with our the coordinator who is up for the

(via Artificial Owl)

"Can Painting Be Saved?"

"He tried to explain that this Japanese monster movie [Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964)] was actually a remake of the classic chick flick Roman Holiday (1953), both movies featuring a stylish princess visiting another country who meets a working-class protagonist who becomes sweet on her, although, despite having some adventures together, the two at the end must part..." --Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice (2009)

Fragments from a History of Ruin.
Atemporality and Ruin Porn. (via Metafilter) Which gave me this Spengler quote: "What does a cathedral dome or a bronze figure mean to us without the patina which transmutes the short-range brilliance into the tone of remoteness of time and place?"

"...executioners were allowed to marry only executioners' daughters and executioners' sons were forced to follow in the bloody footsteps of their fathers." --Angelo Ripellino, Magic Prague (1973; 1994 tr.)

More. "Those pieces of the Berlin Wall that have been preserved are often those which are decorated with striking graffiti art or poignant messages in permanent ink. Someone standing in front of one of these recontextualised fragments, someone who was entirely ignorant of the aftermath of World War II, would be alerted that there was something remarkable about the slab of concrete in front of them by the way it was displayed, disembodied, outside a museum or a bank, but their experience of the Wall would be materially different from someone who was familiar with what the Berlin Wall meant in the quarter century between its construction and fall."

"We see now, as our forebears never could, where this overweening enterprise was leading--to the ruin of humankind, or of as much of humankind, at least, as has cast its lot with Biz. Civ. But a ruin, let us admit it, that is altogether fitting and proper, a thoroughly merited ruin, which we are obliged to inhabit as becomes decaying gentry. That is to say, with as much style as we can muster, with whatever pride we can still pretend to, and with, most importantly, a perfect nonchalance." --Thomas Disch, On Wings of Song (1979)

Qu'ran 16:9. "And Allah's is the direction of the way, and some (roads) go not straight. And had He willed He would have led you aright." (Pickthall)

Also, according to Bruce Sterling (1999): "If you want mail to get through to Turkish Cyprus, it should be fake-addressed to 'Mersin 10, Turkey.' "