|k| clippings: 2015-08-03 — monday's dog-o-war

Today’s WORK is a little more intense than Monday feels for me this morning, but not by much.

Here’s a way to beat the day’s doldrums: enter the (Cormac) McCarthyisms Contest…one prize for a lucky avid reader, another for he or she who dares to scribble.

WORK

“Last of all my turn will come after someone’s spear or sword has removed the life from these limbs; and my dogs, turned savage, tear me to pieces at the entrance to my palace. The very dogs I have fed at table and trained to watch my gate will lie in front of my doors, restlessly lapping their master’s blood. It looks well enough for a young man killed in battle to lie there mutilated by a sharp spear: death can find nothing to expose in him that is not beautiful. But when an old man’s dogs defile his grey head, his grey beard and his genitals, wretched mortals plumb the depths of human misery.”

—Homer
—from The Iliad (trans. by E.V. Rieu; edited by Peter Jones)

WORD(S)

facinorous (facinorious, facinerious) /fa-SIN-ə-rəs/. adjective. Seriously, jaw-droppingly wicked. From Latin facinorōsus (criminal, wicked), from facinus (deed, especially bad deed).

“Nay, ’tis strange, ’tis very strange, that is the
brief and the tedious of it; and he’s of a most
facinerious spirit that will not acknowledge it”
(William Shakespeare)

“I am conscious that in arguing against the ”more deadly than the male“ conception of the woman criminal I am perhaps doing my book no great service. It might work for its greater popularity if I argued the other way, making out that the subjects I have chosen were monsters of brutality, with arms up to the shoulders in blood, that they were prodigies of iniquity and cunning, without bowels, steeped in hypocrisy, facinorous to a degree never surpassed or even equalled by evil men.” (Victor MacClure)

“Thirdly, consider the utter arrogant and facinorious nature of what the socialists are saying. It is in essence, ‘you produce and we will distribute,’ or ‘you work and we will enjoy the result,’ or more bluntly, ‘we will take from you what you have made.’” (John Bowman)

WEB

1. It’s not funny because it’s true… → Every Single Word Spoken by a Person of Color in [Mainstream Film Title]

2. “Non-writers often believe ‘the muse’ is a friendly spirit who whispers ideas into warm, receptive minds. This is a charming misconception. The muse is a muscular, nude hermaphrodite with tentacles, wings, and the antlered head of a stag.” → The Fantastically Normal Life of a Writer

3. Making Paper from Seaweed: Papermaking with Atlantic BioInvader Codium Fragile

4. Eat Pigeon: An Introduction to M.F.K. Fisher, History’s Best Food Writer

5. Today in 1527, the first known letter (in English) is sent from North America to King Henry VIII from John Rut who was on a mission for the King to find the Northwest Passage. This was about the time that Henry was deciding to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, ultimately leading to the Reformation, so perhaps he was too busy to reply. At any rate, no further record of John Rut remains.

WATCH/WITNESS

Photographer David Kaszlikowski located this Himalayan mountain pool using a drone and then photographed it using “a 30-second exposure shot with a Canon 5D Mark III on a tripod. While the shutter was open, he ‘painted’ the water and surrounding area with an LED, creating an eerie glow on the ice and sky. ” That should mean something to photographers in the Clamor. I just think it’s eerily pretty.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader S. writes in regarding Dali’s ‘Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko)’: “…that Dali you pointed to is my favourite of his. My first serious girlfriend’s Dad had a copy of it in his house which I’d stare at whilst laying in bed after, well, you know, and it was the perfect distance away from the bed, right at the tipping point between seeing the details and seeing the macro. Brought back nice memories.”

• Reader G. keeps it simple. In response to Christine Baumgarthuber’s It Ought to be Called Vice Cream, she writes: “I love ice cream.”

• Reader B. observes, about the same piece: “I liked the ice cream passage, but am madly in love with the name ‘Baumgarthuber’.”

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