December 2009 Archives

—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.

“When I stopped, he stopped, too, regarding me out of greenish eyes as bright and cold as broken glass and nodding his head to indicate he knew my game.”

—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.

“Animals are wired to feel better and better when they are helped and so they feel pleasure when they find food or shelter or a mate. When we see the proportions in the golden ratio, we are helped. We feel pleasure and we call it beauty.”

“At each end of the solar spectrum the chemist can detect the presence of what are known as ‘actinic’ rays. They represent colors—integral colors in the composition of light—which we are unable to discern. The human eye is an imperfect instrument; its range is but a few octaves of the real ‘chromatic scale.’ I am not mad; there are colors that we cannot see.

“[W]here are the words to describe the glorious colours that are unknown to earthly eyes? Where the mind or imagination that can grasp the gorgeous scintillations of unheard-of rays as they emanate from the thousand nameless jewels of Barsoom?”

“Your loyalty is not to me but to the stars above.”

“Was it Plato who said, Life is terrible, but it isn’t serious?”

Were they the ’00s or were they the 00’s?

“Under her professional name, Pearl Younger, she showed it all nightly at the Pea Green House in Fort Smith, a gorgeous whorehouse celebrated far and wide as The Pride and Joy of the Great American Southwest.”

—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.

“Pairs of great woodpeckers larger than crows, with flashing white bills and crimson crests afire in the sun, crossed the river in deep bounding flight, and hurtling flocks of small long-tailed parrots, bright green as new leaves in the morning light. The wild things were shining with spring colors and new sap and finally I was, too. I would sink my teeth into this morning land like a fresh peach.”

—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.

“My claim to fame is that I’m one of the world’s foremost authorities on the history of typography. Unfortunately, that’s also my claim to obscurity.”

—Jeremy Edwards, Rock My Socks Off, 2010.

Inspired by the 50 most interesting articles on wikipedia and 50 more of wikipedia’s most interesting articles, I have been clicking away like a lab rat at the random article button on the left hand column of every wikipedia page, googling phrases like ‘interesting wikipedia articles’, and, I confess, borrowing heavily from the archives of best of wikipedia, to produce, for your adult edutainment, the DJ Misc list of 50 additional interesting wikipedia articles:

Stuckism
Superdollar
Chantilly lace
Oracle bone script
Alphabet
Claudian letters
Leet
Street dentistry
Dock Ellis
Sun Ra
Alchemy
Longest name
Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphioparaomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon
Kjerag
Pagan
Interesting number paradox
International Klein Blue
Orange revolution
Colors
Ukiyo-e
Love Land
Hitlers’ Cross
Forest swastika
Church of the SubGenius
Sandwich
Rumi
Floater
Language of flowers
International Talk Like a Pirate Day
Death from laughter
Sexuality of Abraham Lincoln
Chess boxing
Warp drive
Gramophone record
Megalith
Manhattanhenge
Faux Cyrillic
James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher
Reality Checkpoint
Spirit of Ecstasy
Triboluminescence
Green flash
Cosmic latte
Mondegreen
Spectral evidence
The Longest Most Meaningless Movie in the World
Thought terminating cliché
Wikipedia
Nothing

“Ted Smallwood testified that he had not witnessed the shooting, only heard it, so he could not say that Bill House’s account was not true ‘far as it went.’ House looked disgusted but remained silent. Smallwood and a couple of others signed their names and House and the rest took pains drawing their Xs, to make sure that X would not be mistaken for somebody else’s.”

—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.

“That Frenchman said he never held with no Father Who art in Heaven, ‘Man ees made in Hees ee-mage? Who say so? Black man? Red man? Which man? White man? Yellow man? God ees all thees color? Say tabsurde!’ ”

—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.

“Mama says that Indians, too, would suffer ‘Jim Crow’ laws if we hadn’t wiped most of them out with bullets and diseases. In south Florida today, there are few left, but Papa says they have started to come in to trade at Everglade with dugouts full of deer hides, plumes, and pelts. The women like calico in yellow, red, and black—coral snake colors, says Lucius, who knows everything there is to know about Indians and the natural world of the Glades country. Probably the coral snake has sacred meaning, our little boy explains, until Eddie scoffs at this opinions, reminding him that he is only nine.”

—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.

“Ted did not feel like being teased. He reminded me that it was this day in the month before, on April 22nd, that the white wake of the Great Comet was first seen in the east, thirty degrees above the horizon, with its scorpion tail that curled across the heavens like an almighty question mark. That question mark set our preacher a-howling about the eternal War between Good and Evil, and how that scorpion tail was the first sign of Armageddon.”

—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.

“[M]y first novel, The Poorhouse Fair . . . fell into the hands of Harry Ford, a perfect knight of the print world, an editor and designer both, who gave me a delicious striped jacket and an elegant page format, in the typeface called Janson, that I have stuck with for over forty books since. To see those youthful willful hopeful words of mine in that type, with Perpetua chapter heads set off by tapered rules, was an elevated moment I am still dizzy from.”

—John Updike, “Of Prizes And Print”, 1998.

“I drank up women’s tears and spat
them out
as 10-point Janson, Roman and ital.”

—John Updike, Endpoint and Other Poems, 2009.

“Chrysis had appeared through the western door on the first terrace of the ruddy monument. She was naked, as was the goddess. In each hand she held a corner of the scarlet veil which the wind raised against the evening sky while the mirror, held in her right hand, reflected the setting sun.
    Slowly, her head bowed, moving with infinite grace and majesty, she went up the outer steps which wound like a spiral around the high vermilion tower. Her veil trembled like a flame. The fiery afterglow reddened the pearl necklace so that it seemed a river of rubies. She mounted, and in this glory her resplendent skin took on all the magnificence of flesh, blood, fire, blue carmine, velvety red, bright pink. Revolving upwards with the great purple walls, she took her way towards the sky.”

—Pierre Louys, Aphrodite, 1896; translated by Lewis Galantiere, 1933.

“It was a lovely starlit night. They were on top of the Villejuif hill, when Paris appeared like a dark sea, and her millions of lights like phosphorescent waves; waves which were more clamorous, more passionate, more greedy than those of the tempestuous ocean; waves which are ever raging, foaming, and ever ready to devour what comes in their way.”

—Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo, 1845; anonymous translation, Barnes and Noble Classics, 2004.