Life outside the diamond.

Just like HMag, WITF is also revamped and incredible and so much more a joy to use. I don't even find "a very smooth backend" weird-sounding as it leaves my mouth anymore. I am torrential affection and tears at Very Literary over how much I love Kate Zambreno's writing and can't wait for HEROINES and love the internet. My critical faculties are nil. It's the best feeling. Sometimes I feel like I will never develop them like writers I admire and other times I feel like I cannot enjoy anything because I can never stop being analytical about it. I mention in there not really liking many books when the whole of "books" is taken into account. I love the way story is constructed and told which does not make for really burning aisle-chat. When people see me at the bookstore and ask what I'm into and I know they mean what do I like to read about, I can only say mental illness. It goes over the best of the short, torrid list. Or butts - I would definitely say that. It depends on the person. The content of story as my blind spot is something I am considering very seriously in my virulently snowballing gestalt-post on Girls. More on that soon (I read everything aloud and my mouth loved "moron that," that's absolutely how I feel).

I was retweeted by Maria Popova, not because I did anything worthy of Brainpicking (as a verb), but because I bought and now treat as I would my child one of she and Wendy MacNaughton's Susan Sontag on Loves. I have magneto'd it to my closet door, for lack of a frame and fear of letting it live on any surface where I might fall on it. The odds of me harming it far exceed those that I will anytime soon achieve anything Maria Popova will tweet about, so I'm going to take this moment and I'm going to enjoy it.

This is like Christmas all ready: HMag moved me to Arts & Entertainment! That's all I need in the way of presents. So I bought myself Paul Fejos' Lonesome and Marcel Carne's Children of Paradise in order to leverage the necessary amount of buyer's remorse to feel the real sting of that's all you need in the way of presents, Kari.

I managed a trick I'll never pull off again and convinced my boyfriend it was the person seated behind us during last night's showing of the Master who sang along to Philip Seymour Hoffman's rendition of "Slow Boat to China." I should never have told him, since he then assumed that I was the person clearing my throat and laughing at all things during Sleepwalk with Me when that was really the person seated behind us. Both movies contain an old man making an embarrassing analogy about marriage to, respectively, a dragon and a cake. We saw them both at the Midtown Cinema which was saved from drowning this summer and, thanks to thousands of ticket sales, can thrive into the age of digital film.

I loved watching the Master and how Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman's characters interacted, how central their relationship was despite the sensational shadow of What It's Really About. Dominant/supplicant narratives, exploring the dynamics of power, is something I love deeply, and I love how this mined and meditated on and let move freely a person for whom it is easy to assume power and a person for whom it is easy to be shunted around. But Dodd is enchanted by Quell! He wants to be like him, he wants Quell's qualities. Knowing you wield power, being comfortable with that and using it to your advantage in building relationships - which Dodd demonstrates - is not the same as being a person who constantly seizes control, who thinks about control foremost and not relationships, necessarily, at all, like Dodd's wife. I hereby adapt a new rating system and award the Master five slow boats to China.

Spoiler, maybe - not about anything heretofore mentioned - but the Scholar is going to span a city block. I put a period there but I punch those keys with the force of a thousand exclamation points. My affect this lately's been very Nick Offerman. But OMG. OMFG.

Lastly, it bears repeating:

Coming Soon from Birds of Lace

TWINS by Megan Milks

FunSize&BiteSize by Jiyoon Lee

The Mysteries of Laura by Andrea Quinlan

Shell of an Egg in an Effort by Anne Marie Rooney

macey [triolets] by Seth Oelbaum

Come as Your Madness by Kari Larsen

The Jennifer by Maia Elgin

Inversion Twilight by Carrie Hunter

Funerals and Thrones by Jordan Scott

In the Grave by Jeanine Deibel