Build a house from sticks and mud / listen to the poison singing in your blood
This Year: 365 Songs Annotated, John Darnielle
It's pretty funny that the best summary of the John Darnielle theory of songwriting (not to mention best summary of the unique flavor of mental illness common to Mountain Goats fans) is a lyric in an unreleased song. This week I purchased tickets to every night of The Mountain Goats' November San Francisco residency ; financially this was probably unwise but I've had a rough last few weeks and sometimes the only thing standing between yourself and the siren song of wanting to check out from life entirely is knowing that you just have to get through the next four months and then you can get on a plane and go see your favorite band six nights in a row.
i have keys to an apartment in soho i stayed at once, and to a gun safe in a tattoo shop in Chicago, and to a storage room referred to fondly as Malkovich.
Submitted by mols. This has vague Mountain Goats lyrics energy to me, maybe it's just "storage room" reminds me of one of their songs.
And then there’s the showstopper: a looping crescendo that pleasantly combines the cock of a shotgun with the tones of an interstate car crash.
"In Praise of the Great-tailed Grackle, a Bird That Doesn’t Need Your Respect", Asher Elbein for the Audubon Society blog
You are a credit default swap with a discography attached.
"Stop Eating Lady Gaga's Oreos", Adam Mastroianni for his newsletter Experimental History
Submitted by Aaron.
I find centrism to be uninspired political messaging under the best of circumstances, but when the powerful are radically restructuring our politics, economy, relationships and environment, technocratic tinkering is political malpractice.
"This Could Be the Winning Issue for Democrats", Tressie McMillan Cottom for The New York Times
You’re only human; the spirit of the age will ragdoll you.
"How I Learned to Read Way, Way More", John Paul Brammer for his newsletter
Expertly deployed semicolon and "ragdoll" as verb is terrific.
Nobody's cooler than nonchalantly blood-spattered queers, I'd say.
The Feast Makers, H.A. Clarke
Submitted by Jackie.
Of the eight tastes I know about, I think cake probably tastes most like medicine and mud.
"I Work Very Hard, And I Would Like to Try Cake", A Horse for The Onion
It's a dream job really, to be stuck on an island counting all the insects.
Maxim Adams as quoted in an article for ABC News
Submitted by Mark.
Everything above ground was a maze, because everything had to accommodate an underground labyrinth of pollution that couldn’t be named, couldn’t be spoken of, that could only be remediated (or not) in silence.
"The Undervalley", Colin Dickey for Oakland Review of Books
Every tech bubble seems to recreate the flashmob from first principles.
"The Clear Channel Internet", Ryan Broderick for his newsletter Garbage Day
Submitted by Karen.
The producer, that large, anxious man, steams with enthusiasm.
Forty Stories, Donald Barthelme
The Brammer newsletter got me thinking about Bartheleme, who I read a lot in my 20s, so on Saturday I spent a little time reading some of his short stories. A lot of the perfection in his work is not so much at the sentence level and more the armature of the story itself, but he doe pull off some bangers.
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