Sprezzatura

“When the pictures were taken and the family was about to leave, Mr. Philadelphia told Mr. Obama that his sons each had a question. In interviews, he and his wife, Roseane, said they did not know what the boys would ask. The White House photographer, Pete Souza, was surprised, too, as the photo’s awkward composition attests: The parents’ heads are cut off; Jacob’s arm obscures his face; and his older brother, Isaac, is blurry.

Jacob spoke first.

“I want to know if my hair is just like yours,” he told Mr. Obama, so quietly that the president asked him to speak again.

Jacob did, and Mr. Obama replied, “Why don’t you touch it and see for yourself?” He lowered his head, level with Jacob, who hesitated.

“Touch it, dude!” Mr. Obama said.

As Jacob patted the presidential crown, Mr. Souza snapped.

“So, what do you think?” Mr. Obama asked.

“Yes, it does feel the same,” Jacob said.”

Between the final season of Breaking Bad, the new Great Gatsby adaptation coming out, Moonrise Kingdom, Django Unchained, and The Dark Knight Rises I’m probably going to run out of money somewhere along the line. Probably quickly. This is a good year for entertainment

Slipping into Nietzsche mode again. Oh well. “All great thoughts are conceived by walking.” 

(Source: drunkonstevphen, via delacroix)

(Source: funnyordie)

is that Stephen Hawking?

(via whatafuckinfamilypicture)

"Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that ‘plagiarism’ farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. When a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten centuries and ten thousand men — but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington’s battle, in some degree, and we call it his; but there are others that contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone or any other important thing — and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite — that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that."

Mark Twain to Helen Keller—Keller had been accused (and acquitted) of plagiarizing a short story several years prior.

“These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.”

(Source: vikingpenguinbooks)

Shout out to my mother for being such a genuinely compassionate, kind person; Shout out to my sisters for being remarkably mature beyond their years. If I spent every second I should appreciating you guys I would have no time to do anything else. 

"

I was referred to Granada House in November 1989. “Referred” is a very polite way to put it. I was a patient in a rehab attached to a well-known mental hospital in Boston, and a psychiatrist in this rehab had established some credibility with me, and he opined that (1) unless I signed up for long-term treatment someplace, I wasn’t going to be able to stay off drugs and alcohol; and that (2) if I couldn’t find a way to stay off drugs and alcohol, I was going to be dead by 30. I was 27. This was not my first in-patient rehab, nor was it my first mental hospital.

Because certain myths about both addiction and halfway houses die hard, I’ll give you a little bio. I was raised in a solid, loving, two-parent family. None of my close relatives have substance problems. I have never been in jail or arrested—I’ve never even had a speeding ticket. In 1989, I already had a BA and one graduate degree and was in Boston to get another. And I was, at age 27, a late-stage alcoholic and drug addict. I had been in detoxes and rehabs; I had been in locked wards in psych facilities; I had had at least one serious suicide attempt, a course of ECT, and so on. The diagnosis of my family, friends, and teachers was that I was bright and talented but had “emotional problems.” I alone knew how deeply these problems were connected to alcohol and drugs, which I’d been using heavily since age fifteen.

Six months in Granada House helped me immeasurably. I still wince at some of the hyperbole and melodrama that are used in recovery-speak, but the fact of the matter is that my experience at Granada House helped me, starting with the fact that the staff admitted me despite the obnoxious condescension with which I spoke of them, the House, and the l2-Step programs of recovery they tried to enable. They were patient, but they were not pushovers. They enforced a structure and discipline about recovery that I was not capable of on my own: mandatory counseling, mandatory AA or NA meetings, mandatory employment, curfew, chores, etc. Not to mention required reading of AA/NA literature whether I found it literarily distinguished or not. […]

People at Granada House listened to me for hours, and did so with neither the clinical disinterest of doctors nor the hand-wringing credulity of relatives. They listened because, in the last analysis, they really understood me: they had been on the fence of both wanting to get sober and not, of loving the very thing that was killing you, of being able to imagine life neither with drugs and alcohol nor without them. They also recognized bullshit, and manipulation, and meaningless intellectualization as a way of evading terrible truths—and on many days the most helpful thing they did was to laugh at me and make fun of my dodges (which were, I realize now, pathetically easy for a fellow addict to spot), and to advise me just not to use chemicals today because tomorrow might very well look different.

An Ex-resident’s Story (Presumed to be David Foster Wallace, anonymous testimonial sent in to Granada House in Boston)

(Source: pork2k, via whatafuckinfamilypicture)

"The truth is that the heroism of your childhood entertainments was not true valor. It was theater. The grand gesture, the moment of choice, the mortal danger, the external foe, the climactic battle that resolves all-all designed to appear heroic, to excite and gratify an audience. An audience.” … “Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality-there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand? Here is the truth-actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested.” … “True heroism is you, alone, in a designated work space. True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probability and care-with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world. Just you and the job, at your desk."

David Foster Wallace (The Pale King)

(Source: freeheadlines, via whatafuckinfamilypicture)

A black widow you are indeed.

(via pileofthembones)