captain debray & the aesthetics of taxidermy

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Extremely obliging as he was, he did enjoy some small popularity and in the end made up for not being a fireman by stuffing, furiously and with great conviction, all the polecats and weasels killed in the surrounding woods. Every family possessed at least one specimen of our cousin’s skill and at that time we could not got into a house without seeing in its place of honour one of these animals, seated on its piece of wood, indulging in flirtacious gestures, generally in the style of squirrels. Owing to a tendency towards the ideal, which the elderly, retired military often display, our cousin adjusted and softened features in the animals corpses which seemed too repellent or fierce.

(Octave Mirbeau, Abbé Jules, trans. Nicoletta Simborowski)

the aestheticization of food

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“Today the city is preoccupied with food. In the 70's, we were preoccupied with sex. It was a moment of total hedonism with no consequences, no AIDS. And there was birth control and little thought of getting married. Now, a 25-year-old knows 70 kinds of sushi, but at what expense? A youth spent on restaurants is a youth misspent.”

(Fran Leibowitz, a throwaway quote on the glory days of NYC in The New York Times.)

attn. thomas friedman

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“. . . But when I hear other kinds of discussion, especially the talk of rich businessmen like you, I get bored and feel sorry for you and your friends, because you think you're doing something important, when you're not. Perhaps you regard me as a failure, and I think you're right. But I don't think you're a failure, I know you are.”

(Apollodorus, in Plato's Symposium, trans. Christopher John Gill)

the corrupt text

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The child is feather to the man;
mice don’t brood. The swiftest race
to the pie. In the sky an encomium
rewards all who notice it.
This isn’t the way I meant to live
but I must or will have to move.

In broader streets the video preference
startles a dozing anomaly—“Come again?”
I just did. I want it to be all clean
and tasting of only distance and water.
There is a stairway in my pocket
and pheasants on the railway
and all I ever had was to be yours,
your instructor. Again I fell for it,
his pencil sharpener. Over time that
made him quite difficult and complicated.

Now is only sun, sunstrife and sea.

(John Ashbery)