Not interesting.

Dear Ms. McNeece, Fuck You. Seriously.

Dear Ms. McNeece,

The bigotry shown by your decision to cancel prom shows a blatant disregard for the safety of your gay students. Kids look forward to prom, and having it taken away is surely going to cause some teenagers to retaliate against the people they feel are responsible. And it probably won’t be you, it’ll be the homosexual students in your school district.

You aren’t going to stop homosexuality by banning it at your prom, or by canceling your prom, or by creating a situation for gays to be attacked in a place they are legally required to attend. This story has already traveled around the globe, and people the world over are pointing their fingers at your bigotry. I hope you’re embarrassed because I sure am embarrassed for you.

Signed,
A. Coraccio
American resident of the Republic of Ireland

via The Stranger

i’ve got a slot at eye level like
a speakeasy door
and I know you know the password
cause I’ve seen you here before
And I’ve got something sweet for you
and I don’t care if it is more than you deserve

i’ve got a lot of love and a lot of nerve
so watch me while I take this curve

via pictures for sad children

Pizza scissors?!

yeah, i know it’s been awhile,
since i’ve stared at the stars.

The Art of Fiction No. 64

VONNEGUT
Many people see the Dresden massacre as correct and quite minimal revenge for what had been done by the camps. Maybe so. As I say, I never argue that point. I do note in passing that the death penalty was applied to absolutely anybody who happened to be in the undefended city—babies, old people, the zoo animals, and thousands upon thousands of rabid Nazis, of course, and, among others, my best friend Bernard V. O’Hare and me. By all rights, O’Hare and I should have been part of the body count. The more bodies, the more correct the revenge.

INTERVIEWER
The Franklin Library is bringing out a deluxe edition of Slaughterhouse-Five, I believe.

VONNEGUT
Yes. I was required to write a new introduction for it.

INTERVIEWER
Did you have any new thoughts?

VONNEGUT
I said that only one person on the entire planet benefited from the raid, which must have cost tens of millions of dollars. The raid didn’t shorten the war by half a second, didn’t weaken a German defense or attack anywhere, didn’t free a single person from a death camp. Only one person benefited—not two or five or ten. Just one.

INTERVIEWER
And who was that?

VONNEGUT
Me. I got three dollars for each person killed. Imagine that.

Via The Paris Review

Anyone whose goal is ‘something higher’ must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I don’t know if I buy into this whole foursquare thing, but I’m sure not going to let anyone else claim my house

— Famous last words from @nickdor

We’ve been taught that our government, ostensibly a representative democracy, is effectively neither. We’re powerless. We’ve had the civic engagement beaten out of us. Friedman’s assumption that we think our job is done is condescending and incorrect. We’ve been shown by all three branches of the federal government that they’ll do whatever they want regardless of popular opinion, that common sense and the people’s best interests don’t matter, and that there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it.

— No, we can’t

Nous sommes foutus. →