post a one paragraph or less from a book you're reading

[Idylle Moon Dancer]

Had it been some trace of that bizarre musical piping over a wide range which Lake’s dissection report had led us to expect... - and which, indeed, our overwrought fancies had been reading into every wind howl we had heard since coming on the camp horror - it would have had a kind of hellish congruity with the aeon-dead region around us...As it was, however, the noise shattered all our profoundly seated adjustments - all our tacit acceptance of the inner antarctic as a waste utterly and irrevocably void of every vestige of normal life. What we heard was not the fabulous note of any buried blasphemy of elder earth from whose supernal toughness an age-denied polar sun had evoked a monstrous response. Instead, it was a thing so mockingly normal and so unerringly familiarized by our sea days off Victoria Land...that we shuddered to think of it here...To be brief - it was simply the raucous squawking of a penguin.

At the Mountains of Madness
H.P. Lovecraft

[Magrittes Pipe]

1. the

[ghostsofgiants]

7. Fucking love that book!

[terrya]

2. From "Grief" by Andrew Holleran:

Of course museums are morgues - tombs containing art. Their sepulclral quality was part of their appeal - the dim light, the silence, the tourists wandering through them like ghosts.

[redqueen]

10. thanks

i think that may go on my 'to read' list
:)

[taterguy]

3. anyone recognize this?

Just for the record, I would like to have it be known by anyone who cares that I don’t think life is a perpetual dive. And even though it’s genuinely frightening, I don’t think Richard Hell’s fascination with death is anything else but stupid. I suspect almost every day that I’m living for nothing, I get depressed and I feel self-destructive a lot of the time and a lot of the time I don’t like myself. What’s more, the proximity of other human beings often fills me with overwhelming anxiety, but I also feel that this precarious sentience is all that we’ve got and, as simplistic as may seem, it’s a person’s duty to the potential of his own soul to make the best of it. We’re all stuck on this miserable earth where life is essentially tragic, but there are glints of beauty and bedrock joy that come shining through from time to precious time to remind anyone who cares to see that there is something higher and larger than ourselves. And I am not talking about your putrefying gods, I am talking about a sense of wonder about life itself and the feeling that there is some redemptive factor you must at least search for until you drop dead of natural causes. And all the Richard Hells are chickenshits who trash the precious gift too blithely, and they deserve to be given no credence, but shocked awake in some violent matter. Either that or be spanked and put to bed

[Idylle Moon Dancer]

5. was "chickenshits" part of 19th century vocabulary?

Poe?

[taterguy]

6. Close, Lester Bangs

[trackfan]

4. OK

Vilicae quae sunt officia curato faciat; si eam tibi dederit dominus uxorem, esto contentus; ea te metuat facito; ne nimium luxuriosa siet; vicinas aliasque mulieres quam minimum utatur neve domum neve ad sese recipiat; ad coenam ne quo eat neve ambulatrix siet.

[alcibiades_mystery]

8. From Gilles Deleuze, "Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953-1974"

Faced with the way our societies come uncoded, codes leaking on every side, Nietzsche does not try to perform a recoding. He says: this hasn't yet gone far enough, you're nothing but children ("the equalization of European individuals is the great irreversible process: we should accelerate it still more.") In terms of what he thinks and writes, Nietzsche's enterprise is an attempt at uncoding, not in the sense of relative uncoding which would be the decoding of codes past, present, or future, but an absolute uncoding - to get something through which is not encodable, to mix up all the codes. It is not so easy to mix up all the codes, even at the level of the simplest writing, and language. The similarity I see here is with Kafka, what Kafka does with German, in accordance with the linguistic situation of the Jews in Prague: he builds a war-machine in German against German; through sheer indetermination and sobriety, he gets something through in the German code which had never been heard before. Nietzsche, for his part, wants to be or sees himself as Polish with respect to German. He seizes on German to build a war-machine that will be uncodable in German. That's what style as politics means. More generally, how do we characterize such thought, which claims to get its flows through, underneath the laws by challenging them, and underneath contractual relations by contradicting them, and underneath institutions by parodying them? Let me come back quickly to the example of psychoanalysis. In what respect does a psychoanalyst as original as melanie Klein still remain within the psychoanalytic system? She explains herself quite well: the partial objects that she tells us about, with their explosions, their flows, etc., are only fantasy. The patients bring lived experiences, intensely lived experiences, to specifically a contract: give me your lived experiences, and I will give you fantasies. And the contract implies an exchange, an exchange of money and words. In this respect, a psychoanalyst like Winnicott truly occupies the limit of psychoanalysis, because he feels that this procedure is no longer appropriate after a certain point. There comes a point where it is no longer about translating, or interpreting, translating into fantasies, interpreting into signifiers and signifieds - no, not in the least. There comes a point where you will have to share his experience. Is it about a kind of sympathy, or empathy, or identification? But surely it's more complicated than that. What we feel is rather the necessity of a relation that would be neither legal, nor contractual, nor institutional. That's how it is with Nietzsche. We read an aphorism or a poem from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. But materially and formally, texts like that cannot be understood by the establishment or application of law, or by the offer of a contractual relation, or by the founding of an institution. Perhaps the only conceivable equivalent is something like "being in the same boat." Something of Pascal turned against Pascal. We're in the same boat: a sort of lifeboat, bombs falling on every side, the lifeboat drifts toward subterranean rivers of ice, or towards rivers of fire, the nOronoco, the Amazon, everyone is pulling an oar, and we're not even supposed to like one another, we fight, we eat each other. Everyone pulling an oar is sharing, sharing something, beyond any law, any contract, any institution. Drifting, a drifting movement or "deterritorialization": I say all this in a vague, confused way, since this is a hypothesis or a vague impression on the originality of Nietzsche's texts. A new kind of book.

[redqueen]

9. No poem at all,

it is formed, said Nabokov, by random "iambic incidents culled from the prose of Moby Dick." Such effects receive their fullest orchestration from Lolita, as the Notes to this volume will suggest.

[tjwmason]

11. Got some damn long paragraphs here

here is one of the shorter:

"When he was fully dressed he had to walk, with Willem trading on his heels, through the next room, which was now empty, into the adjoining one, hose double doors were flung open. This room, as K. knew quite well, had recently been taken by a Fraulein Buerstner, a typist, who went very early to work, came home late, and with whom he had exchanged little more than a few words in passing. Now the night-table beside her bed had been pushed into the middle of the floor to serve as a desk, and the Inspector was sitting behind it. He had crossed his legs, and one arm was resting on the back of the chair."

The Trial
Franz Kafka.

I haven't read any fiction for a while, and so decided to read it - only started it this evening.

[lizziegrace]

12. From "Letter to Brigit"

part of Viggo Mortensen's book Linger.

"I have been able to largely digest and assimilate the stronger surface emotions of your final morning. As much as I am and will continue to be haunted by your sweet, departing gaze when the brain-stopping serum was administered, time and the responsibilities resulting from your passing have more or less carried me away from that heartbreaking scene. I will always see your eyes slowly lose their gleam as I gently lay your head down. Will always remember your final generous gesture of rolling halfway over to let us rub your belly one last time before the doctor gave you the sedative."

For all of us who have ever lost a beloved pet. :hug:

[Ariana Celeste]

13. "Six weeks later, American soldiers landed near Santiago

on Cuba's southeastern coast. They fought 3 one-day battles, the most famous being the one in which Roosevelt, dressed in a uniform he had ordered from the Brooks Brothers, led a charge up Kettle Hill, later called San Juan Hill. On July 3rd, American cruisers destroyed the few decrepit Spanish vessels anchored at Santiago. Spanish forces soon ended their resistance, and the Cuban and American commanders, Generals Calixto García and William Shafter, prepared to accept their formal surrender. Before the ceremony, though, Shafter astonished García by sending him a message saying he could not participate in the ceremony or even enter Santiago. That was the first hint that the United States would not keep the promise Congress had made when it passed the Teller Amendment."

Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq

Stephen Kinzer

So far I'm loving this book- because it's an easy read. Honestly this is something a Sophomore/Junior in high school taking a US History class should read.

[Wetzelbill]

14. Cheating Death, Stealing Life : The Eddie Guerrero Story

The paragraphs are short so I'll just do this:

As I was getting into my TransAm, I grabbed a bottle of Renutrient and threw it into the backseat. Renutrient was a legal form of GHB, a drug that promotes fat reduction and muscle building by stimulating growth hormone release. It also gives you a hell of a buzz and makes you pass out. Looking back, I realize I was still feeling upset from my fight with Vickie and thinking very bad thoughts. I'll show you, I thought. I'll hurt myself.


The store was closed, so I went ahead and drove to the next convenience store up the road. I bought some eggs and a twelve-pack of beer, and then got back in the car.


Before I drove off, I decided to take some of the Renutrient. It's a liquid, taken by the capful. Usually one or two caps would put me down, but God help me, that night I took five good-sized shots.

[Nicole]

15. One paragraph

This section will show you ways to use herbs to support your health and well-being. In today's busy world, it is becoming increasingly important to rebuild vitality and strength. Emotional,work, or environmental stresses are undermining general health patterns, and conventional medicine doesn't always have the answers. Using herbs for their healing properties can help prevent problems from occurring by working gradually to increase general energy levels so your body can fight potential problems by itself.

The Herb Bible - A Complete Guide to Growing and Using Herbs
by Jennie Harding

[Richard Steele]

16. "The empress, delicate as she is, danced,....

...with her neck bare and her head uncovered,
every polonaise at this magnificant ball
in the garden of her cousin. In Russia every body
pursues his career to the limits of his powers.
The duty of an empress is to amuse herself to death."

'La Russie en 1839', by the Marquis de Custine
English Translation via the Longman edition of 1843

[Mutley]

17. "Follow me, reader!

Who ever told you there is no such thing in the world as real, true, everlasting love? May the liar have his despicable tongue cut out!

Follow me, my reader, and only me, and I'll show you that kind of love!

No! The Master was mistaken that night in the hospital when, just after midnight, he told Ivan bitterly that she had forgotten him. That could never be. Of course she hadn't forgotten him."

The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov

[miss_american_pie]

18. Where or When, Anita Shreve

Sometimes this information -- the small truths and the larger ones -- puzzles him: how one can be with a woman for so many years, ostensibly have shared so many intimacies (how many times had they made love, he wonders -- two thousand? three thousand?), and yet still feel fundamentally unkown in her presence.

[shugh514]

19. There has never been..

..upon the earth a generation of free men and women. It is not yet time to write a creed. Wait until the chains are broken - until dungeons are not regarded as temples. Wait until solemnity is not mistaken for wisdom - until mental cowardice ceases to be known as reverence. Wait until the living are considered the equals of the dead - until the cradle takes precedence of the coffin. Wait until what we know can be spoken without regard to what others may believe. Wait until teachers take the place of preachers - until followers become investigators. Wait until the world is free before you write a creed. In this creed there will be but one word - Liberty. (1877)

What's God Got To Do With It, Robert Ingersoll on Free Thought, Honest Talk & the Separation of Church & State

[RedCappedBandit]

20. So long and thanks for all the fish

...This plant has, or rather, had, a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

This is in the prologue of So Long and Thanks for All The Fish by Douglas Adams. You have to read the entire thing to get the whole effect, but this is the funniest part imo.

[Ikonoklast]

21. 'The Elegant Universe' , Brian Greene

Actually proving that the strong coupling physics of the Type 1 string theory is identical to the weak coupling physics of the Heterotic-O theory, and vice versa, is an extremely difficult task that has not yet been achieved. The reason is simple. One member of the pair of supposedly dual theories is not amenable to perturbative analysis, as its coupling constant is too big. This prevents direct calculations of its many physical properties. In fact, it is precisely this point that makes the proposed duality so potent, for, if true, it provides a new tool for analyzing a strong coupled theory: Use perturbative methods on its weakly coupled dual description.

Great book. Just started to re-read it this week.

[txwhitedove]

22. Poets Against the War, edited by Sam Hamill....

1st lines at Intro:

"We suffocate among people who think they are absolutely right,
whether in their machines or their ideas. And for all those who
can live only in an atmosphere of human dialogue, the silence is
the end of the world." --Albert Camus

Me: I am thankful for the dialogue in DU.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

23. from 'JPod' by Douglas Coupland

"Dirk, who's a friend of mine from Hewlett-Packard, sent me photos from his trip to Nagoya, using the Kodak EasyShare photo display system. Using its interface, I felt like I was time travelling to 1999. I half expected a pop-up window to tell me to submit my mailing address so that they could snail-mail me a 56K floppy. And then I got to thinking about it ... Kodak still exists? Even seeing its name makes me feel like I'm at a garage sale. I bet they stopped hiring young people in 1997."

p55

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPod

[taterguy]

24. Still depressingly relevant

This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it -- that we really are just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972