Is it right to feel so wrong?
I really object to this state of affairs wherein, since I have not been able to see either of my physical therapists since the city shut down in mid-March, my pain levels have gotten so bad that I am sleeping a couple of hours per night at most. I am not looking for tips on insomnia or pain management. I am doing everything in my power that is not those aspects of PT that cannot be reproduced at home. I am just registering unhappiness at my exhaustion and shot concentration and at least I'm not likely to lose the use of a limb from it, but also ow. Have some links.
1. A friend whom I had not heard sing since grad school has recorded himself singing Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes' "Lonely House." He apologizes for the glitches of a first-time video, but I think the authentic feeling more than makes up for any audio pops.
2. Courtesy of
moon_custafer: a really good point. Also, I hope that's all the same movie; I'd watch it.
3. Courtesy of
handful_ofdust: I remember very fondly the children's book this spell comes from. Specifically, I remember reading it on the cat-tattered green couch of the apartment in which I grew up. I just realized it should probably be classed among that genre of invented worlds that take on lives of their own, like Greer Gilman's Cloud, and I've never seen it discussed that way.
4. Courtesy of
spatch: an eloquent bookshelf. (It may have been inspired by John Finnemore's Cabin Fever.)
5. Want to be part of tracking the asymptomatic or untested spread of SARS-CoV-2? There's a study for that.
I saw that the man in the White House wants to "reopen the economy" on May 1st, which I assume is nothing more than his continuing appetite to murder his so-called fellow Americans for profit. I don't know if the U.S. can pull off a general strike, but I don't know what else our options are. Our governor's newfound spine had better be able to hold up. [edit] Massachusetts just joined the Northeast coalition to coordinate ongoing pandemic response, otherwise known as the acknowledgement of reality in the face of the federal government. This is one hundred percent politically fucking nuts, but it makes me feel safer.
1. A friend whom I had not heard sing since grad school has recorded himself singing Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes' "Lonely House." He apologizes for the glitches of a first-time video, but I think the authentic feeling more than makes up for any audio pops.
2. Courtesy of
3. Courtesy of
4. Courtesy of
5. Want to be part of tracking the asymptomatic or untested spread of SARS-CoV-2? There's a study for that.
I saw that the man in the White House wants to "reopen the economy" on May 1st, which I assume is nothing more than his continuing appetite to murder his so-called fellow Americans for profit. I don't know if the U.S. can pull off a general strike, but I don't know what else our options are. Our governor's newfound spine had better be able to hold up. [edit] Massachusetts just joined the Northeast coalition to coordinate ongoing pandemic response, otherwise known as the acknowledgement of reality in the face of the federal government. This is one hundred percent politically fucking nuts, but it makes me feel safer.

no subject
It's Yiddish—אַפ צעלאָכעס. It means "for the spite of it." It can mean just to be contrary, but it can also mean in defiance. The latter usage has sort of become my rallying cry in the last couple of years.
no subject
no subject
I believe the Yiddish is פֿון דײַן מויל אין גאָטס אויערן—fun dayn moyl in gots oyern, "from your mouth to God's ears." I have no idea of the Yiddish for "keyboard," although I'm confident it exists. I happen to know the Yiddish for "computer password," for example. (It's פּאַראָל, parol.)
no subject
The closest thing I had in my Portuguese Catholic upbringing was a great grandmother who was always praying to Somebodies and all the appropriate saints for the problems at hand. I've been known to follow in her footsteps even now, and Nana's been gone almost 40 years.
no subject
no subject
שלום, פרידן אף דער וועלט
דעם דייטשל אף צעלאָכעס
היטלערן ווארפט עס אין היץ און קעלט
...און ער קאָן אונז קושן נאָר אין
Sholem, fridn af der velt
Dem daytshl af tselokhes
Hitlern varft in hits un kelt
Un er kan unz kushn nor in . . .
"Peace, freedom in the world
To spite the little Germans
Hitler tosses in heat and cold
And he can kiss our . . ."
—Psoy Korolenko, Sergei Erdenko, Sophie Milman, Isaac Rosenberg & Sasha Lurje, "Tsum Nayem Yor 1944 (Happy New Year 1944)"