pure science with a splash of black cat

"I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state."

Roger Ebert (1942-2013)

Ebert’s chosen profession had many elites, but few among even those people could match him for sheer gift with the written word. Agree or disagree with him — and particularly over video games did I disagree with him — it’s impossible to deny his contributions to film culture and criticism, and to literature.

When the Sun-Times website comes back up, read “Nil By Mouth,” his essay on losing his ability to eat.

Godspeed, good sir. Two thumbs up to you.

"I think David’s happier talking to the audience than I am. I think David’s happier improvising at the end of sketches than I am. And I think that’s just his natural, you know, cuntiness."

Robert Webb. (via bottleonthebookcase)

"It is characteristic of all committee discussions and decisions that every member has a vivid recollection of them, and that every member’s recollection of them differs violently from every other member’s recollection of them. Consequently, we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, from which it emerges with an elegant inevitability that any decision which has been officially reached will have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, and any decision which is not recorded in the minutes has not been officially reached, even if one or more members believe they can recollect it, so in this particular case, if the decision had been officially reached, it would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, and it isn’t, so it wasn’t."

Sir Humphrey Appleby

"Don’t wait for that light at the end of the tunnel, stomp around there and turn the fucker on yourself."

Sarah Millican (via isadora-violet)

(Source: quirkytidbits, via codylynnclark)

"Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him."

William Faulkner, The Paris Review (1956)

"When Kemp flew to New York in November to accept his second Gold Glove Award, he received a call from his agent, Dave Stewart. Stewart told him he had reached an agreement with the Dodgers on an eight-year, $160 million extension — then the biggest contract in National League history. Kemp broke down and cried at baggage claim. ‘You think about the 2010 season, all the struggles before that, your whole life,” Kemp says, shaking his head. ‘And then I was like, “Wow, now I can take care of my mama.”’"

Center fielder Matt Kemp is taking control of the Los Angeles Dodgers | Molly Knight, ESPN the Magazine (June 25)

(via dodgers)

The Tangled Web

The National Education Service

"No existe la libertad, sino la búsqueda de la libertad, y esa búsqueda es la que nos hace libres."

Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012)