Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

I had exacted revenge. But for whom? For one act, or many? Against one man, many men or the world? I wondered if I should feel guilty. Should I have felt some pride in my action? Had I done a brave thing? Had I done an evil thing? Was it evil to kill evil? The truth was that I didn’t care. It was this apathy that left me wondering about myself-not wondering why I didn’t feel anything or whether I was incapable of feeling, but wondering what else I was capable of doing. It was not an altogether bad feeling.

— Percival Everett / James

You were so small in my hands
no shrapnel could hit you,
but the dust and
smoke of the bomb
rushed into your lungs.
No need for any gauze.
They just closed your eyes.
No need for any shroud.
You were already
in your swaddle blanket.

— Mosab Abu Toha / “[You were so small in my hands]”

I hope it isn’t true. If there is reincarnation, what we should hope for is to be reincarnated either as bacteria or as beetles, because they’re the ones who are likely to survive what we’re creating in the world.

— Noam Chomsky / Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy

In March of 1859, 436 men, women, and children were sent to Savannah to be sold in order to pay off debts incurred by plantation owner Pierce M. Butler. This was the largest sale of human beings in U.S. history, known as the “Weeping Time.”

— Georgia Historical Society / “Enslaved People of Butler Island” / Interpretive Sign at Butler Island Plantation

I erased the world so nothing can find it, snuffed out the roses, red and hot as the snouts of bombs, repealed the polar ice cap, even that fat oxymoron, the “industrial park,” has disappeared. 

— Lynn Emanuel / “Plague’s Monologue”

Male blue-lined octopuses appear to immobilize females with venom during mating to avoid being eaten by their partners. Female Hapalochlaena fasciatahave large appetites and are about the size of a golf ball — at least twice the size of males — making sex a risky business. Researchers peeped six pairs of wild octopuses in aquariums, and saw that, during copulation, females stopped breathing, turned pale and had no reflexive response to light — known symptoms of the potent venom.

— Donna Lu / “Male blue-lined octopuses inject females with venom during sex to avoid being eaten, study shows” / The Guardian

When we are dancing we like to flip-flop
between Rogers & Astaire in this room.
When playing exorcist we take turns being
the cross & Linda Blair in this room.

— Jahan Khajavi / “An Organ That Vibrates You”

What I’m Listening To:

Get a dose of her in jackboots and kilt
She’s Killer Diller when she’s dressed to the hilt
She’s the kind of a girl that makes the
“News of the World”
Yes, you could say she was attractively built
Yeah, yeah, yeah

— The Beatles / “Polythene Pam”