancing illegal? Is this the tiny town from Footloose?" (Lindsay, Arrested Development)
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links: The Best Year-End Books List I've Seen @ (The Year in Reading/The Millions), The King of Sentences, by Jonathan Lethem (fiction @ The New Yorker), Shopping with Kate Moenning (@YouTube).
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12.9.2007
quote: "Trees in their youth look younger/than almost anything/I mean/In the spring/When they put forth green leaves and try/to look like real trees/Honest to God/I can see them trying." (Jack Spicer)
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links: From The Sunday NY Times -- Radiohead: Pay What You Want For This Article,Your Child's Disorder May Be Yours, Too, The Year of Dressing Dangerously: Monthly Party Gives 1992 Its Due
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12.8.2007
quote: "Books made people different, she thought. That's why Dolores felt different every day, after every book. It felt as if every book she read somehow altered her chemical constitution." (from "The Darling," Scott Bradfield.)
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link: "Bloggers v. Criticism, Intro: The Critical Condition" (@TimeOut), nerve's new Hollywood Sex Scene Database (@Nerve)
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12.7.2007
quote: "My candle burns at both ends/ It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends/It gives a lovely light." (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
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link: Autostraddle Season Five Recap Trailer Vlog #3, Laureate Attacks Poetry Teaching (@BBC News), Hollywood's Plastic Surgery Obsession (@ RADAR online), Is an "Arrested Development" movie in the works? (@ AfterEllen),
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12.6.2007
quote: "I have never been able to understand the complaint that a story is 'depressing' because of its subject matter. What depresses me are stories that don't seem to know these things go on, or hide them in resolute chipperness; "witty" stories, in which every problem is an occasion for a joke, "upbeat" stories that flog you with transcendence. Please. We're grown-ups now, we get to stay in the kitchen when the other grown-ups talk." (Tobias Wolff, Intro to Vintage Book of Contemporary Short Stories)
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link: Permalancers Get Cancer Too! (@Gawker), Return to Fat Camp @ fourfour, Marcel Berlins on the Last Lines to a Story He Adored by Raymond Carver, "I Feel Betrayed ... I Think." (@guardian uk)
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12.5.07
quote:
Rebecca: This is so bad, it's almost good.
Enid: This is so bad it's gone past good and back to bad again.
(Ghost World)
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link: Interview with Dani Who Still Has a Shot at Love! (@afterellen), Rachel Started Her Blog Again!, Viacom Screws Everyone (@gawker), 2007 Holiday Gift Guide: Music, Books, Fashion, Home, Dining & Wine (@The NY Times), Asperger's Syndrome Gets a Very Public Face (Heather from ANTM) (@The NY Times)
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12.4.07
quote: "In my opinion, all men are islands. And what's more, now's the time to be one. This is an island age. It helps to think of the day as units of time, each unit consisting of thirty minutes. Most activities take about half an hour. Taking a bath. Doing the crossword. Exercising. Three units. Carefully trimming my perfectly unkempt hair, two units, easy. All in all, I had a very full life." (About a Boy)
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link: ANTM Recap @fourfour, Books on a Plane (@Book Cannibal), "Found Objects" by Jennifer Egan (@The New Yorker), "Gawker" Obituary (@n+1),
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12.3.07
quote: "Feeling screwed up at a screwed up time in a screwed up place does not necessarily make you screwed up." (Pump up the Volume)
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link haze: New Dolly Parton Video featuring Amy Sedaris! (@Queerty), The Encyclopedia of Lesbian Movie Scenes (seriously, exhausting resource heaven), Two Gawker Editors Decide Not To Be Douchebags (@NYmag), Disney's $4 Billion "Princess" Brand (@Newsweek), What's Wrong With the American Essay? (@truthdig), "Is Reading Just About Making You Look Cool?" (@the Guardian UK)
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12.2.07
quote: "People say with the book sometimes, "How did you write this book, it has no self-pity? It's compassionate. Dah, dah, dah."I say you should have seen the drafts. They are full of self-pity and ridiculous rages. And I edited them out mostly because when you look at the stuff on page it doesn't ring true, actually. It does feel like a diversion from the essential state. Which, hopefully if you can get to it, is a little purer." (Nick Flynn)
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link: The Classless Utopia of Reality TV (@The NY Times), Pulse: The Glamour Girl (What Serena van der Woodsen is wearing) (@The NY Times)
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12.1.07
quote: "Sometimes you're flush and sometimes you're bust, and when you're up, it's never as good as it seems, and when you're down, you never think you'll be up again. But life goes on." (Blow)
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link: The New York Weekend From Hell (@Gawker), From Lowest to Highest: The Levels of Greatness a Fiction Writer can achieve in America (@The Stranger)