RIP, Denis Johnson :: “Car-Crash While Hitchhiking” | An appreciation in the Los Angeles Times | Another in the New York Times | And The New Yorker | The AP obit
Or maybe that wasn’t the time it snowed. Maybe it was the time we slept in the truck and I rolled over on the bunnies and flattened them. It doesn’t matter. What’s important for me to remember now is that early the next morning the snow was melted off the windshield and the daylight woke me up. A mist covered everything and, with the sunshine, was beginning to grow sharp and strange. The bunnies weren’t a problem yet, or they’d already been a problem and were already forgotten, and there was nothing on my mind. I felt the beauty of the morning. I could understand how a drowning man might suddenly feel a deep thirst being quenched. Or how a slave might become a friend to his master.
—Denis Johnson
—from Jesus’ Son
steenth /STEENTH/. adjective. The latest in an indefinitely long series. Derived from “sixteenth” > from Old English siextēne (six and ten) and still used that way in stock trading, where it refers to 1/16 of a point in price. See also: umpteenth.
“There’s this Monaco gook. He snoops around in his yacht, digging up telescope-eyed fish, and people talk about it. ‘Another darned fish,’ they say. ’That’s the ‘steenth bite the Prince of Monaco has had this year.’ It’s like a soap advertisement.” (P. G. Wodehouse)
“The Commissioner almost beats his own head against the desk in his exasperation as he reiterates over and over: ‘But why? Why? Why?’ And for the steenth time, he gets the same indigestible answer: ‘Because he was killing me.’” (Cornell Woolrich)
“A jiffy later, I was on my way up, and another steenth of a jiffy I was at the eaves…” (Paul Hutchens)
“The library building once housed an insane asylum—so notorious that the park was known as ‘Barmy Park.’” → The Library of Books and Bombs [Thanks, Reader B.]
“Stab” appears rather early… → I’ve tracked (and graphed) all my son’s first words since birth
“Fifty years ago, Marottichal was rife with alcoholism and illicit gambling, but everything changed after one man taught the town to play an ancient game of strategy.” → The ancient game that saved a village
Talk of adjective order (and “GSSSACPM” … and ablaut reduplication) has spiked of late…and it is a fascinating (and ultimately complicated) topic! So, some links old and new. → A surprisingly good article in Slate | Language Log’s Big bad modifier order | Mark Forsyth’s Bish bash bosh | Neil Whitman on Ordering Your Adjectives | A bit more technical but intriguing, Donka Minkova’s Ablaut reduplication in English: The criss-crossing of prosody and verbal art
A brief essay on true “first editions,” AKA books published during the incunabula, with a few nice illustrations. → On the Nature of Things
“…This mark is based on the Tilburg dialect word ‘jè’ (which sounds more or less as ‘yeah’) that is used as a confirmation but often expresses some doubt or mild irony. The jè-mark bridges the gap between the exclamation point and the question mark.” → TilburgsAns introduces a new punctuation mark
Sweden has just listed the entire country on Airbnb :: Speaking of Airbnb, they are launching a print (!?) magazine because they found that existing travel magazines had “almost no people in them.”
“I designed A Movie Poster A Day in 2016 and here’s the collection.” (many are better than the real ones).
Today in 585 BCE, a solar eclipse said to have been accurately predicted by the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus occurs, the drama of which, according to Herodotus, ends a decade-long war between the Medes and the Lydians. This event is arguably the earliest historical event whose date is known with precision to the day.
“In 1936, a family of Russian Old Believers journeyed deep into Siberia’s vast taiga to escape persecution and protect their way of life. The Lykovs eventually settled in the Sayan Mountains, 160 miles from any other sign of civilization. In 1944, Agafia Lykov was born into this wilderness. Today, she is the last surviving Lykov, remaining steadfast in her seclusion.”
Starting at just $450…jeans that convert into a denim diaper. → Y/Project | Detachable Cut-Out Side Jeans
Reader B.: “The opening poem reminded me of James Gunn’s underrated The Listeners (1972). A hard read for me as a kid. ¶ I saw In the Realm of the Senses with a crowd at college. When it ended… I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more intense, aroused, exhilarated, and scared group of people. ¶ PS: ”swell-bent for leather"? Get some Judas Priest down ye!
Reader F.: “Thank you for sharing Chana Bloch’s ‘Voyager’ poem. I had never heard of her before, but in that one poem she hit on a theme that has inspired and haunted me since I was a child and Voyager was launched.”
Reader M.: “I watched In the Realm of the Senses with my boyfriend and roommate late one night, stoned then stunned, then deeply uncomfortable.”
Reader D.: “The story about Karen Carpenter becoming an icon in the Philippines buzzed in my head with all the discussions of ‘cultural appropriation’ lately. Not the same thing but related somehow.”
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