Whatever Catches My Fancy
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Twitter self-destructing is undoubtably bad for creatives and activists and anyone who wants to use the platform for what it’s intended for—but it’s very good for me, someone with limited impulse control who can lose hours watching the trainwreck of history combust before us.
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For those who haven’t read the Silmarillion, which of these is NOT a plot point?
Elrond’s dad kills biggest dragon with help of flying boat
Rocky elf marriage ends with husband taking all 7 kids and inventing murder
Elf princess beats up lady vampire and wears her skin as a cloak
Emo elf wants to fuck his cousin who hates him, thousands dead and injured
Elrond’s mother born from an egg Helen of Troy style
Gods on the verge of divorce due to disagreement about the invention of dwarves
Sauron beaten up by huge talking dog
After staring at wife for 200 years, elf’s hair turns silver and he grows taller
Sauron no longer able to look sexy after helping destroy entire continent
(via zealouswerewolfcollector)
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Ooh, what’s the Walt Whitman poem? now I’m curious!
O Captain! My Captain! One of four incredibly homoerotic poems Walt write about how personally wrecked he was by the assassination of Abe Lincoln.
For some reason I always hear “O Captain! my Captain! Rise up and hear the bells” to the tune of “Oh my darling Clementine.”
This and the other Lincoln tributes, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (the most ambitious of his elegies), “Hush’d be the Camps To-day,” and “This Dust was Once the Man,” were published in Sequel to Drum Taps which is, as the title indicates, the sequel to Whitman’s earlier war poetry collection Drum Taps. Whitman had traveled to the war zone seeking news of his missing younger brother George, a Union soldier. George turned out to be lightly wounded and recovered soon, but Whitman was shocked by what he saw in hospitals while searching for his brother and became a regular visitor to wounded soldiers throughout the rest of the war, as well as writing poems based on these experiences. He was looked at as basically the devil by some of the staff, but Colonel Richard Hinton, visited by Whitman while wounded, was more favorable: “Walt Whitman’s funny stories, and his pipes and tobacco were worth more than all the preachers and tracts in Christendom.” Based on Hinton’s comments, it seems like entertainment other than tracts was in short supply in the hospitals. (source)
“O Captain, My Captain” became so popular with people who otherwise weren’t fans of Whitman or his poetry that he got frustrated: “Whitman read a newspaper article that said "If Walt Whitman had written a volume of My Captains instead of filling a scrapbasket with waste and calling it a book the world would be better off today and Walt Whitman would have some excuse for living.” Whitman responded to the article on September 11, 1888, saying: “Damn My Captain […] I’m almost sorry I ever wrote the poem…” (source, which makes it sound like he wrote to the paper, when actually he was venting to a friend.) He continued reciting it at his lectures, though.There are a couple of variant lines in the quatrains of “O Captain! My Captain.” I believe this below the cut is the final version, though I’m not sure–notice the drops of blood in this one! I like this version better although I am really not a Whitman fan.
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I’m obsessed with buildings like this, they are so beautiful because they are pure function. The form is just an incredible display of geometry.
(via bedlamsbard)
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Important to note that I mock Walt Whitman only because I respect his power. He pioneered parasocial relationships—he fawned about Abraham Lincoln nodding to him on the street in letters to his mother. Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker were obsessed with him. He was almost six feet tall. He was an Anti-Stratfordian. One of his non-poetry publications was called Manly Health and Training and suggested “nude sunbathing and eating meat almost exclusively”. This picture was on display in his house.
The man could absolutely tear me in half with his bare hands. His only weakness is his tender heart and also probably tuberculosis.
- 1 day ago
- 51 notes
- #walt whitman
- #also he’s America’s foundational mythmaking poet or whatever
- #I prefer dickinson
- #but as funny as Emily can be she has nothing on walt
- #he is simply… a strange little man sometimes
- #once he claimed to have six illegitimate children and historians now have to clarify
- #‘that’s almost certainly a lie’ whenere they discuss him
- #having to footnote all the documents because Walt got mad and started fibbing
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Ooh, what’s the Walt Whitman poem? now I’m curious!
O Captain! My Captain! One of four incredibly homoerotic poems Walt wrote about how personally wrecked he was by the assassination of Abe Lincoln.
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Do you think that there were any ships that went out whaling out of New England and missed the entire american civil war
Like they went out in 1860 had a long voyage for the usual reasons and came back in late 1865 with very little idea of what had happened. like “oh boy I’ve finally finished getting my whale oil I can’t wait to see my favourite president Abraham Lincoln after having been out whaling since early 1860.” do you think that that was anyone
(via capitola)
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Penrose tiles are so cool. its an aperiodic pattern that does not repeat itself at all ever.
LOOK AT IT
(via nyenyerle)
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![Screenshots taken from Wikipedia's entry on "The Lottery", a short story written by Shirley Jackson in 1948. The first one says: Jackson and The New Yorker were both surprised by the initial negative response from readers; subscriptions were canceled and much hate mail was sent throughout the summer of its first publication, with Jackson receiving at least 10 letters per day.[2] The Union of South Africa banned the story because some parts of Africa still used stoning as a punishment."](https://64.media.tumblr.com/72964d4f2d23f0d01666ec262f2887ad/fa0c95c1c374d74f-45/s500x750/a87249c08d6765a3f3572518599a4410369deceb.png)
![Curiously, there are three main themes which dominate the letters of that first summer—three themes which might be identified as bewilderment, speculation and plain old-fashioned abuse. In the years since then, during which the story has been anthologized, dramatized, televised, and even—in one completely mystifying transformation—made into a ballet, the tenor of letters I receive has changed. I am addressed more politely, as a rule, and the letters largely confine themselves to questions like what does this story mean? The general tone of the early letters, however, was a kind of wide-eyed, shocked innocence. People at first were not so much concerned with what the story meant; what they wanted to know was where these lotteries were held, and whether they could go there and watch. — Shirley Jackson, "Come along with me"[2]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/3a00022adf1f6648cc048ad988c4b844/fa0c95c1c374d74f-37/s500x750/bcafe5a7d118d11d8c5f3db20d3bb251c5aa7e47.png)