On Is Rick Moody Too Wealthy to Criticize Taylor Swift?
@HereKitty @C_Webb Seriously, is "marrying up" even still a thing?
It is on Fishers Islands, for sure.
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On The Questions Following Aaron Swartz's Death
@barnhouse I'm confused. Why did he break into a closet and access the server directly if he already had access?
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On A Conversation With D.T. Max About His New David Foster Wallace Biography
@Gene That's right. Thanks.
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On A Conversation With D.T. Max About His New David Foster Wallace Biography
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On A Conversation With D.T. Max About His New David Foster Wallace Biography
Suicide as the "ultimate withholding gesture"... I don't know. I know I have only a comparatively superficial understanding of Foster-Wallace's story and a (fortunately) limited interaction with suicides or attempted suicides in my own experience but I've always had the sense that it was driven more by unbearable psychic pain, rather than "withholding." To me, "withholding" has the ring of conscious choice: "I am withholding to make you [do something]/[not do something]/[feel a certain way]." And the ring of the cliche of suicide as the ultimate "selfish act"--something I've never been quite comfortable with. Who are we to judge another's pain or to say that, presented with the same level of pain, we wouldn't have done the same thing? Maybe "withholding" to relieve your loved ones of the burden of witnessing or experiencing vicariously your psychic pain--i.e., you will cause them more pain in the short term by your suicide, but less in the long run of your inevitable decline? The brother of one suicide I knew said something like this in his eulogy to his sister--that he was relieved that her torment was over, that whereever she was, it was a better place than the hell she was experiencing on earth. Essentially words that could be said about someone with cancer, he was obviously viewing it as the inevitable end of a very powerful mental illness.
Maybe his suicide was another "double-bind"--bouncing back and forth between his own psychic pain and the psychic pain he would cause by his absence--with the former winning out (tennis metaphor in there?). We'll never know, but I like to think that, with the generosity of spirit that he seemed to have, that he didn't have much a choice in the matter.
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On Shaving: What's It All About?
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On The Battle For Planet Flanagan
@Honest Engine Last thing: any Wikipedians here that could edit the "Pirates" entry? The Plot section needs some beefing up. Thx
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On The Battle For Planet Flanagan
@Honest Engine And screw that Hudnutter guy, he appears to be responsible for the untold amount of princess paraphernalia at my house.
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On No Point In Having Sex
You're doing it wrong.