It is unusual that a song and video which capture exactly how I am feeling on the inside come along exactly at the moment I am feeling those things, but that is exactly what has happened today, right now, with this. Exactly. [Via]

“If he could get treatment for his addiction to alliteration and stop using phrases like ‘for you and I’, this prodigiously talented ‘small boy of 52’, as he described himself two years ago, could walk away with the Booker prize.”
 — Terry Eagleton likes Morrissey.

“A cleaning robot ‘committed suicide’ by climbing on to a kitchen hotplate where it was burned to death. According to local reports, the Irobot Roomba 760 robot is thought to have rebelled against its chores and decided enough was enough. Firemen were called to the blaze at Hinterstoder in Kirchdorf, Austria, and say they found the remains of the machine on the hotplate.”

“This year is the seventh warmest since records began in 1850 and rising sea levels caused by climate change are aggravating the impact of storms such as Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Wednesday. More greenhouse gases in the atmosphere meant a warmer future, and more extreme weather, was inevitable, WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said in a statement during November 11–22 climate talks among almost 200 nations in Warsaw.”

I bet a lot of people who will be adults in ten or twenty years are going to look back at this song as something that helped them out during tough times. [Via]

He woke up to the cold light of dawn following the greatest triumph in his career with an oddly empty feeling and a strong seam of sadness dug deeply in his soul that he had never quite experienced before. While a bit of the buzz had hung over from the success of the previous day, even the knowledge that he had created something that would stand as his legacy for the rest of his life and probably for many years after was not enough to soothe the anxiety and strange sense of futility that hung about the air around him; if he had to put a word to it, it would be “bereft.” He felt bereft. He thought back to the moment when he unleashed his masterpiece on a waiting world — the sense of anticipation as he ushered it into the stream where a million eager eyes awaited, the brief bit of doubt he allowed himself to feel as he sat sweating out the response, the ultimate and gratifying shower of accolades as the crowds roared their approval and the calls and letters came in from those he had admired early on in his own career acknowledging him now as the master, regretfully but respectfully paying tribute to the way his genius had exceeded anything they had even dreamed of birthing into the world in their own lives. He focused on the moment of conception once again, the lightning that went through his veins at the instant of realization that he had come up with something even he had not known he was capable of creating, how it were as if the kind of divine inspiration of which he had heard the great poets speak but had never really given credence to before because it seemed so unlikely had now brushed him with its genius and allowed him to do with it what he would. And then he snapped back into the world in which he now lived, a world he had made, to be sure, but one that he ruefully realized would always now carry the tinge of the past, the increasingly diminishing memories of a moment in which he had become like a god, and every hour after where he could never quite scale that peak again. He tried to comfort himself with the knowledge that only a handful, perhaps two others at most, had ever even seen the vista from the vantage point from which he had once looked out, but regardless of what he told himself he kept being dragged down by the terrible truth that no matter how mighty his vision and how powerful his performance, he would never know such a sense of complete control again. He sighed and turned over, pulling the pillow over his head and closing his eyes tightly, trying to go back to sleep so that he might for at least a few minutes more avoid the tragic knowledge with which he would be forced to contend for each day of the rest of his existence: It was all downhill from here. And then he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.

by Leah Reich

PT Cruiser is a user of Twitter, but not your average user. When online, she tweets a rapid stream of consciousness, at least in part to meet her goal of 300,000 tweets by year’s end. She is also now an author. Her first book, cruisin to the finish line: speed secrets, was self-published last month, under the name “tcot,” or Top Car on Twitter. This fall she gave a rare interview, explaining that she lives about 45 minutes outside of New York City, wakes up very early to go to work unpacking freight, and only watches VH1 Soul. She also blogs irregularly on the occasions of R&B; stars’ birthdays.

Brendan O’Connor:

what is it like

Leah Reich:

it’s like
have you ever tried to write your stream of consciousness
everything in your brain
even the shitty mean thoughts
and you can’t
because that barrier between brain and exterior
somehow contorts your words and makes them presentaple
lol presentable
or makes you want to conform to something you think you should be writing
maybe you can say them but you can’t write them
honestly
it’s like poetry
it’s BETTER than a lot of poetry
it’s offensive and cruel
it’s repetitive but in a way that’s rhythmic
it’s kind of like diary entries and stories and lists
but they read sometimes like poems
some are clusters of tweets
it basically helps give context to everything about the twitter feed
so you get it
PT Cruiser is hot
PT Cruiser I get you now
PT Cruiser your book
PT Cruiser I read it
PT Cruiser you didn’t make any fucking sense
PT Cruiser I thought you were so annoying
PT Cruiser who the fuck is Maria
PT Cruiser but then I read it
PT Cruiser I read it in a single night
PT Cruiser I hope you fuck Miguel
PT Cruiser you deserve it
PT Cruiser your book is insane
PT Cruiser your book is ugly
PT Cruiser your book is beautiful
PT Cruiser Miguel sings a song called Beautiful
PT Cruiser I’m not using the hashtag
PT Cruiser I’m not sorry
PT Cruiser I hope Miguel sings Beautiful to you
PT Cruiser your book is like poetry
PT Cruiser your book is better than poetry I mean
PT Cruiser I was offended
PT Cruiser you dox your racist grandma
PT Cruiser your dumb manager
PT Cruiser you are horrible to Maria
PT Cruiser she can’t speak English
PT Cruiser so much that bothered me so much
PT Cruiser I couldn’t put it down though
PT Cruiser you don’t hold back car
PT Cruiser you are a mess of contradictions
PT Cruiser you go for it you go all the way
PT Cruiser terrible thoughts but there they are
PT Cruiser diarrhea classroom will stay with me always
PT Cruiser also Paul

Brendan O’Connor:

omg what

Leah Reich:

PT Cruiser I can’t believe I’m saying this
PT Cruiser I hope people read your book
ok that’s my review

Leah Reich lives in the Bay Area and likes avocados. cruisin to the finish line: speed secrets is available online.

★★ A sunny morning presented itself through the windows, while sausage browned in a pan. For the first time, the logic of putting hardboiled eggs into a lasagna almost made sense — nothing seemed too dense to feed the body now, with the cold and dark closing in. A little past midday, dark gray swept over everything, with pale glowing patches where the clouds were torn and the torn spots occluded. The building made sharp creaking noises; the Hudson, which had been a bright-blue green, went slate gray. The Monopoly board lay in dimness on the rug. And then the eventful short afternoon turned again; clear blue overtook the sky, and the murky river became silvery. The toddler was more than ready to go out into it.

“Charities incorrectly assume that connecting with people through social media always leads to more meaningful support. Our research shows that if people are able to declare support for a charity publicly in social media it can actually make them less likely to donate to the cause later on.”

Remember 2006? It seems so long ago now. Anyway, the Internet sure does have opinions about this one, and I guess it’s okay if you do too.