The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.
—Søren Kierkegaard
—from The Journals of Kierkegaard
pandiculation /pan-dik-yoo-LAY-shən/. noun. Stretching and yawning, as when first waking up. Rarely, just yawning. From Latin pandiculari, from pendere (to stretch).
“The skipper, a big-bellied man with a red face, stood in the wheelhouse and yawned. (If I were a visitor from another planet – but then, am I not a visitor from another planet? – I think that of all the earthlings’ quirks it is the act of pandiculation that would surprise and fascinate me most, that slow stretch and then the soundless ape-howl, in which they indulge themselves with such languorous relish.)” (John Banville)
“…Yet when Mars depicts Venus, he cannot but paint from above; from the imam’s throne, the archbishop’s pulpit or via the pornographer’s lens…” I pandiculate, and Aphra Booth swivels around. (David Mitchell)
“…in the next edition of my Opium Confessions revised and enlarged, I will make you believe and tremble: and à force d’ennuyer, by mere dint of pandiculation I will terrify all readers of mine from ever again questioning any postulate that I shall think fit to make.” (Thomas De Quincey)
Privacy as we think of it is a new (and deeply endangered) thing. → The Birth And Death Of Privacy: 3,000 Years of History Told Through 46 Images.
The Positive Lexicography Project is “an evolving index of ‘untranslatable’ words related to wellbeing from across the world’s languages” from Afrikaans to Zulu/Xhosa.
The 174 videos in the Japanology series cover everything from mushrooms to swords to cram schools and Shinto shrines. Clamorites might enjoy starting with stationery. [Thanks, Reader B.]
This poet is riding through Denver delivering dreams to doorsteps. Nightmares cost extra.
Wikipedia: The Text Adventure turns Wikipedia into an interactive, text-based game. Zorks!
Is the tilde the sarcasm punctuation mark we’ve been looking for? → The Internet Tilde Perfectly Conveys Something We Don’t Have the Words to Explain
Fascinating to think that the first inventors to record sound never listened to it…they were only interested in the visual picture… → At The Dawn Of Recorded Sound, No One Cared
On squicks and squees and re-imaging the (tagging) vocabulary of porn → Can These Pornographers End ‘MILFs,’ ‘Teens,’ and ‘Thugs’? :: Balances well with The More Things Change, which examines how, with sex and sexual practices, the more things change, the more things, well, change.
A Piece of Work is everything you wanted to know about modern and contemporary art but were afraid to ask … In this 10-episode podcast series, [Broad City’s] Abbi [Jacobson] looks for some answers in lively conversations with curators, artists, and some friends, including Hannibal Buress, Tavi Gevinson, RuPaul, and Questlove.
Today in 1850, a 30-year old Persian merchant known as the Báb (birth name: Sayyed ʿAli Muhammad Shirāzi) is executed for apostasy in Tabriz, Iran. Accounts differ in drama—members of the Baha’i Faith (of which his teachings were the forerunner) tell a story in which the firing squad’s bullets sever his ropes and the Báb disappears…finally being found in another part of the barracks calmly dictating to his secretary—but all agree that the first volley harmed neither the Báb nor Anís, a young follower, who had been suspended 10 feet above the ground for the execution, and they both had to be rounded up, re-bound, and finally killed by a second volley.
Beckett is the trailer for “A short lived detective drama from 1972” starring Sam Beckett as Beckett the private eye, Andre the Giant as Little Bim (longtime Clamorites may remember some links to the story of Beckett and Andre’s unexpected real-life relationship), Jean Paul Sartre as Walleye Molloy and Jean Cocteau as Huggy Bear. I want to live in the alternate reality where this isn’t an alternate reality.
Other than humans, the palm cockatoo is the only other species who make, and make music with, a musical tool → Birds play sick jungle beat with drumsticks they make themselves. See also, the longer but interesting scientific abstract video that goes behind the scenes of the 6000+ hours effort to film more than 60 drumming events.
Reader B.: “With regards to the Oldest Color Photos… it should be noted that a number of the photographs are credited to Albert Kahn and there is much more to be said about him. ¶ With the invention of Autochrome, Kahn, a very wealthy man, endeavored to build a photographic archive of the various cultures of the entire planet — in color. What he accomplished is not only to captured cultures before they disappeared, but also captured history unfolding. The only reason I know about him is because I discovered there was a BBC series that told his story, ”Edwardians in Colour“. He produced not just colored photographs, but colored movies. ¶ I recommend the series because it gives context to the photographs. ¶ I haven’t been able to see the entire series and don’t know how many episodes there are, but I have watched four of them on YouTube. Here is the first one.”
A different Reader B.: “For your invocation of the glorious Flannery O’Connor, do you know the band Ministry? They sampled your quote (spoken in the movie version) in this kickass song.”
Reader G. also on Flannery O’Connor: “‘Where is there a place for you to be? No place. … In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.’ ¶ but still, I feel like going back to places I’ve been and new places have got to feel different than this place I’m in right now. I feel like I would feel different, cast free, a great weight lifted. But I guess no matter where I go, there I am. I felt like this prose rang true, and I wanted to argue with it too.”
And Reader J.!: It’s interesting how your selection from Wise Blood connects with the end of “A Good Man is Hard to Find”:
“Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead,” The Misfit continued, “and He shouldn’t have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can-by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness,” he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.
And then the great conclusion, one of the bleakest notes on behalf of pure immediacy I know of:
“She would of been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
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