pretentiousilliterate

[pretentiousilliterate]

realized today that I’m the kind of person who, when someone says they’re eating Paleo now, says ‘oh, me too, sorta,’ when what I really meant is that I had some nuts for breakfast.

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Chrysalis

by Jenny Molberg

Butterfly rain-forest chrysalis webcam

Florida Museum of Natural History

I want to see, somewhere, 

the hot, cocooned unfolding

of metamorphosis. The caterpillars

are flown in from El Salvador,

or New Guinea, and inside

the dewed glass, shadows of men in white coat cloak

the tic of emergent wings - 

What of the future do you hold 

inside yourself? See: if you take a scalpel 

and puncture the chrysalis,

it will explode - yellow goo

of cells, burst cells, amino acids,

proteins, here a bit of gut,

here a bit of brain.

A thing builds a shell around itself,

dissolves, becomes another thing.

The way, when you are wrecked

with love, you take only what you need,

you, liquid version of yourself,

all heart cells and skin cells -

here a trough of heart,

here, gutter of liver, channel

of hearing or touch. What remains,

as with the caterpillar, is memory.

See, we melt entirely.

I have been a child, a lake, a glacier,

glacier pool, woman, river of woman, 

another woman, an older one.

The oldest scientist asks, If we are all 

creatures of transformation,

if we are never quite the same,

what are we

when we arrive at the moment of death?

It is easier to think in death

that I am me, but dying. See: 1668.

The Dutch naturalist Jan Swammerdam

dissects a caterpillar for Cosimo de Medici.

And though we now think

everything ends,

turns to soup, to river, to ash

and what’s passed is past, he unfolds

the white sides of the insect and reveals

two wing-buds, tucked 

tight inside the skin.

Now, as I watch the knife

pierce the chrysalis,

a river of cells swelling through

and out, I remember

what my father once said,

that what you see is only a fraction

of what you refuse to believe,

and against the edge of the chrysalis,

embryonic half-wings twitch

without a body, waiting

for their slow decay, and then

for the next body

that opens itself

to the risk of flight.

[pretentiousilliterate]

New Year’s Resolutions

Meditate every day

Exercise most days

Drink a little less

Eat little better 

Keep track of what I’m reading

Occasionally update this blog

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oh no I missed the window when I should have gotten up to get food and now I’m too hungry to move. 

Send help.

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Charlie is genius, right, he's made from a million old pieces of bubble gum. Imagine that. In the summer of 1976 on the way home from an Alice Cooper concert, Charlie started to melt on the pavement. It was too hot in L.A and he melted, like a pink bitch. Luckily though, there was Eric Phillips, a local crocodile who dabbled in black magic. He took pity on Charlie, and scraped him off the floor with a pair of fish slicers. He poured him into an antique soup ladle, and boarded his magic carpet, destination, Alaska. Eric Phillips decided to refreeze Charlie, but in his cold blooded reptilian haste, he refroze him into the shape of a hoover. Charlie wasn't phased though, he just zoomed about the place, sucking up Inuits. The Inuits didn't mind. They loved it in Charlie's big tight warm belly pouch, and they refused to come out. Charlie said, "I'm cool with that," and set fire to a posh hammer to make it official. The downside was that the Inuits suffocated immediately. It was air-tight in there. Charlie panicked, and fired the tiny Inuit bullets into to Eric's crocodile peepers. The green shape, was frozen. After a quick drink, Charlie stole Eric Phillip's magic carpet, and left for Seattle. Charlie was racked with guilt. He'd killed 50 Inuits, no one needs that. He decided to spend the rest of his life putting small hairstyles onto boots, monkey nuts, trumpets, and spanners.

[pretentiousilliterate]

One Is One

Heart, you bully, you punk, I'm wrecked, I'm shocked stiff. You? you still try to rule the world--though I've got you: identified, starving, locked in a cage you will not leave alive, no matter how you hate it, pound its walls, & thrill its corridors with messages.

Brute. Spy. I trusted you. Now you reel & brawl  in your cell but I'm deaf to your rages, your greed to go solo, your eloquent threats of worse things you (knowing me) could do. You scare me, bragging you're a double agent

since jailers are prisoners' prisoners too. Think! Reform! Make us one. Join the rest of us, and joy may come, and make its test of us.

Marie Ponsot, The Bird Catcher

[pretentiousilliterate]

I have been asked about my thoughts on Lena Dunham, so here they are. I am rambling and disjointed here because I am still thinking through all this. I am only speaking for myself and many people are going to disagree with my point of view and that’s okay. We’re not always going to agree but I do...

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shoulder cap. That's what they call the kind of tattoo I want. Noting for later.

Rose shouldercap 

Kirsten Holliday, Wonderland Tattoo, Portland, Oregon

tumblr: @kirstenmakestattoos

instagram: @onholliday

[pretentiousilliterate]

I actually think this is a lot more honest and a preferable way of going about things. In this case, it feels like a kick in the teeth because the guy is so accomplished, but it's transparent and keeps people from wasting their time sending in useless applications. I also, in general, believe in hiring adjuncts internally or locally, because it is an particular kind of meritocracy-above-all BS to SCOUR THE COUNTRY and make somebody move 3,000 miles for a job that pays freakin' $18,000 a year, when you have perfectly qualified candidates for the job living right across the street.

One more thing that makes it harder for adjuncts to get jobs: job ads that are specifically crafted towards the one person the university already plans to hire.

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I do think it can be really difficult to live like you’re 22 when you’re 32.

Billfold commenter EatMoreDumplings, on lifestyle creep and stagnant salaries. (via hello-the-future)

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A More Pragmatic Klan Rally

"White supremacy!" 

"I think that’s definitely a part of our eventual vision, but it’s a bit up-in-the-clouds for our user base. Let’s be a little more realistic." 

"White power!" 

"I love that enthusiasm. Is there a way we can see that tempered with some real-world logistics?” 

"White competence!" 

"Let’s start with that." 

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Right now, children’s literature is seeing an intense flare-up in the ongoing conversation about the diversity crisis in children’s books. While this conversation has been going on for decades, now social media has given the people having it megaphones, and they are using them to brilliant ends....

[pretentiousilliterate]

I kind of lost it in the comments section. But come on! Why do so many people who write about this subject refuse to make even the tiniest bit of intellectual effort?

Trigger Warnings and the Novelist’s Mind

Jay Caspian Kang on how trigger warnings might affect the creative process: http://nyr.kr/1hdzXfc

“A writer friend of mine once likened a completed novel to a pressure cooker—the weight placed on every stylistic decision should be extraordinary and evenly distributed. A trigger warning or, really, any sort of preface, would disrupt the creation of those highly pressurized, vital moments in literature that shock a reader into a higher consciousness.”

Illustration by Nishant Choksi.

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I mean, me, if they paid me enough? And probably most people?  "What kind of a person would accept a job that probably pays pretty well and most likely isn't all that demanding, especially compared to, like, coal mining?" What kind of a question is that? The kind of question only an outrageously moneyed person would ask.

Call it “Downton Abbey” syndrome: The newest trend among the world’ s ultra-rich is to have a butler. But what type of person would willingly give over his life to serving the outrageously moneyed?

[pretentiousilliterate]

please watch this this video made me into who i am today