OMG SUSAN!

iowacity: From the bottom of the hill on Flickr. OH MAN THIS...

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:26:04 -0500

iowacity:

From the bottom of the hill on Flickr.

OH MAN THIS HILL. <3

Video

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:32:22 -0500

I hope the rising black smoke carries me far away, and I never...

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:33:00 -0500

I hope the rising black smoke carries me far away, and I never come back to this town again in my life

innumerable-gibbons: #GPOY ditto

Sun, 12 May 2013 10:57:24 -0500

innumerable-gibbons:

#GPOY

ditto

emperorsclubmusic: We played on Iowa Public Radio and they made...

Sat, 04 May 2013 07:45:40 -0500

emperorsclubmusic:

We played on Iowa Public Radio and they made a video: 4-30-13 (by iowapublicradio)

Our entire performance can be streamed here.

Love this. #iowafriends

here's that bad advice you were hoping for: Americans Dress Like Shit And It Displeases Me Greatly!

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:04:21 -0500

here's that bad advice you were hoping for: Americans Dress Like Shit And It Displeases Me Greatly!:

thatbadadvice:

Annie’s Mailbox, 24 April 2013:

Dear Annie: I am appalled by the way people dress. We dress so casually that women do not take pride in being women, and men are losing their dignity. I believe in equality, but do women have to dress like men? And everyone wears jeans with everything. We look…

Reblogged for “The revolution will be wearing some fucking slacks.”

thebluthcompany: A Great Gatsby/Arrested Development...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 06:52:43 -0500

thebluthcompany:

A Great Gatsby/Arrested Development Mash-up

[via]

I Don't Want to Live in the Land of the Brave Anymore

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 06:49:10 -0500

ceandersen:

beatyourwings:

I don’t want to be Theo. I desperately don’t want to be Theo. But as the molecules of Boylston Street’s pavement waft through New England tonight, I can’t help but feel that we’re all being asked to turn into some version of him.

Read More

on Boston.

A world of peace doesn’t exist if people don’t DO anything. He lists the options of response and rejects them all, but doesn’t offer or even try to imagine any new solution other than “peace.” I understand feeling fear if you feel fear and if that makes sense to you, but not trying to think around or to think up a way to change the culture of violence we live in doesn’t make any of this go away. Peace doesn’t happen via fear, just like it doesn’t happen via keeping calm and carrying on. Peace demands positive action, which starts when we imagine a world that might be more liveable and how to make it so.

My Dead Friends

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:39:00 -0500

by Marie Howe

I have begun,
when I’m weary and can’t decide an answer to a bewildering question

to ask my dead friends for their opinion
and the answer is often immediate and clear.

Should I take the job? Move to the city? Should I try to conceive a child
in my middle age?

They stand in unison shaking their heads and smiling—whatever leads
to joy, they always answer,

to more life and less worry. I look into the vase where Billy’s ashes were —
it’s green in there, a green vase,

and I ask Billy if I should return the difficult phone call, and he says, yes.
Billy’s already gone through the frightening door,

whatever he says I’ll do.

bad-postcards: THE WORLD’S LARGEST CEREAL PLANT QUAKER OATS...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 07:36:54 -0500

bad-postcards:

THE WORLD’S LARGEST CEREAL PLANT

QUAKER OATS COMPANY
Cedar Rapids, Iowa

This famous plant occupies some 20 buildings and covers an area of 15 acres and is the world’s largest cereal plant. The capacity of the seven towering Grain Elevators is nearly 10,000,000 bushels. This is one of the outstanding sights in Cedar Rapids which is known as “The Cereal Capital of the World.

I was just talking about the weird cereal smell in Cedar Rapids this weekend.

here's that bad advice you were hoping for: What Should I Do When Women Drink Alcohol?

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:01:29 -0500

here's that bad advice you were hoping for: What Should I Do When Women Drink Alcohol?:

One of the better ones of these, most of which are good to begin with.

thatbadadvice:

CultureMap Austin: Emotional Hardbody, April 10, 2013:

Dear Emotional Hardbody,
Last Wednesday there was a parents’ meeting at 7 p.m. at my son’s elementary school. Another mom of a child in my son’s class emailed a group of moms suggesting that we get together for dinner at Applebee’s…

calumet412: Advice to girls from the Chicago Day Book, 1916,...

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 07:19:57 -0500

calumet412:

Advice to girls from the Chicago Day Book, 1916, Chicago.

via Click Americana

Excited to hear that next year I will be old/desperate enough to start sitting in the laps of strangers.

"The wizards at Electronic Arts seem to understand cities as market-driven algorithms. Input people,..."

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 08:41:29 -0500

“The wizards at Electronic Arts seem to understand cities as market-driven algorithms. Input people, rules, and resources, and the results are stability, growth, and wealth. There is some rough justification for this attitude. The physicist Geoffrey West has plowed through vast quantities of urban data from all over the globe—frequency of illnesses, miles of roadway—and shown that cities become more efficient as they grow. Moreover, efficiency increases at the same rate everywhere, suggesting that you could predict the behavior of cities with one universal equation. It’s a mechanistic worldview guaranteed to delight a programmer, but West’s theory also has a second, squishier part. Cities, he points out, are physical manifestations of human interactions. The data reveal those social dynamics, but do not necessarily shape them. From Lagos to Los Angeles to Mumbai, the physical world is experiencing a great rushing tide of urbanization, which creates huge environmental problems and at the same time concentrates the creativity needed to solve them. In the Sims’ world, though, the masses migrate and settle, then file passively through their lives. SimCity’s engineers have repeated the same mistake made by countless potentates, forgetting that cities are forged both by master builders and the people who hack their grand plans.”

- Justin Davidson Explores the Addictive World of SimCity (via merxaus)

“…forgetting that cities are forged both by master builders and the people who hack their grand plans.” YES TIMES INFINITY

joala: IM CRYING

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:09:38 -0500

joala:

IM CRYING

Junot Diaz on Men Who Write About Women

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 08:24:09 -0500

The Atlantic: It sounds like you're saying that literary "talent" doesn't inoculate a writer—especially a male writer—from making gross, false misjudgments about gender. You'd think being a great writer would give you empathy and the ability to understand people who are unlike you—whether we're talking about gender or another category. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Junot Diaz: I think that unless you are actively, consciously working against the gravitational pull of the culture, you will predictably, thematically, create these sort of fucked-up representations. Without fail. The only way not to do them is to admit to yourself [that] you're fucked up, admit to yourself that you're not good at this shit, and to be conscious in the way that you create these characters. It's so funny what people call inspiration. I have so many young writers who're like, "Well I was inspired. This was my story." And I'm like, "OK. Sir, your inspiration for your stories is like every other male's inspiration for their stories: that the female is only in there to provide sexual service." There comes a time when this mythical inspiration is exposed for doing exactly what it's truthfully doing: to underscore and reinforce cultural structures, or I'd say, cultural asymmetry.

samarov: A few covers of Nelson Algren’s Neon...

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 08:07:39 -0500

samarov:

A few covers of Nelson Algren’s Neon Wilderness (courtesy of Google Image search)

Photo

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 10:59:00 -0500

meangirlsofcapitolhill: Sequestered Development: the story of...

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 07:26:09 -0600

meangirlsofcapitolhill:

Sequestered Development: the story of a wealthy country that lost everything and the government that had no choice but to keep the nation together.

electricband: “Mother wanted me to come out in a komono so we...

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:21:30 -0600

electricband:

“Mother wanted me to come out in a komono so we had quite the fight”

Oh Little Edie I love you

The revolutionary costume! You’ll never see this in East Hampton.

Photo

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:18:58 -0600