January 2011
28 posts
“I’m sure a “Jersey Shore” set on the shore of the original Jersey would be...”
– Sam, commenting at Danyl’s place.
(Last of the Jersey Shore ephemera for a bit, I promise.)
“Instead of being a laid back libertine’s paradise the Jersey Shore house is an...”
– Danyl considers the moral and theological allegories seen on the Jersey Shore, first season. My other favourite:
A relationship forms between two cast members (Ronnie and Sammy) and they appear to have genuine feelings for each other. But since their lives are all about instant...
A very severe shock of earthquake →
A report in the Star of the Christchurch Earthquake, 5 June 1869, thought now to be around MM7, “at very shallow depth within a few kilometres of the CBD” (Geonet; cf the MM9 Canterbury Earthquake 40 kilometres west of the city).
Link via @Jo_Gilbert.
“‘Lanky legs,’ said he, in a low voice, ‘these young nuts are...”
– John-Paul considers Snugglepot and Cuddlepie.
Darkness All Around Us
WatchPatriot: Ten Guitars
The guitars are made to be played. In fact Parekowhai opened the project with a performance by guitar orchestra Gritbox reprising the Quin-Tikis’ number from the 1960s rock-road movie Don’t Let it Get You. This Teddy Boy Maori guitar band exemplified the utopian play-together spirit of Ten Guitars quite literally: one person picking and another fingering the...
“You belong in Ian McEwan’s sitting room or bedroom, or, in a touristical mode,...”
– ads without products on second-, first- and third-person narration.
“Here I was, on stage in a ridiculous T-shirt, with a band that was...”
– The third entry in a chronicle of failure by Man of Errors tells the story of his band, Perverted Thrust, performing at Rockquest in 1990. (I also played in a band that competed in Rockquest that year. We were called Keep Off The Grass.)
Graffito of the Moment
Photo by Adrienne Rewi (click through for full size).
Work Imitates Work →
Supercomputing and the planning of meetings.
Peter Wells on the old Napier Prison →
Outside the guide talked about the people buried there. I knew Kereopa Te Rau was not buried there. Nevertheless I obediantly marked the spot in the contemporary manner: by taking a photo.
I noted the interesting differences in the story-telling. Here the eyes represented his dead children, killed by Pakeha soldiers. He became a kind of family man seeking justifiable revenge. Or was that...
The Dysfunction of Criticism Today →
We are in a period of flux – political culture, and in particular the left, is in a state of potentially highly productive disarray. Because literature and art more generally is notoriously (or, at least it should be notorious) resistant to dogmatic analysis, it can provide both a school for thinking through problem and solution sets that flicker dimly on the horizon, somewhere on the other side...
HaikuLeaks →
loscheiner:
Some smarty-pants wrote a code that searches for haiku patterns in Wikileaks cables. Several of the accidental poems are quite lovely. Here are some that I enjoyed:
As is typical, the Pope stayed above the fray and did not comment.
Instead, he gulped three cans of Coca-Cola while inhaling his food.
Parts of the country are often cut off by snow and...
