"Every car pulls in its own way. A good car presses very pleasantly against your back as if pushing with one hand. The main attraction of a good car is the quality of its propulsion, the quality of its acceleration. It has the effect of a singer’s crescendo. The voice-propulsion of the Fiat amplifies very pleasantly. You press the accelerator and the car, wild with enthusiasm, carries you forward. In some cars, acceleration is good but jerky. I especially remember a sixty-horsepower Mitchell of that sort. All your sensations are different in an automobile: you feel PROPULSION and peace of mind, PROPULSION and anxiety. But everything you feel is conditioned by sensation of movement pressing against you."

Zoo or Letters Not About Love, Viktor Shklovsky (1923)

Stetson, Age 11 →

Stetson, age 11: Vanilla and balmy with an undercurrent of musk, probably just like what the Electric Horseman smells like I think as I wrap the last of the Christmas tree lights around my Huffy Pro Thunder bike.

I’ve been walking these streets so long, singing the same old song

Fourteen strands of light run from the handle bars down to the front wheel guard, across the center bar, finishing at the chain guard. Every now and then Sharon glances over from her parent’s porch. I can’t tell if she’s annoyed or curious.

I know every crack in these dirty sidewalks of Broadway
Where hustle’s the name of the game

The extension cords, seven in all, run from the chain guard up to the socket by the back door. My little brother’s standing there waiting for the signal.

There’s been a load of compromising on the road to my horizon.

I put my hat on and give my chest another spray of Stetson. Straddling the Huffy now. From the top of the driveway. Almost ready.

I’m gonna be where the lights are shining on me.

Now!

Like a Rhinestone Cowboy. Riding out on a horse in a star-spangled rodeo.

Sing it, Glen. I hope Sharon’s watching this. I steal a glance for her.

Like a Rhinestone Cowboy.
Getting cords caught in spokes and flipping over handlebars,
hat smashed, both wrists probably sprained.

The first thing I do is look for my hat. I sit up and notice my hands are bleeding. Sharon has knelt down near me, she looks concerned. “Are you okay?” she asks. And I am. In fact, I’m perfect.

why do boys people have to grow up? it really ruins them.

Postfeminist Dystopias →

all ideologies are contradictory, impossible, unlivable, and impossible to replicate in real life.  But we still like to consume things that suggest that they are achievable — hell, that’s how aspirational, capitalist-based media culture works.

oh, and this

But she’s a bitch because ideology is fucked: she’s done what her culture, her media, her resultant ideals told her to do — and it SUCKS.  She’s so unsatisfied, so angry.  We don’t even know what her job is — because it DOESN’T MATTER, because postfeminism could give two shits about your job.

anne helen petersen, how can one human be SO AWESOME ALL THE TIME. i almost can’t take it.

(Source: worldcat)

View high resolution

maygrey:

The Secret Life of Plants (1979)

(Source: liljunebug, via gardenhd)

"There are no answers, only cross references."

Norbert Wiener (1894-1964). (via speciesbarocus)

(Source: en.wikiquote.org, via yottiemcgottie)

i think i may just have to get “i <3 the AFI” tattooed somewhere on my person if this kind of things keeps up.

the five empressions, hey lover.

Stanley Kubrick - One Point Perspective

(Source: cinematicfantastic, via youmissyouroldfamiliarfriends)

"The question Plato raises in Gorgias is whether or not practicing rhetoric is “mechanical” in the same way that a baker makes bread mechanically: as a rote habit that anyone could learn with enough practice. If rhetoric is mechanical, then it could not be considered an ethical practice, insofar as it relies upon habit versus true judgement or wisdom."

making good bread is an art. so is fixing my bike. so is composing a really charming email. and they’re all ethical acts too. fuck anyone who tries to put limits on my art or anyone else’s. also fuck anyone who tries to obscure the ethical dimensions of the quotidienne.