Larry’s Pretty Good Journal

This famous post is doing the rounds again:

my favorite thing i’ve learned in college is that way back in ancient china there was this poet/philosopher guy who wrote this whole pretentious poem about how enlightened he was that was like “the eight winds cannot move me” blahblahblah and he was really proud of it so he sent it to his friend who lived across the lake and then his friend sends it back and just writes “FART” (or the ancient Chinese equivalent) on it and the guy was SO MAD he travels across the lake to chew his friend out and when he gets there his friend says “wow. the eight winds cannot move you, but one fart sends you across the lake”

This story is so Chinese.

It’s a real incident, btw: the guy was Su Shi, a Song dynasty poet/artist/essayist/statesman sometimes better known by his art name Su Dongpo, the "friend" was his Chan (Zen) master Foyin, the abbot of a temple across the lake where he was staying, and 屁 means both “fart” and (idiomatically) “nonsense.” Very Zen.

Edit to clarify: Foyin was not just a friend but Su Shi's master, who taught him meditation. Which means my man was crossing the lake to chew out his Zen master, and somehow thought this was going to go well for him. Smh.

---L.

Subject quote from Cruel Summer, Bananarama.

A link for you, and a link for you, and, yes, a link for you, too. All three are for the anonymous gifter of a paid account -- thank you, whoever you are:

Drone videos of black sand beaches in Iceland.

There I Ruined It presents Santa Claus Is Coming to Town as sung by Radiohead, to the tune of “Creep.” (via)

A contemporary (1813) review of Pride and Prejudice. That Mr Collins was considered a recognizable type and not a caricature is interesting. (via lost)

---L.

Subject quote from On Grafton Street, Nanci Griffith.

Short shameful confession: Every time I hear the refrain line of “What It Sounds Like,” I want to add on, “when doves cry.”

ETA: Yesterday I realized that "darkness and harmony" has the same rhythm as "bone thugs-n-harmony," and now I cannot unhear it.

---L.

Subject quote from What It Sounds Like, HUNTR/X.

A few links hoarded up, sometimes for a while:

“This guy saved a PNG to a bird.”

A very small selection of very good P.G. Wodehouse quotes. (via)

From Neal.fun: I’m Not a Robot, where you solve increasingly ridiculous CAPTCHAs. Level 11: “Select all the squares with Waldo” (via)

---L.

Subject quote from Castle on the Hill, Ed Sheeran.

A few important bird links, plus a beautiful one:

OwlsInTowels.org. (via)

How to pick up a duck. (via)

Woodblock prints of Hasui Kawase, an artist who was a major influence on Hayao Miyazaki.

… in a wonderful balloon

---L.

Subject quote from Joyride, Roxette.

… that money just can’t buy

A few links some of you may appreciate:

Sometimes you just need to watch a video of 24 hopping baby goats. (via)

Incidental Comics gives us a handy guide to Proofreader’s Marks. (via a friend)

First footage of live colossal squid in its native environment.

---L.

Subject quote from Can’t Buy Me Love, The Beatles.

For Poetry Monday:

“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,” W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good.


Sometimes known as “Funeral Blues,” this started as a satirical blues song for the play The Ascent of F6 (1936) by Auden and Christopher Isherwood, with music by Benjamin Britten. During its initial run it was sung by Hedli Anderson plus a chorus, and at her request Auden rewrote the lyrics into a solo cabaret song that she performed (with revised music by Britten) until she retired from the stage. Auden published this revision as an independent poem dated April 1936, and he continued tweaking it throughout his life—this is his final version from the posthumous Collected Poems, where it is part IX of “Twelve Songs.” Some of you may know it as a funeral reading in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

---L.

Subject quote from God, Tori Amos.

Slightly pointless genre noodlings:

Should Puck of Pook’s Hill be classified as Mainstream or Fantasy, or both? Or is it better served to call it Children’s Literature, a genre where adherence to realism has never been as strict as in Mainstream?

What about The Jungle Books? Or Just So Stories? What’s the genre status of beast fables anyway?

(Kim’s genre is of course Most Excellent Book.)

(I started to ask whether anyone has written the American (or for that matter Canadian) equivalent of Puck of Pook’s Hill, then realized the Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales series sorta counts, maybe, I think. Are there any others?)

Okay, maybe not “slightly.”

---L.

Subject quote from John Brown’s Body, Stephen Vincent Benét, used because the lines make me think of Carl Sandburg’s children’s biography “Abe Lincoln Grows Up.”

Rhythm Nation 1814 slaps harder than any other album of 1989. Fight me.

(Yes, even more than Crossroads, Disintegration, or Pretty Hate Machine. They all slap too, but none have the advantage of being new jack swing.)

---L.

Subject quote from Miss You Much, Janet Jackson.

Three less serious links:

Is it time for another Sympawny? Yes, so here’s a Tiny Liquid Ballerina in the shape of an octopus. (via)

It is also time for Pachelbel’s Canon played by train horns? Yes, and it’s just as demented as you think. (via)

And it is definitely time to reveal that genetic analysis proves that triangles are actually very pointy circles.

---L.

Subject quote from Everybody Hurts, R.E.M.