Internet Lovelies

Daniel Clowes' cover for the New Yorker

"Where are the books?"
"Um, they're over here on the bottom shelf. But wouldn't you rather have a Simpsons themed Monopoly board? Or perhaps you'd like to browse our 32 different varieties of moleskine notebooks?"

So many bookstores (and online book retailers) have become like pharmacies; barely even carrying the things they were created to sell. My local CVS (aka Snuggie Outlet) doesn't carry Tylenol. The biggest pharmacy in town doesn't have Tylenol. TYLENOL. My god but they have waffle irons.

A book — a real book — is one choice, taken from a pile, opened and entered as its own singular, separate world. Once chosen, you are not holding the constant opportunity to alter or improve your choice, or simply change it just for the sake of restless change. You are there, now, without the relentless pressure of the fact that you could always be, and maybe you should be, maybe you’d be happier or more productive or different, doing something else.

KJ Dellatonia, Link

Imagine the least funny joke you can imagine and then imagine having to see that joke repeated for a hundred minutes while someone punches you in the face with the sharpest knife in the world while also pouring gasoline into the cuts and occasionally burning you with white hot fire. That’s a moderate approximation of the experience of watching this movie.

Roxane Gay on watching Jack and Jill, Link

It's also the experience of watching Carlos Mencia try to perform comedy. OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Snap.

Nothing will trickle down to you unless you shake the clouds. Time to make it rain updwards.

Jim Behrle on occupying American poetry, Link

I think mostly what this is about, is whether you’re the type of person who writes something on the Internet and feels secure/smug/confident or the type who is immediately racked with regret and self-doubt and self-loathing...

But there is that compulsion to say something. (Dare I say?) to say anything.

Elizabeth Ellen, Link

I'm that second type of person. Whenever I get a comment, facebook like, retweet, etc., evidence that whatever bullshit I've been spewing forth has actually been read, I become a nervous wreck. Whenever I comment on message boards or other people's blogs, I immediately close out of the window and log out of email, terrified of any response back. Or no response at all. It's complicated.

Hi! I have social anxiety disorder. Even on the internet! (fun!)

There's a list of the 56 Best/Worst Similes in this blog post from House of Figs. Whether they're the best or worst is up to you. But they're all hilarious. Here's a sample:

5. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

16. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

17. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

43. The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.

And my all time fave:

51. It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.

That sentence is so intriguing! What is "it," and what could it possibly look like? My mind goes immediately to Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, but I've seen it before, so it obviously cannot look like that. The mystery!

I feel like I've used too many exclamation points today.

:(

Whatever. I'm just gonna watch this 50 times over and then play some Simpsons Monopoly.