from Sports Illustrated
"It's fine to wave the Olympic flag and get all gooey-eyed about girls tumbling," says Tom Tresser, a Chicago educator and organizer of the ad hoc group "No Games Chicago," who went to Switzerland in June to lobby the IOC against picking his hometown. "But the city is broke as a stone."
Olympic bid cities of course must agree to shoulder whatever cost overruns the Games may incur if they want to play host. Surely a worthwhile risk for Sochi. But Tresser asserts that Chicago can't afford it by inverting the cliché "stone-broke." Readers may associate stones with coldness or death before financial disadvantage.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Safire Sparkles On
Usage maven and MMM spiritual godfather William Safire died yesterday of pancreatic cancer. His final "On Language" column in the New York Times, printed mere days before his death, was sharp. An excerpt:
As an old Chinese philosopher never said, “Words about graphs are worth a thousand pictures.”
As an old Chinese philosopher never said, “Words about graphs are worth a thousand pictures.”
Boundaries of Human Intercourse
from a radio broadcast of FDR at the San Francisco World's Fair, 1939
As the boundaries of human intercourse are widened by giant strides of trade and travel, it is of vital import that the bonds of human understanding be maintained, enlarged and strengthened rapidly.
President Roosevelt was a master of the radio speech, and had a gift for winning the nation's confidence. Was it commerce or kinky sex that the president was calling for? All this talk of "intercourse," "giant strides," "bonds," "enlargement" and "rapid strengthening" seem off-color. FDR continues:
Unity of the Pacific nations is America's concern and responsibility . . . their onward progress deserves now a recognition that will be a stimulus as well. May this, America's World's Fair on the Pacific, in 1939, truly serve all nations in symbolizing their achievements of all the ages past . . . and in amalgamating their destinies . . . one with every other--through all the ages to come.
Maybe this erotic panacea could have come to fruition had it not been for the Axis powers.
As the boundaries of human intercourse are widened by giant strides of trade and travel, it is of vital import that the bonds of human understanding be maintained, enlarged and strengthened rapidly.
President Roosevelt was a master of the radio speech, and had a gift for winning the nation's confidence. Was it commerce or kinky sex that the president was calling for? All this talk of "intercourse," "giant strides," "bonds," "enlargement" and "rapid strengthening" seem off-color. FDR continues:
Unity of the Pacific nations is America's concern and responsibility . . . their onward progress deserves now a recognition that will be a stimulus as well. May this, America's World's Fair on the Pacific, in 1939, truly serve all nations in symbolizing their achievements of all the ages past . . . and in amalgamating their destinies . . . one with every other--through all the ages to come.
Maybe this erotic panacea could have come to fruition had it not been for the Axis powers.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Seven Types of Ambiguity
from William Empson's landmark work of literary criticism
Empson's fourth type of ambiguity deals with "alternative meanings [that] combine to make clear a complicated state of mind in the author."
This is a pretty good description of the task of this blog. Of course sometimes I infer a complicated state of mind out of a mere tic. After all, there are types of ambiguities, and ambiguities of type!
Empson's fourth type of ambiguity deals with "alternative meanings [that] combine to make clear a complicated state of mind in the author."
This is a pretty good description of the task of this blog. Of course sometimes I infer a complicated state of mind out of a mere tic. After all, there are types of ambiguities, and ambiguities of type!
Slouching Toward Bethlehem
from a review in Double X
It pleases me so much to be 42 and have it seem like popular culture is actually interested in what it’s like to slouch toward the Bethlehem of middle age.
Elizabeth Wurtzel would love to see a show exploring sexuality and romance in women approaching middle age, but decides that ABC's Cougar Town falls short. To describe this time of life, Wurtzel borrows from William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming."
This poem endures as one of the twentieth century's great expressions of anxiety. In the midst of modern upheavals, a sort of Messiah or Antichrist emerges from the desert. Just what havoc this "rough beast" will visit upon us is left unsaid, but it is almost certainly not the frustrations of turning forty.
Wurtzel is also invoking Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion's 1968 volume of essays. That book is a testament of disaffection in California and more congruent to Wurtzel's declinist attitude. Didion's title essay exposes the Haight-Ashbury as a failed social experiment.
Didion herself somewhat muddles the Yeats reference. The poem reads "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" Is Didion suggesting an antichrist borne of lax morals? Her title's absent pronoun further complicates the metaphor: is it herself or us who are "slouching," rather than the "rough beast"?
"Slouching" can only be in one direction: downward. Hence Yeats' dark force must be an extraterrestrial entity that deigns to take human form. But the phrase now seems to carry a connotation of adult female dissatisfaction. Both Wurtzel and Didion have adapted an apocalyptic vision into a shorthand for their own private pathos.
It pleases me so much to be 42 and have it seem like popular culture is actually interested in what it’s like to slouch toward the Bethlehem of middle age.
Elizabeth Wurtzel would love to see a show exploring sexuality and romance in women approaching middle age, but decides that ABC's Cougar Town falls short. To describe this time of life, Wurtzel borrows from William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming."
This poem endures as one of the twentieth century's great expressions of anxiety. In the midst of modern upheavals, a sort of Messiah or Antichrist emerges from the desert. Just what havoc this "rough beast" will visit upon us is left unsaid, but it is almost certainly not the frustrations of turning forty.
Wurtzel is also invoking Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion's 1968 volume of essays. That book is a testament of disaffection in California and more congruent to Wurtzel's declinist attitude. Didion's title essay exposes the Haight-Ashbury as a failed social experiment.
Didion herself somewhat muddles the Yeats reference. The poem reads "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" Is Didion suggesting an antichrist borne of lax morals? Her title's absent pronoun further complicates the metaphor: is it herself or us who are "slouching," rather than the "rough beast"?
"Slouching" can only be in one direction: downward. Hence Yeats' dark force must be an extraterrestrial entity that deigns to take human form. But the phrase now seems to carry a connotation of adult female dissatisfaction. Both Wurtzel and Didion have adapted an apocalyptic vision into a shorthand for their own private pathos.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
The Period on the End of a Record
from VBS' Soft Focus with Ian Svenonius
Win at all costs, make sure you come through...every time one has to execute something, whether it be a pass, touchdown, you know, put the period on the end of a record, so to speak...I have my own special game. I haven't named it yet, but I'm always throwing touchdowns.
At 2:50, Jennifer Herrema of the band Royal Trux is asked if her enthusiasm for competitive sports influence her approach to music. It's a tough comparison, but she has fun with it. For a moment she leaves sports behind and borrows from grammar lessons to describe her creative approach. Sentences after all, must be punctuated in order to be legible (period).
It's an interesting sentiment because Royal Trux's greatness is wholly derived from their unfinished, spontaneous qualities. A fixation on completeness is not brought to bear on their early work.
Win at all costs, make sure you come through...every time one has to execute something, whether it be a pass, touchdown, you know, put the period on the end of a record, so to speak...I have my own special game. I haven't named it yet, but I'm always throwing touchdowns.
At 2:50, Jennifer Herrema of the band Royal Trux is asked if her enthusiasm for competitive sports influence her approach to music. It's a tough comparison, but she has fun with it. For a moment she leaves sports behind and borrows from grammar lessons to describe her creative approach. Sentences after all, must be punctuated in order to be legible (period).
It's an interesting sentiment because Royal Trux's greatness is wholly derived from their unfinished, spontaneous qualities. A fixation on completeness is not brought to bear on their early work.
Mississippi's Golden Bosom
from Langston Hughes' "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
Langston Hughes launched his reputation on this short poem which posits the speaker as an emissary for blacks throughout history. But anyone who has seen the Mississippi River knows that it doesn't change color when the sun goes down. The "muddy bosom" must then be some essence that yellows in the autumn, or it encompasses an entire landscape that surrounds the river.
Earthy spirituality or doggerel?
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
Langston Hughes launched his reputation on this short poem which posits the speaker as an emissary for blacks throughout history. But anyone who has seen the Mississippi River knows that it doesn't change color when the sun goes down. The "muddy bosom" must then be some essence that yellows in the autumn, or it encompasses an entire landscape that surrounds the river.
Earthy spirituality or doggerel?
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Gifts that Go on Costing
from A Trial by Jury, by D. Graham Burnett, page 181
[Jury duty] drew on all of me, and all of others, and we were bound by this. Life hands one few such episodes, and they are, in a way, gifts that go on costing.
The author of this memoir is an intellectual sucked out of the airy world of academe and into the role of jury foreman at a murder trial. His experience changes his life and rearranges his views on truth and justice.
Caught between remembering his service as burden or gift, Burnett splits the difference: not a "gift that goes on giving," but one that goes on "costing," that is, taxing him even after the verdict is reached.
[Jury duty] drew on all of me, and all of others, and we were bound by this. Life hands one few such episodes, and they are, in a way, gifts that go on costing.
The author of this memoir is an intellectual sucked out of the airy world of academe and into the role of jury foreman at a murder trial. His experience changes his life and rearranges his views on truth and justice.
Caught between remembering his service as burden or gift, Burnett splits the difference: not a "gift that goes on giving," but one that goes on "costing," that is, taxing him even after the verdict is reached.
Ring of Silence
from the Rukhnama, Section I, verse 278
The silence that arises from the tongue of centuries rings in my ears.
Saparmurat Niyazov, dead in 2006, was a man out of his time. The hypernationalistic president-for-life of Turkmenistan renamed the month of April after his mother. The Rukhnama was a collection of his spiritual ramblings, compulsory reading for all Turkmen students.
Even by the standards of totalitarian balderdash, this excerpt is a whopper. Dictator that he is, Niyazov claims to speak for all his people, even the dead. Assuming this burden actually is his, it is instructive to note that the avowed legacy of the Turkmens is...nothing. The "tongue of centuries" imparts "silence," and the sound of what it doesn't say manages to linger in Niyazov's mind.
The silence that arises from the tongue of centuries rings in my ears.
Saparmurat Niyazov, dead in 2006, was a man out of his time. The hypernationalistic president-for-life of Turkmenistan renamed the month of April after his mother. The Rukhnama was a collection of his spiritual ramblings, compulsory reading for all Turkmen students.
Even by the standards of totalitarian balderdash, this excerpt is a whopper. Dictator that he is, Niyazov claims to speak for all his people, even the dead. Assuming this burden actually is his, it is instructive to note that the avowed legacy of the Turkmens is...nothing. The "tongue of centuries" imparts "silence," and the sound of what it doesn't say manages to linger in Niyazov's mind.
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