“But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shamble after as I’ve been doing all my life, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’ What did they call such young people in Goethe’s Germany?”
—Jack Kerouac
—from On the Road
carnage /KAR-nəj/. noun. Extensive, indiscriminate slaughter, most often of human beings. A collection of carcasses. From French carnage, from Italian carnaggio (murder, slaughter), from Latin carnaticum (slaughter of animals), from carnum (flesh). Various sources note that “[Robert] Southey tried to make a verb of it,” so I’ve included that example as well.
“The carnage of 9/11 generated an intense surge of patriotic solidarity, even with America’s Babylon, a city scandalously and notoriously indifferent to Heartland values.” (Simon Schama)
“More athletes actually got killed in the hand-to-hands, but they lacked the dramatic, cathartic aspects of football, the sheer carnage when 144 men were involved at once, the drenching of the arena stands with blood.” (Ursula K. LeGuin)
“Mark! where his carnage and his conquests cease!
He makes a solitude, and calls it – peace!”
(Lord Byron)“…And swords rage where the Eagles cry & the Vultures laugh saying
Now comes the night of Carnage now the flesh of Kings & Princes…”
(William Blake)“All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.” (W.H. Auden)
“…there was vast confusion, havoc, conflict, honourable death, bloody battle, horrible consternation, and upon Tal Mavra, a thousand banners: there was an outrageous carnage, and the rage of spears and hast signs of violent indignation.” (Robert Southey)
Thousands of terms for drunks and drunkenness → The Drunktionary :: Pairs with our previous links to an interactive “Timeline of Slang Terms for Drink, Drunks and Drunkenness” and maybe “Drunk Shakespeare: The Trendy Way to Stage the Bard’s Plays in the US & the UK.”. Oh, and Thomas Nashe on Eights Kinds of Drunkard.
I encourage you to check out the free and open FutureLearn course Japanese Culture Through Rare Books, if only to watch (or download!) the extensive series of videos on Japanese books, materials, binding and culture. Fascinating.
I try to stay away from direct politics here, but: Postal Service business is up, deficit is all politics.
I prefer the magazine title “Those Magnificent Women and Their Typing Machines” → These Women Reporters Went Undercover to Get the Most Important Scoops of Their Day.
Everything is f**ked: The syllabus :: Pairs well with Calling Bullsh*t in the Age of Big Data — Syllabus and “F*ck Nuance” a paper by Kieran Healy.
Words of the Year 2016 from: Oxford English Dictionaries & Dictionary.com & The Chronicle of Higher Education & Merriam-Webster & The American Dialect Society (PDF).
Today in 1561, Sir Francis Bacon—philosopher, writer, scientist and orator—is born in London. Bacon was a true renaissance man, excelling as a philosopher and scientist…and the field in which they overlapped. Bacon’s most significant legacy is likely his thoughts on the scientific approach to the natural world and what that means for our own conception of our place within and, possibly, over it. This was a particularly vital area given that Bacon lived and wrote during a time when science was beginning to challenge—and sometimes displace—religious thought. I’ve learned most from Bacon’s work through his letters and his commonplace book, even if the latter has been used by deluded conspiracy theorists to claim he (as leader of a cabal) must have been the real author of Shakespeare’s work (though the story of the audacious, brilliant, unrelated and not-a-little-cuckoo Delia Bacon, who originated the theory, is fascinating).
“When Peter Bellerby couldn’t find the perfect handmade globe for his father’s 80th birthday, he took matters into his own hands. He spent the next few years learning and perfecting the lost art of globemaking, which turned out to be a difficult, detailed process.” → ► The Globemakers: Craft with a Modern Spin
“Chris Heck fought his way up over the most dangerous, life-threatening tricks, with numerous sore finger injuries, and nervous breakdowns to where he is today.” → ► Fingers of Steel
Reader J. shares: “Though I dispute (my back, indeed my chine disputes) the idea that everything old is new: some old things just get older. However, to anyone who’s missed seeing All That Jazz, it wouldn’t hurt to start with ► the Youtube excerpt of this song-and-dance piece. This is a movie that stands with 8 1/2 (to which it builds a gorgeous system of homages) as the greatest metatext about artistic creation in the history of film; and it stands with Singin’ in the Rain as (not only a great piece of metacinema, but) an epochal transformative text in the history of movie musicals. La La Land? It’s show time!”
Reader B: “The typewriter story is grand.”
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