25 5 / 2013
THIS BOOK WILL TAKE OVER YOUR LIFE: ‘BEFORE I FALL’ BY LAUREN OLIVER
So this week I wrote about Lauren Oliver’s Before I Fall, because reading it was a highly EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE for me. Seriously, it’s so good. Go read it now. Why are you on Tumblr when you could be reading it?!
24 5 / 2013
this will be out in the spring!
oh god, yes.
All the babies I know are gonna be getting this one.
(via yahighway)
24 5 / 2013
(via Billy Joel on Not Working and Not Giving Up Drinking - NYTimes.com)
Pretty sure this is the greatest picture of all time, and I’m a cat person.
23 5 / 2013
“If you met a hatchet-wielding hitchhiker in real life, would you laugh, or would you cross the street?
‘It’s important to realize how the funniness in these videos is really close to something that’s desperately unfunny,’ says Mark O’Connell, who wrote Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever.
He thinks of Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of the alleged Boston bombers, who became affectionately known as Uncle Ruslan by the collective public, and who was widely memed for calling his nephews ‘losers.’
‘This is a guy who is undergoing an incredibly traumatic experience, and then he becomes this ironic folk hero,’ O’Connell says. ‘It’s really weird.’”
Kai the Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker: Why did we love him? by Monica Hesse
Read the sample, bought it immediately.
Without reading this essay, here are my thoughts on why people (including me!) are so obsessed with the crazy characters that we get out of these news stories: because everyone else is so boring. These people are larger-than-life, they’re doing insane things, they’re saying even MORE insane things, and we love it. These the the sorts of people we typically only see on sitcoms or quirky indie movies, but here they are, in person, REAL, giving us a respite from the boring politeness of everyday life.
But, unlike in a quirky indie movie, sometimes people who act crazy are actually, legitimately crazy. Not in a fun way, but in the way where they sometimes kill people.
It’s the same reason I’m so drawn to movies/books in which crazy, kooky, or homeless people are presented as logical love interests. It’s fun to think that someone so out-of-the-ordinary is going to be your friend. In real life, if I met Mark Duplass’s character in Safety Not Guaranteed, I would do everything possible to avoid talking to him.
22 5 / 2013
"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences. (Roy Ascott’s phrase.) That solves a lot of problems: we don’t have to argue whether photographs are art, or whether performances are art, or whether Carl Andre’s bricks or Andrew Serranos’s piss or Little Richard’s ‘Long Tall Sally’ are art, because we say, ‘Art is something that happens, a process, not a quality, and all sorts of things can make it happen.’ … [W]hat makes a work of art ‘good’ for you is not something that is already ‘inside’ it, but something that happens inside you — so the value of the work lies in the degree to which it can help you have the kind of experience that you call art."
Brian Eno (via jessiethatcher)
I could reblog/post this every day as a constant reminder.
(via notational)
(via fishingboatproceeds)
21 5 / 2013
that’s too sweet i can”t even
Oh, crying.
How to be a good person 101. The best.
Guys, there’s a reason I had a crush on Zach Galifianakis back when I was in high school, before he was super-famous and he just had a Comedy Central special. Because I KNEW. THAT’S why I had his picture hanging in my locker…not just because I was a total weirdo.
(Source: lickypickystickyme)
21 5 / 2013
Swapping out the laces when I should be studying for a trig final….
This is my little brother. I was like this in high school, too, but insert “writing in my journal” or “listening to The Smiths” or “buying truly ugly sweaters at the thrift store” in for “swapping out the laces.”
