September 2009
“They have accents, my dear,” she told Amory. “Not Southern accents or Boston accents, not an accent attached to any locality, just accent”—she became dreamy. “They pick up old, moth-eaten London accents that are down on their luck and have to be used by someone. They talk as an English butler might after several years in a Chicago grand opera company.”
— this side of paradise
can we just take a moment to discuss how ghoul the concept of unisex pants is?
i mean, it isn’t like i haven’t been exposed to them for a while, it’s just that i only now fully comprehend how bad the idea is.
things that can be unisex & have a chance of being successful:
- names
- sweaters & tops
- well-maintained bathrooms
things that should never be unisex:
-pants
i don’t care if they actually fit. it is not a cool idea at all.
“Again with the sweatpants?”
“What? I’m comfortable”
“You know the message you’re sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You’re telling the world, ‘I give up. I can’t compete in normal society. I’m miserable, so I might as well be comfortable.’” —seinfeld
“What? I’m comfortable”
“You know the message you’re sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You’re telling the world, ‘I give up. I can’t compete in normal society. I’m miserable, so I might as well be comfortable.’” —seinfeld
a diverting game to play while in miserable circumstances
(via fallingandlaughing)
Earlier this week I found myself in an extremely interior circle of hell. I speak of the Comcast Customer Service Center in Chicago, where I thought I was just stopping by to pick up some self-install equipment. This stopping-by turned into over an hour of queueing followed by one of the most angrymaking customer service interactions I’ve ever had. I resurrected my long-dormant yelp account just so I could vent my spleen. Having gotten that out of my system, let me tell you about a fun game I play in situations where I might otherwise have a rage-out:
THE WERNER HERZOG GAME
Number of players: 1 (2 if you count imaginary-Werner-Herzog-in-your-head)
Prerequisite: Having seen one or more Werner Herzog documentaries (ideally late-period ones where the voiceovers approach a brilliant kind of self-parody)
How you play: Imagine Werner Herzog narrating your horrible experience. Allow his doomy, weirdly soothing Teutonic soliloquies to transmute your experience from one of mundane frustration, boredom, etc. to one of sublime terror, or one that exemplifies the murderousness of nature, or the pitilessness of the universe.
Some examples to get you started:
- “I believe the common denominator of this food court is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.”
- “The blank stare of my oral hygienist bespeaks a terrifying malevolence. The scraping of her tartar pick is the nightmarish sound of cannibals whispering darkly.”
- “The post office is a place of pestilential despair, a primordial soup one wishes to crawl out of, if only to evolve to further Lessons of Darkness.”
Tip: If you’re having trouble channeling your inner Werner Herzog, imagine the person standing behind you in line, or jostling you on the overstuffed train car, or whatever, is Klaus Kinski, and he is trying to murder you. This always helps me get in the mood!
“Against a large part of the frictions & irritations & clashing of temperaments incident to participation in a community life, a certain toughening of the mental hide is a better protection than the law could ever be.”
—Calvert Magruder
