July 2010
43 posts
“What about “handing off” your daughter to another man proves that...”
– Chelsea Clinton’s big fat leaked wedding - Broadsheet - Salon.com
Excellent piece by Rebecca Traister
the world of the (department) store
fluffynotes:
I’ve been thinking about the appeal of the department store (if any) and its place against boutique stores, discount chains and online shopping and I keep thinking its strength lies in its history and everything it stood for over 100 years ago. Creating another world, a home away from home - but a better home, more inspiring, more luxurious, the possibility of social mobility.
...
On the worst bathroom ever
Jean: That is the WORST BATHROOM EVER.
Dining Companion: Why? No toilet paper.
Jean: Much worse.
DC: No handwash?
Jean: No.
DC: Bad towels? Water on the floor? Weak hand dryer? Toilet blocked?
Jean: The door has 'loos' painted on it, with an apostrophe.
“Do you know why I stopped? Because you are a BEAUTY!”
– Random driver who let me cross the road
(No, sir, I thought maybe you stopped your car because you were not someone who believes in running people down at crosswalks. Can’t believe I was wrong, but thanks for clarifying.)
“How long were you and Earl married?” the voice of one of the elderly women...”
– Decided to check out the Harlequin romance novel, Without Borders, that I wrote eight years ago, when I was ‘working’ at my first-ever office job. I have been reading it through splayed fingers. It’s…execrable.
On fallow periods
I’m having one, writing-wise. You may have noticed that already, if you’re the kind of person who does not follow my blog because you really like to look at photos of swans.
It makes me feel like a fraud, a bit: I think to myself, ‘I should do some writing’ and I even think about things to write on the bus home and then when I get there, and sit in front of my laptop, what...
“The “rebound” is what your lifeless, smashed body may well do,...”
– Film review: The Rebound by Peter Bradshaw | Film | The Guardian
2 tags
Pursuit of Happiness (KiD CuDi cover) / Barbara
...
“TQ: This song is about people fighting their oppressors. Do you have any...”
– Katie Price on ‘Take The Power Back’ by RATM
The Quietus | Features | A Quietus Interview | She’s A Model: Katie ‘Jordan’ Price On Kraftwerk & Slayer
“Jean Hannah Edelstein’s night, Let Me Tell You About Me, also started a...”
– Spread the word: The rise of the literary night out - Features, Books - The Independent
Delighted that LMTYAM was included in this article about the amazing live literary scene here in London.
inthetrees:
Dizzee Rascal - That’s not my name...
“Last month I packed up my possessions and moved in with Conor, and the first...”
– a little pinch of salt (via annieatkins) (via conorh)
Oh, the immersion! I miss Ireland often.
2 tags
1 tag
On lumpy milk (following an encounter last night)
I never saw milk go lumpy until I moved to Ireland in 2003. I believe this is because American (and also Canadian) milk is so full of chemicals that it doesn’t lump.
For some reason, I find it profoundly upsetting whenever it happens that I pour some milk into tea or on to cereal and it is in lumps; usually I have to leave the room to recover.
It makes me feel the same way that thinking...
BANK FOR LADIES ONLY - British Pathe →
BANK FOR LADIES ONLY
OMAG this is the greatest thing I have ever seen in my life.
My mother was 17 years old in Scotland in 1964. These are my people!
“With even more patience, one may make 16 pours, eight into each cup. There are...”
– How to pour the perfect cup of coffee | Education | The Guardian
Forget the tall one-pump extra-hot vanilla soy latte: ABBABAABBAABABBA is the hot new Starbucks order.
2 tags
On thirty-three years
Today it is thirty-three years since the day that my parents promised to love each other for ever. They were married in a small town in Scotland by the minister who served at my mother’s church, because that was what you did in a small town in Scotland, but they had the wedding in a hotel (‘it would really have been better if you were an atheist’, the minister remarked to my...
3 tags
On being the Math Queen
I was elected the Math Queen when I was in sixth grade, seventeen years ago. The election was held by the Math Club, of course - thirty kids who regarded math to be such an exciting pursuit that we cheerfully gave up one of our lunch hours once a week to sit together in a classroom and do extra problems. (I am sort of proud of us, in retrospect.)
I did not want to be elected Math Queen because...
“You know who are very successful writers right now, in the sense of being on the...”
– Writing Advice From Emily Gould | Faster Books
“He looked up from his wintry bollito misto, looked right past me, looked back...”
– Gary Shteyngart, ‘Lenny Hearts Eunice’, New Yorker June 14 & 21 2010
[boiled lovemaking! What a delight!]
The Stags Head: WE'RE LIVE →
The most eccentric pub in my neighbourhood starts blogging. Am fascinated.
1 tag
2 tags
“She thought she remembered hearing about a boy who, at nine, could map the...”
– ‘The Erkling’ by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum (New Yorker, July 5 2010)
“many years ago my cousin had to transport a barge-load of sheep from an island...”
– This comment is so good (in response to this), it deserved its own post.
“For about a million reasons,” Siegel claimed, “fiction has now...”
– Literary storm rages as critic Lee Siegel pronounces the American novel dead | Books | The Observer
Oh, dear: the novel went and died again.
This is the worst kind of critical elitism.
2 tags
On a man who does not like his job
You do not like your job. You are taking the Victoria Line home at ten o’clock at night and you are doing your level best to do what it is that you actually like, which is reading Dante. You have pressed your Penguin classic edition open, across your lap. You have bent the spine. You feel the glossed paperback cover slide against the weave of your creased brown trousers.
You studied English...
On a list of things I've loved this week
- short stories by Alice Munro (a birthday gift);
- HOLDING THE MAN at Trafalgar Studios;
- dinner with Steph at Ciao Bella, the restaurant in London where I’ve no doubt dined the most in the past seven years, and for good reason: it is utterly charming (and not too expensive);
- the return of my prodigal BFF from Iraq, all dusty and excitable and most importantly, alive;
- this photo of...
On Canada (because it is your day)
I decided to go to university in Canada because it was a four hour drive from my home, and because it was relatively cheap, and because the first time I went to Montreal - I was 14, my brother was looking at universities, I recall wearing really terrible khakis and dining at Harvey’s - I looked at drunk kids playing Duck, Duck Goose on McGill’s Lower Field and I thought to myself: this...
“For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one...”
– Molly Ringle Writes the Worst Sentence of 2010 - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat
Ooh.
June 2010
30 posts
