Mary Roach: 10 things you didn't know about orgasm

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/lang/eng/mary_roach_10_things_you_didn_t_know_about_orgasm.html

[Reportedly contains adult content -- it is a lecture about orgasm]

Samuel Johnson's ideal pasttime, had he no obligations or ambition

"If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman but she should be one who could understand me, and would add something to the conversation."

"Life of Johnson" Boswell -- 19 Sept. 1777.

Samuel Beckett took this as a sign of impotence, but signed on to the idea himself. Letter of 26 Apr. 1937.

New Poem

An Unusual Duck


It's a duck.
But
it doesn't look like a duck
it doesn't walk like a duck
or quack like a duck.
WTF!!??

Mud Pie or Face

Dream:

a game show, entitled "Mud Pie Or Face"

in which contestants wuold end up either with a mud pie in their face, or an untouched face, in which case they woul also win prizes.

sometimes. in honor of National Comma Week, there were three options: mud in the face, pie to eat, or a clean face and prizes.

Final Renard Selections

As a man, Christ was admirable. As God, one could say of him: "What? Was that all He could do?"

Let us not forget that the world makes no sense.

I have a remarkable memory: I forget everything! It is wonderfully convenient. It is as though the world were constantly renewing itself for me.

The theatre. To think that God, who sees everything, must see that!

Writing for someone is like writing to someone: you immediately feel obliged to lie.

Between me brain and me there is always a layer I cannot penetrate.

More from Jules Renard

1897

My father had a heart, but his heart was not a home.

1898

I am a man continually astonished, each instant just fallen from the moon.

I like solitude, even when I am alone.

1902

Style: When"amethyst" comes along, "topaz" is not far behind.

1903

Irony is an element of happiness.

The sudden naturalness of an actor when, during a rehearsal, he interrupts himself to speak to the prompter.

The beauties of literature. I lose a cow. I write about her death, and this brings enough to buy another cow.

1904

One day I believe in human progress, I call for it with all my might; the remaining six days, I rest.

1905

I shall never get used to that woman, I shall never get accustomed to my mother.

Work is a treasure; I know it by counter-proof.

Blues Poem

My baby
makes me nervous.
Makes me wonder
what rhymes with nervous.
Makes me worried
What rhymes with worried?
My baby
makes me crazy.
Makes me think
Makes me think everything must rhyme.

Album of the Day

"Midnight At The Movies" -- Justin Townes Earle.

For one thing, there's a version of The Replacement's "Can't Hardly Wait" but also the low key but jaunty honky tonk song "Poor Fool" ("Now the heart's a tricky thing / But yours more the most / You spend your whole life wandering / With a look on your face like you seen a ghost") [lyrics approximate] and the melancholy "Someday I'll Be Forgiven For This" and many more.

{Album of the season: "Together Through Life" -- Bob Dylan.}

More from the Journal of Jules Reynard

1891

When he looked at himself in a mirror, he was always tempted to wipe the glass.

1893

To spend one's life judging oneself is very entertaining; and, on the whole, not very difficult.

If you thought highly of your family, you would want to please them; and if you tried to please them, that would be the end of you.

1894

I love you as I love that phrase I made up in a dream and which I am unable to remember.

Man is an animal who lifts his head to the sky and does not see the spiders on his ceiling.

1895

The truly free man is the one who will turn down an invitation to dinner without an excuse.

"It is enough to throw you into despair: to read everything, and remember nothing! Because you do remember nothing. You may strain as much as you like: everything escapes. Here and there a few tatters remain, fragile as those puffs of smoke left over after a train has passed."

from the Journal of Jules Renard, August 1889 (tr. Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget.)

Short story

A man, who used to be a bookstore worker, walked into a bookstore. In the bookstore, another younger customer kneeled, inspecting a copy of Pop 1280 by Jim Thompson. "That's a good book," said the older man. "Really?" asked the younger man, who told the older that he was just getting into noir, and had read Hammett and Chandler and Ross MacDonald and someone else, and was looking for the next author to immerse himself in. "You'll like Thompson, then. He's pulpier than those writers -- "

"I like that. What's his best book?"

"I like The Killer Inside Me the best, but Pop 1280 is good too."

When the older man left, he was pleased to have made the sale. A young man on his knees is looking to get picked up, one way or another.

Song of the morning

"I Will Never Love You More" by Soko

Nice sentence

"He laughed, a balloon losing air."

Nice image, swiftly etched.

from The Genius by Jesse Kellerman.