I did happen to catch and release a croaker considerably larger than the one pictured below, but I chose not to photograph it so as not to compromise the considerable dignity of that aged fish. It was then caught and eaten by a mocking otter. I’m also catching up on the Litvinenko news and theories, [...]

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Observe this creature: I hereby announce my intent to break this record over the weekend.

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I recently finished this entry in the most recent Interactive Fiction competition. The game, written by Andrew Plotkin, noted IF auteur, under the pseudonym Edgar O. Weyrd (anagram of “Edward Gorey”), has two section: the first is the best IF-implementation of a Rhem-like game I’ve ever played. While nowhere near as complex or difficult as [...]

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The reason boxers wear gloves is not so much to prevent damage to their opponents’ faces as it is to prevent damage to their hands. We should keep this in mind when using “take the gloves off” metaphors. I mention in particular because the NYT currently blurbs this article using it, and I think that [...]

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A textual note about “Matinée D’Ivresse”: “ASSASSINS dans le ms est en plus grand caractères et souligné” (Pléiade, 1963). You can also learn, at least in this edition, about the then-recent vogue for Robert Faurisson’s topo-typo-erotic interpretation of “Voyelles,” along with some suitably apoplectic remarks from Etiemble. Perhaps the unhappy fate of that controversy is [...]

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Borges cites this approvingly in his essaylet, “On William Beckford’s Vathek,” and he also notes that it is almost impossible to read because of Mallarmé’s “etymological dialect.” Belloc also called Beckford one of the “vilest men of all time,” which is quite a compliment, considering. Also, Borges’s remark about the distinction between the atrocious place [...]

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I’m pleased that the latest Norton includes an excerpt about this exceptionally curious piece, but I question the decision not include an excerpt from the text itself. I suppose that my interest in the “simulation hypothesis” may color my expectations somewhat, however.

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You remember Tennyson reading an unpublished poem to Jowett; when he had finished, Jowett said, I shouldn’t publish that if I were you, Tennyson. Tennyson replied, If it comes to that, Master, the sherry you gave us at lunch was downright filthy. As told by Philip Larkin in his Paris Review interview. I also recommend [...]

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fryday 15th. Set out from the vessel with my servant and portmantle on his Sholder. we walked 7 miles to where there were some whale fishers tents, and got one of them to Cary us over the Sound [Core Sound] in their boat to Beaufort, a Small vilage not above 12 houses, the inhabitants seem [...]

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Will Adam Morrison average more than 15 pts. a game this season? Had left heredity, Narcissus bentAbove the gene pool. As at a thrown stickStill waking echoes of that give-and-take—Repercussions dire in the event— I would interpret that as a yes, though with perhaps historically low rebound and assist figures. Who are other players who [...]

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I’m increasingly interested in the work of Paul Laffoley (and hope to see the exhibit running between Jan 4 and Feb 17 at the Kent Gallery). One of the bits of lore that Laffoley tends to repeat in interviews and his writings is that his first word, spoken at six months of age, was “Constantinople.” [...]

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Bombastus kept a devil’s birdShut in the pommel of his sword,That taught him all the cunning pranksOf past and future mountebanks (Hudibras II.3) Browning quotes this in the heroically pedantic notes to his Paracelsus.

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Another fishing story: As I was coming down the [Elizabeth] river in a sloop bound for the bay, it happened to prove calm, at which time we were three leagues short of the river’s mouth; the tide of the ebb being then done, the sloop-man dropped his grapline, an dhe and his boy took a [...]

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A copy of Jean Ray’s Malpertuis arrived today, and I also had the flounder siciliana at the finest Italian restaurant in Bethel, NC (La Cassetta, I recommend it)—flounder being one of the many toothsome fishes I did not catch on my recent outing. There are apparently some Pacific islands and perhaps also places on the [...]

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I think that the length of time we saw a CGI bombinent black fly mass whip a man athwart trees and then the ground (“kerosene”) tonight was unusual in several respects. We had witnessed the burial of the dead—I half-expected to see brands arc-light Trixie’s floating pyre—with the white robes. Perhaps it’s a ritual meant [...]

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