“Every asylum in this nation is filled with poor souls who simply cannot stand lanolin, cellophane, plastic, television, and subdivisions.”
John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
I Hate Plastic and Subdivisions
“Every asylum in this nation is filled with poor souls who simply cannot stand lanolin, cellophane, plastic, television, and subdivisions.”
John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
Thursday, September 17, 2009
An Ordinary Catholic Woman
The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy
Sometimes when she mentions God, it strikes me that my mother uses him as but one of the devices that come to hand in an outrageous man’s world, to be put to work like all the rest in the one enterprise she has any use for: the canny management of the shocks of life. It is a bargain struck at the very beginning in which she settled for a general belittlement of everything, the good and the bad. She is as wary of good fortune as she is immured against the bad, and sometimes I seem to catch sight of it in her eyes, this radical mistrust: an old knowledgeable gleam, as old and sly as Eve herself. Losing Duval, her favorite, confirmed her in her election of the ordinary. No more heart’s desire for her, thank you. After Duval’s death she has wanted everything colloquial and easy, even God.
"But now do you know what he wants to do? Fast and abstain during Lent." Her eyes narrow. Here is the outrage. "He weighs eighty pounds and he has one foot in the grave and he wants to fast." She tells it as a malignant joke on Lonnie and God. For a second she is old Eve herself.
Sometimes when she mentions God, it strikes me that my mother uses him as but one of the devices that come to hand in an outrageous man’s world, to be put to work like all the rest in the one enterprise she has any use for: the canny management of the shocks of life. It is a bargain struck at the very beginning in which she settled for a general belittlement of everything, the good and the bad. She is as wary of good fortune as she is immured against the bad, and sometimes I seem to catch sight of it in her eyes, this radical mistrust: an old knowledgeable gleam, as old and sly as Eve herself. Losing Duval, her favorite, confirmed her in her election of the ordinary. No more heart’s desire for her, thank you. After Duval’s death she has wanted everything colloquial and easy, even God.
"But now do you know what he wants to do? Fast and abstain during Lent." Her eyes narrow. Here is the outrage. "He weighs eighty pounds and he has one foot in the grave and he wants to fast." She tells it as a malignant joke on Lonnie and God. For a second she is old Eve herself.
This Explains Everything Part 3
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert B. Cialdini
Salesmen, advertisers and other compliance professionals manipulate us through use of these six principles of persuasion:
--our human sense of reciprocity
--need for internal commitment/consistency
--attraction to scarcity
--being influenced by liking someone or something,
--appeals to authority, and
--social proofs.
Salesmen, advertisers and other compliance professionals manipulate us through use of these six principles of persuasion:
--our human sense of reciprocity
--need for internal commitment/consistency
--attraction to scarcity
--being influenced by liking someone or something,
--appeals to authority, and
--social proofs.
This Explains Everything Part 2
Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior, by Geoffrey MillerOur successes and failures (and consumer purchases) are linked to these traits--all genetic, heritable and consistent through life:
1. intelligence
2. openness
3. conscientiousness
4. agreeableness
5. stability
6. extroversion
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Thomas Wolfe on Aline Bernstein and Aline Bernstein on Thomas Wolfe
William B. Wisdom had been gathering Wolfe's writings for years. He planned to establish a memorial at Harvard--a collection of all the Wolfe material he could get hold of, including, he hoped, the passionate love letters between Wolfe and Mrs. Bernstein. The sweetests and ugliest sentiments were conveyed in those letters. One of the most memorable salutations, for example, read, "My heavy-breasted, grey-haired Jewish bitch, I love the stench of your plum-colored arm-pits."
. . .
After several years of negotiating, Wisdom purchased [Bernstein's letters from Wolfe]. Mrs. Bernstein demanded that every penny of the money due her go to the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies. Writing to [Maxwell Perkins] about this stipulation, she said: "It will be a retaliation for all the insults to the Jews that Tom hurled at me."
Max Perkins, Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg, Pocket Books, 1978, p.524-525
. . .
After several years of negotiating, Wisdom purchased [Bernstein's letters from Wolfe]. Mrs. Bernstein demanded that every penny of the money due her go to the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies. Writing to [Maxwell Perkins] about this stipulation, she said: "It will be a retaliation for all the insults to the Jews that Tom hurled at me."
Max Perkins, Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg, Pocket Books, 1978, p.524-525
This Explains Everything
Anne-Louise-Germaine de Stael-Holstein (nee Necker)
Madame de Stael
Delphine (1802)
5-page tale "The Reasons Why Leontine de Ternan Decided to Become a Nun.
"I was once a very beautiful woman, and I am now fifty years old. The two absolutely ordinary facts have been the cause of everything I have ever felt in life."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22689?email
Madame de Stael
Delphine (1802)
5-page tale "The Reasons Why Leontine de Ternan Decided to Become a Nun.
"I was once a very beautiful woman, and I am now fifty years old. The two absolutely ordinary facts have been the cause of everything I have ever felt in life."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22689?email
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Winky Dink and You
There remains in my aging brain a neural connection that holds the memory of using a crayon to write on the screen of my television set as a pre-schooler.
What was I doing?
Using the Winky Dink and You TV Kit.
Click here to see an interesting description of this program including a clip of host Jack Barry's shameless pitch to incite young children to buy the kit. Among various fifties television sales to young children, this was among the most innovative with a relative long "playtime" use.
www.tvparty.com/requested2.html
Even more shameless was Ding Dong School marm Miss Francis's pitch for Wheaties.
What was I doing?
Using the Winky Dink and You TV Kit.
Click here to see an interesting description of this program including a clip of host Jack Barry's shameless pitch to incite young children to buy the kit. Among various fifties television sales to young children, this was among the most innovative with a relative long "playtime" use.
www.tvparty.com/requested2.html
Even more shameless was Ding Dong School marm Miss Francis's pitch for Wheaties.
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