Anne Trubek in Notes from a Small Press, on her abandoned career in academia:

Eighteen years later, at a department meeting, she told me I had always been difficult. I had started off that way. Remember, she said, I demanded an office with a window as a condition of accepting the job, forcing her into the storage closet. Nothing had been said about this in the intervening years—during which another colleague had moved to an office out of the suite, because the dysfunction amongst the four of us was so high she could not bear it.

As someone who myself spent years dreaming of becoming an academic—and didn’t—but did marry one—this whole piece captures so well the romance and claustrophobia and insane competition of that world. The best evocation of it I’ve encountered since the vivid (and weirdly similar) Vladimir by Julia May Jonas.

Re: 2015 travels in Tibet: The further I get from that trip, the more impressed I am by the photos from it, all taken on a standard-issue iPhone 5. I had so much fun with that camera.

I re-did the Lightplay archives so each entry has a hyperlinked cover image. In doing so, I realized one of my 2015 travelogues from south-eastern Tibet never got posted. So I tracked it down, added it, and sure felt a pang of missing that corner of the world.

The scariest words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to decide what you can and cannot do with your body.

Santa Monica, May 2023

Schadenfreude, n., pleasure derived from another’s misfortune.

__________, n., relief derived from the decline of a social media platform where you never developed a following.

Sitedeklinenrelief?

Today in megalomania: Who is the American Bohumil Hrabal? Could I?

Just re-installed Webster’s 1913 onto the MacOS dictionary app—and it continues to absolutely rip. (Somehow my previous install had broken.) Thanks @craigmod@mastodon.social for the last-mile work of getting this out-of-copyright masterpiece into an app where one actually, constantly uses it.

West Hollywood, April 2023

West Hollywood, May 2023

San Pedro, May 2023

Jeet Heer in his rebuke of Harvard’s slavering embrace of post-conviction Jeffrey Epstein:

The modern neoliberal university is a shark that must constantly consume donations in order to stay alive.

The only rocket ship I want is a rowboat full of arugula.

Great article on dark online patterns that trick you into not unsubscribing. I always thought my online literacy protected me—that dark patterns, awful for others, were merely a hassle for me. But last year, after I “unsubscribed,” the Wall Street Journal took me for over $300.

Tired: conspicuous consumption

Wired: conspicuous consumption of the commons

A chicken covering “Work” by Rihanna.

(Am I telling on myself as a millennial with this joke? (Am I double-telling with this (these!) meta-concerns?))

West Hollywood

Western Canon

My father once told me his favorite tombstone inscription:

What I am you shall become.

Sort of the opposite of Neil Young telling his old man to take a look at his life and see how “I’m a lot like you were.”

Ah, our fleeting numbered days, our many ephemeral returns!

Undoubtedly the best thing among many good things here are the simply enormous hands. But also: the silhouette resembling a twirly tutu. And of course the idea of such a card being used for “trading”. No notes, you can find me on Truth Social eight days a week baby.

Introverts.

Love these johnny-come-latelies in San Francisco wringing their hands about seeing drug users on the streets, when this is how San Franciscans spent the 1890’s:

(pic via this great post on Victorian opium den photos.)

At the bottom of an article on Yahoo News about a gang shooting in LA: a comments section full of dozens and dozens of not just racist but truly Nazi-, Jim Crow-level hate speech. Reported at least thirty posts. So unexpected and vile; unflushed toilet vibes. Do better, humans!

Just noticed the Botox lady’s sign is fading. It’s been up for years. Are its days numbered?

How sad it would be to live in a neighborhood without her visage peering down like a god, forever begging the question: is she, uh, holding a mask of someone else’s perfect, puffy face?

You know you’re at the post office when the back door features a narrow letter slit. Let‘s gooooo!