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As incomprehensible as it may seem, I have somehow spent more than two hundred hours playing Oblivion. I know this because the game keeps a running tally of the total time one has spent with it. I can think of only one personal activity I would be less eager to see audited in this way.
Tom Bissell, Extra Lives -
We exposed college students to suggestive materials in order to lead them to believe that, as children, they had a negative experience at Disneyland involving the Pluto character. A sizable minority of subjects developed a false belief or memory that Pluto had uncomfortably licked their ear. Suggestions about a positive experience with Pluto led to even greater acceptance of a lovable ear-licking episode. False beliefs and memories had repercussions; those seduced by the bad suggestions were not willing to pay as much for a Pluto souvenir. These findings are among the first to demonstrate that false beliefs can have repercussions for people, meaning that they can influence their later thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors.
Shari R. Berkowitz, Cara Laney, and Erin K. Morris (University of California, Irvine), Maryanne Garry (Victoria University of Wellington), and Elizabeth F. Loftus (University of California, Irvine), “Pluto Behaving Badly: False Beliefs and Their Consequences.” Cited by William Saletan, in “The Recipe.” -
Autun, still as a churchyard. Tile roofs, dark with moss. The amphitheater. The great, central square: the Champ de Mars. Now, in the blue of autumn, it reappears, this old town, provincial autumn that touches the bone. The summer has ended. The garden withers. The mornings become chill. I am thirty, I am thirty-four—the years turn dry as leaves.
James Salter, A Sport and a Pastime -
The judge smiled and wished them both good luck. The lawyers sagged with relief, and a torrent of merry legal chitchat—speculation about the future of no-fault, reminiscences of the old days of Alabama quickies—excluded the Maples. Obsolete at their own ceremony, Joan and Richard stepped back from the bench in unison and stood side by side, uncertain of how to turn, until Richard at last remembered what to do; he kissed her.
John Updike, “Here Come the Maples.” -
[My father] and I never seemed to be in rapport: Our basic assumptions were very different. But that now looks superficial. I treat my sons much as he treated me: out of breath with impatience, and then a long inhalation of affection.
Saul Bellow, in a letter to Martin Amis dated March 13, 1996, as published in The New Yorker (April 26, 2010). -
To the house nurse, who complains that Caroline’s and Baby John’s toys are getting mixed up in the bathtub, Jack explains: “Yes, well, let me make a judgment about that. Now the uh following toys have been appropriated for tub use: 18 PT boats, three uh Yogi Bear uh beach balls, two Howdy Doody plastic uh bouncing clowns, a ball of uh Silly Putty and a rubber swan. Now, let me make a uh judgment on the dispersal of these items. Nine of the PT boats, two of the Yogi Bear uh beach balls, the uh ball of Silly Putty belong to uh Caroline. Nine of the PT boats, one of the Yogi uh Bear uh beach balls and the uh two Howdy Doody plastic bouncing clowns are Baby John’s … The rubber swan is mine.
Vaughn Meader, The First Family, a comedy record, as quoted in Time (November 30, 1962). (Via David Folkenflik) -
Question: Why are there no public restrooms? Answer: According to oral tradition, Mrs. Grant requested that there never be a public restroom in her tomb.
One of three “Frequently Asked Questions” posted on the National Park Service website for Grant’s Tomb. -
Critical work that has attempted to explain the experience of geographical and textual space in modern writing has focused predominantly on the map as an analytical tool of orientation that makes formal writing structures legible. My dissertation, however, articulates a positive and generative potential in the experience of getting lost. Disorientation, then, allows us to come to terms with the difficulty of modernist literature from the ground level—to view these works not as an abstraction seen from the “God’s eye” perspective that is implicit in most maps, nor a teleological outcome of the Enlightenment seen from retrospect. By restoring the experience of disorientation, I argue that getting lost becomes a radical discourse that reflects back to us how we orient ourselves—what we pay attention to as we move through physical space and how we construe meaning as we move through a text from page to page.
Adam Wheeler, Mappings, Unmappings, and Remappings, a supposed “work in progress” described in the curriculum vitae he submitted to The New Republic. -
For the 58 spots in which the study was able to identify the creative team, 92% of the creative directors were white males, 7% were white females, and one lone creative director was Latino. The Latino was not an agency employee, but the winner of a Doritos consumer contest.
Kuner Patel, “Study Finds Super Bowl Ad Creators are Overwhelmingly White and Male” (Advertising Age, May 10, 2010)
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Walking in the wind, Josey says “My breasts / are like martinis” and I hail a cab, know she means shaking, ice cold.
Jill McDonough, “Breasts Like Martinis”
A digital commonplace book, plus the occasional photograph of Virgil the basset hound.
