“The world is too vast to live in a single place, or three, or four”

• Ko Un, via this video of Not Vital

ELO’s debut album was released in the United States in March 1972 as No Answer. The name originated after a US record company secretary called the UK label for the name of the album, but as she was unable to reach anyone, left a note in the file reading “No answer.” A similar mistake resulted in the release of the Byrds 1970 LP, Untitled.

solecism (n): 1. A nonstandard usage or grammatical construction; 2. A violation of etiquette; 3. An impropriety, mistake, or incongruity.

Latin soloecismus, from Greek soloikismos, from soloikizein, to speak incorrectly, from soloikos, speaking incorrectly, after Soloi (Soli), an Athenian colony in Cilicia where a dialect regarded as substandard was spoken.

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness.

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

Our first impressions are not only our own: they are bathed in the light of our parents’ heyday.

Gregor von Rezzori, Abel and Cain

Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained.

John Stuart Mill

A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.

Frank Zappa

Imbricate: (adj) having regularly arranged, overlapping edges, as roof tiles or fish scales.

Lahar (n) - An avalanche of volcanic water and mud down the slopes of a volcano.

Shitegeist (n) - The popular but worthless spirit or mood of the times.

Anything that degrades culture shortens the path to servitude.

Albert Camus

Otiose (adj) - Lazy or indolent; pointless or superfluous; ineffective or futile.

This is the way you look at the poorest details of the world resurfaced: you feel their singleness and precise location and the forlorn coincidence of your being there to see them.

Alice Munro

Today I learned that the Orinoco River, which flows north into the Caribbean, is naturally connected to the Amazon River, which flows east into the Atlantic, via the Casiquiare, defying my understanding of watersheds.

“Advertising…sell advertising mail the magazine free to a guaranteed audience…they’ll all line up like dominoes target your ads in on your guaranteed audience you’ll see boat magazines free to boat owners sex mags free to kids and singles photo mags free to camera buffs just get the lists knock out this five percent return on direct mail and your ad boys will pay the difference to know who they’re reaching…targeting in on every one of them drugstores selling us customer lists through wholesalers handling (our) prescription line.“

• J R, William Gaddis, 1975

In the beginning, there’s no sudden cut, no catastrophe or collapse, only a slight sense of repetition.

Carlos Fonseca in Natural History

Nugatory (adj) - Of no value or importance. From the Latin nugatorius, from nugari “to trifle,” nugae “jests”

Uxorious (adj) - Having or showing a great or excessive fondness for one’s wife. From the Latin uxor, ‘wife’.

The night closed like a trapdoor, and the ensuing peace made me wish I had been sleeping.

• Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, 284

On this day (August 3) in 1527, the first English-language letter known to be sent from North America was dispatched by John Rut while at St. John’s, Newfoundland.

[This] third day of August we entered into a good harbour called St. John and there we found Eleuen Saile of Normans and one Brittaine and two Portugal barks all a fishing and so we are ready to depart towards Cap de Bras that is 25 leagues as shortly as we have fished and so along the Coast until we may meete with our fellowe

A Magician Explains Why We See What’s Not There

Our visual system is continuously predicting the future, and the world that you are now perceiving is the world that your visual system has predicted to be the present in the past.

So we are indeed living in a simulation: our own

”Literature…allows us to recall from oblivion all that which the contemporary eye, more immoral every day, endeavors to pass over with absolute indifference.”

Enrique Vila-Matas, Bartelby & Co.

Today I learned that Gram Parsons is buried in the Garden of Memories Cemetery, Metairie, Louisiana, and that Nudie suits are named after Nuta Kotlyarenko (Nudie Cohn), who was Ukrainian.

“The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong. But he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land.”

• Hugh of Saint-Victor

Oblomovism (n) - The inability to bring oneself to act; apathy; indolent, lazy inertia. After the main character in an 1859 book by the same name (Oblomov, by Ivan Gocharov).