Quotable Quotes

MONTGOMERY BURNS:

"You there, fill it up with petroleum distillate, and re-vulcanize my tires, post haste. And none of your usual boobery!"

"Hello, I'd like to send this letter to the Prussian consulate in Siam by Aeromail. Hmm...am I too late for the 4:30 autogyro?"

Rob (High Fidelity):

What really matters is what you like, not what you are like. Books, records, films, these things matter. Call me shallow; it's the fuckin' truth.

video backpacker, Slacker:

"To me, my thing is, a video image is much more powerful and useful than an actual event. Like back when I used to go out, when I was last out, I was walking down the street and this guy, that came barreling out of a bar, fell right in front of me, and he had a knife right in his back, landed right on the ground and... Well, I have no reference to it now. I can't put it on pause. I can't put it on slow mo and see all the little details. And the blood, it was all wrong. It didn't look like blood. The hue was off. I couldn't adjust the hue. I was seeing it for real, but it just wasn't right. And I didn't even see the knife impact on the body. I missed that part."

Audience: Boo! Boo!
Burns: Smithers, are they booing me?
Smithers: Uh, no, they're saying "Boo-urns! Boo-urns!"
Burns: Are you saying "boo" or "Boo-urns"?
Audience: Boo! Boo!
Hans: I was saying "Boo-urns."


More, Slacker:

"I've had a total recalibration of my mind, you know. I mean, it's like, I've been banging my head against this 19th century type, um, what? Thought mode? Construct? Human construct? Well, the wall doesn't exist. It's not there, you know. I mean, they tell you, look for the light at the end of the tunnel. Well, there is no tunnel. There's just no structure. The underlying order is chaos."

Stranger: ". . . How things been goin'?"
Dude: ". . . Well, you know, strikes and gutters, ups and downs . . . Yeah. Thanks Gary . . . Well, take care man, gotta get back . . . "
Stranger: "Sure. Take it easy, Dude."
Dude: "Oh, yeah."
Stranger: "I know that you will."
Dude: ". . . Yeah, well . . . the Dude abides."

Our lil brainiac

Our lil brainiac
Originally uploaded by mattbucher.

We hear a book fall off the bookshelf and find that our dog has opened the pages of "Ulysses" (and she's not trying to eat the paper). She's also been known to bark aggressively if Oprah comes on the TV. I guess she hates what Oprah did to James Frey. And yes, that's duct tape on the book.

Valentines, yo

chocolate bar2
Originally uploaded by mattbucher.

shipped from NYC to Austin just in time. Nothing can make you forget real estate woes quicker than some truffles. Highlights include the pb&j truffle, the key lime pie truffle, and the kahlua truffle.

Tasty Delicious

cupcakes!
Originally uploaded by mattbucher.

Did I mention that my wife used to be the cupcake froster at the famous Magnolia Bakery??! Well did I??

The Double B

BB
Originally uploaded by mattbucher.

If I had cattle, this would be my brand.

Pre-decimal British currency

1 pound	=	20 shillings
1 pound	=	240 pence
1 pound	=	1 sovereign
1 crown	=	5 shillings
1 half crown	=	2 shillings, six pence
1 florin	=	2 shillings
1 shilling	=	12 pence
1 penny	=	4 farthings
1 groat	=	4 pence
SLANG TERMS
shilling	=	"hog" or "deaner"
half crown	=	"tosheroon"
sixpence	=	"sprowsie" or "tanner"

Bespoke Suit

I've always liked this site English Cut

How to buy a bespoke suit:
http://www.englishcut.com/archives/000016.html

You would think we are a dentist's office

We subscribe to:

New York Times (Sunday)
New York Magazine
The New Yorker
Harper's
Vanity Fair
The Atlantic
BookForum
US Weekly
Vogue
Lucky
Texas Monthly

Meme

Four jobs I've had:
1. editor
2. ditch digger
3. copywriter
4. house painter

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. The Big Lebowski
2. Office Space
3. Bottle Rocket
4. Ocean's Eleven

Four places I've lived:
1. New York, NY (Brooklyn and Manhattan)
2. Denver, CO
3. Austin, TX
4. Tyler, TX

Four TV shows I love:
1. The Dog Whisperer
2. Six Feet Under
3. Baseball Tonight
4. No Reservations

Four places I've vacationed:
1. Zihuatanejo, Mexico
2. Galveston, TX
3. Amsterdam
4. Las Vegas

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. raw fish, which is my favorite dish
2. Katsu Don Buri
3. roasted chicken
4. massaman beef curry

Four sites I visit daily:
1. kottke.org
2. slate.com
3. nytimes.com
4. news.google.com

Five places I would rather be right now:
1. in a library
2. at the French Laundry or Per Se
3. Playa La Ropa
4. upstairs at the Stage Door Café, Breckenridge
5. Takamatsu Japan

I tag all three people who read this.

Nelly song

In one verse of one song, Nelly manages to rhyme

ensemble
mambo
combo
Cabo
Tae-bo
Volvo
Diablo
Rhino

Is there a song that consists entirely of end-rhymes?

SXSW Interactive

One of the coolest events to occur in Austin every year is the SXSW film, music, and interactive festivals. This year's South by Southwest Interactive Festival features a keynote "conversation" between two of our favorite bloggers: dooce and kottke. The problem is, the rest of the festival doesn't really interest me and a single badge costs $275. So, for the wife and I to attend this one lecture it would cost us about $550. Now, I really like these bloggers, but I'm leaning towards saying no to the $550 cover charge.

Bibliomania, part 2

One of my New Year's resolutions is to consume less media in order to write/create more, but I appear to be failing (see Netflix mention below). Maybe I will post a short story soon.

Reading/recently read:

Black Hole by Charles Burns / This is the guy who draws the cover of The Believer every month. This is an awesome book, part teen horror comedy, part sci-fi thriller, part Daniel Clowes.

The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman / Former Professional Literary Agent and renowned smoking-jacket/Tolkien/attack-ad expert Hodgman takes us on a tour of Complete World Knowledge. For example:

WERE YOU AWARE OF IT?

Jorge Luis Borges was editor-in-chief of Games magazine from 1980-81.

WERE YOU EVEN AWARE OF THIS FACT??!!?!?

There is the famous list of 700 hobo names and a study of the Lycanthropic cycles and their antidotes.

Warlock by Oakley Hall
This is a New York Review of Books reissue of a classic western about a Tombstone-like town called Warlock. It's supposed to be this end-all, be-all Western myth, and I am so far very impressed with the writing style and plot.

Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy

I'm re-reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" and my favorite detail I'd forgotten is the way the country kid Walter Cunningham answers in the affirmative: "Yeb'm."

Also, we just subscribed to Netflix and our first two movies were "Broken Flowers" and the Johnny Depp "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." I really didn't want to like the Tim Burton "redoing" of a classic, but I have to admit that I really liked it. I thought "Broken Flowers" was OK--a lot of Jim Jarmusch trying to be unpredictable (which I like) and Bill Murray as his own sad clown (which was good the first couple of times, but felt kind of half-hearted here, like Murray was getting tired of it. I'd like to see Bill Murray team up with Harold Ramis and do "Stripes 2" or something like that. Any suggestions for the queue?

Apparently

Murray=Sutter
Originally uploaded by mattbucher.

Bill Murray was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame.

electrical fire

electrical fire
Originally uploaded by mattbucher.

We had a small electrical fire the other day.

HIGH WINDOWS

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed all their lives---
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it; the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

--Philip Larkin (1974)

Trip to the antique store

Dr. Monkey
Originally uploaded by mattbucher.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbb/sets/1672158/

Went to this cool antique store during the holidays and saw everything from a human skull to a Kenny Rogers photo montage.

The Bird

For some reason, the Kansas City Star thought it necessary to give us a 1500-word piece on athletes flipping the bird. I can just picture the reporter pitching this to his editor: "Uhhh... I got this great idea about a pressing issue in the world of sports. Steroids? Salary Cap? No, sir. The Bird."

Signed books

DFW - Infinite Jest
Originally uploaded by mattbucher.

I don't have a scanner, but I do have a digital camera and this weekend I had some time on my hands so I decided to take shots of a few of my signed books. I discovered that many of the books I've had signed were not signed on the title page so that's difficult to communicate in a single photo and some of the signatures are pretty plain and unremarkable. I've got a funny Zadie Smith signature that I can't seem to upload right now, but hopefully soon.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbb/sets/1598639/

Rawrrrrrr

LIONESSSSS
Originally uploaded by mattbucher.

The paw, the maw, the look: sheer beauty.

The reading docket

1. I am slowly working my way through Volume 1 of Emma Goldman's "Living My Life," which is incredibly well written and informative. I'm going to start looking for volume 2 soon, but I am taking my time with this one, about one chapter per night.

2. Am also taking my time going through "The Good Earth." I read it a long time ago but had absolutely no perspective on it and couldn't even recall the plot, but now that I am re-reading it I am riveted. This is the Chinese Steinbeck. After I'm finished I might have to sit down and figure out what Buck is saying about contemporary American ethics, especially with respect to investing in real estate.

3. This weekend I passed up the chance to get the hardcover or Audio CD of DFW's "Consider the Lobster" in order to buy something I really wanted to read (for the first time): Jack Finney's sequel to "Time and Again" - "From Time to Time." Written 25 years after the first book, this one follows the adventures of Si Morley as he goes back to 1912 (or forward to 1912 since he is still living in the 1880s) to affect the sinking of the Titanic.

4. Next in the queue: James Magnuson's "The Hounds of Winter" and Steinbeck's "The Long Valley"

5. Books I'm looking to buy: Nathanael West's "The Dream Life of Balso Snell"; Upton Sinclair's "Oil!"; Leon Rooke's "The Beautiful Wife"; and John Hodgman's "The Areas of My Expertise."