From an essay in the American Scholar by Christian Wiman, about cancer, suffering, and faith:

"Experience seems to stream clearly through some lives, rather than getting slowed and clogged up in the drift-waste of ego, or stagnating in little inlets of despair, envy, rage. It has to do with seizing and releasing as a single gesture. It has to do with standing in relation to life and death like those late Bontecou mobiles, owning an emptiness that, because you have claimed it, has become a source of light, wearing your wound that, like a ramshackle house on some high exposed hill, sings with the hard wind that is steadily destroying it."

Opening paragraphs of Dexter Filkins's review of "No Easy Day":

"Earlier this year, under a half-moon in eastern Afghanistan, I found myself on a C-130 transport plane with a group of American Special Operations commandos — maybe Navy SEALs, maybe Army Rangers. The operators, as they like to call themselves, had come for a mission, carried it out and were hitching a ride back to their base. They had long hair and long beards, and their eyes were very hard. They didn’t smile and they didn’t talk, not even to one another. When the plane landed, they disappeared.

In the 11 years since 9/11, Special Operations commandos like SEALs and Rangers have done the dirty work of America’s wars. By day, ordinary soldiers may be trying to win over the locals with water projects and new schools, but at night the SEALs and Rangers are swooping into villages and killing and dragging away guerrilla leaders. In Afghanistan, Special Operations teams carry out dozens of these missions every night: Kill and capture, kill and capture, kill and capture. It makes the eyes very hard."

These three links describing a sequel to Patrick Swayze's "Roadhouse" are the funniest stuff I have read in a year. 

http://flint.craigslist.org/wet/3192431130.html

http://flint.craigslist.org/wet/3210111484.html

http://flint.craigslist.org/wet/3237585586.html

"After a couple minutes of Guy Cooler and Captain Karl rappin' about last night's babes through the john door, we hear monster trucks outside. Guy Cooler dives out the window on top of one and starts punchin' the windshield in. Captain Karl grunts out a premie and comes outta the john with a chainsaw, but runs down the stairs instead of divin' out the window. . .'cause he's carryin' a chainsaw."

I could not praise this stuff any higher-- not even if my own son wrote it.  (My hypothetical son, that is.)  My favorite part is that this fantastically well-written material is not in Shouts and Murmurs or McSweeneys or The Onion.  It's in the Flint, Michigan Craigslist.  As Bart Simpson said, "That's called committing to the bit."

The brains behind this is the dude who writes the Karl Welzein Twitter feed.  AKA "Dad Boner."

https://twitter.com/DadBoner

I'm not sure who he is, which is part of what I like about it.

Here are two things I read within a day of each other at the end of July.  I meant to post them back then, but life distracted me.  I re-read the first one last night.

The first is from section 7 of “I Sing the Body Electric,” by Walt Whitman.  This poem appears, (rather appropriately, as you will see), in his group of poems titled, “Children of Adam”:

A man’s body at auction,
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.

Gentlemen look on this wonder,
Whatever bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,
For the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant,
For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll’d.

To continue this blog in an elegiac tone for another post: 

Mary Karr has two fantastic poems in Poetry magazine this month about suicide.  The links are below.  Well, to be honest, I suppose they are kind of about…

As they say over in the old sod, brilliant:

Big ups to the Gray Lady.  Both of these are completely kick ass.

"A Simple Bike Race."

"One Race, Every Medalist Ever."

This is one finely written article.  Check out my man's bio from his website:

He received a Masters in International Relations from Cambridge University, a Masters in New Media and Information Systems from the London School of Economics, and a JD from Yale Law School.  The recipient of a Marshall Scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, he blah blah blah blah....

Boy, do I hate reading a bio like that.  I assume he also holds the World Record in the 5000 meter, invented the touchscreen visual display, and is now patiently nursing Lindsay Lohan back to health on a small yet fried-chicken-filled island in the Caribbean.  The bastard.

I'm not a football fan, and had never heard of this guy--and even I love this article.

"I was part of the inaugural rookie symposium the N.F.L. conducts to help college players make the transition to professional football. Three days of meetings pretty much consisted of the same two messages: use a condom and save your money."

Or friend who sells the New Yorker.  Then, read "Transatlantic," by Colum McCann.  It's behind the paywall.  I mention it here in a linkless post anyway since it will be worth the effort.

"In spite of his exile, he had a wide circle of friends and admirers to whom he wrote unbuttoned letters.  In the most famous of these, to Francesco Vettori, we glimpse his addiction to hobnobbing with simple people over cards and drinks at the tavern.  When in the late afternoon he is through with that recreation, he goes home, dresses in the handsome garments, and converses with the ancients, 'asking' them about their lives and actions.  During these four studious hours he is never bored; he forgets his poverty and disgrace, and does not fear death."

-From Dawn to Decadence, p. 259

Lauren Collins on UK rag, The Daily Mail.  Collins is such a fun writer.  She could make an article about bags of poo interesting.  Unfortunately, that one is behind the paywall.

Andrew Sullivan's readers write in about football's concussion crisis.  This one is great.  Also on the Dish, the man himself has a very good post titled, "Jesus and Sex."  Toward the end of the post, which is largely about forgiveness, Sullivan acknowledges his own failings and quite eloquently concludes, "I am unworthy to deliver such a message. But if no broken being can speak to the truths he cannot always live up to and has often strayed from, then we would have a great deal of silence."  It's nice seeing Andrew, as his fans call him, resort to blunt modesty like that.

Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a devastating rebuke to Juan Williams.

David Brooks is my homeboy.  A lot of people dis him because he veers off into psychology, (pop or otherwise), rather than constantly rebuking his fellow travelers on the right.  I am fine with him writing about what he feels like because:  first of all, I don't need yet more commentary to convince me the GOP is intellectually bankrupt; and secondly, unlike snobs who live in think-tanks, I don't read psychology journals all day and don't care if he is dumbing it down for me.*  But anyway, I appreciate his efforts, along with his NYT colleague Ross Douthat, to remind people that not everyone on the right is insane, cynical, stupid, or some dangerous combination of the three.  Here are three recent articles by him I dug.

And with that, I offer a toast:  to a vibrant Media Filter in the coming weeks, months, and yea, centuries, throughout which DennisOToole.com will entertain and instruct all who need it most.


*Note a day later: this is an infelicitous phrase in a run-on sentence, but you know what I mean.  There are two connotations for "to dumb it down."  One is "to make the complex accessible;" the other is "to dilute original, intelligently crafted research while insulting the intelligence of the audience."  Clearly I mean the former.  But, since Brooks is accused of the latter, I am making the distinction.  As for the snobs in think-tanks line, that alludes to one very harsh critique I saw of Brooks's forays into psychology.  Don't feel like linking to it.  Trust me.  It exists.

This blog post is so intellectually satisfying that I just can't handle it.

"The Book of Jobs," a very long and very excellent article on Steve Jobs, by Maureen Tkacik.

(Posted via a Mac.)

Two fans offer suggestions for new Comedy Central show, "Key & Peele."