Daily Archives: May 3, 2009

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Unloading some sweet links

Stuff White People Do (as distinguished from SWP Like) is a thoughtful blog about racial behavior in America. This isn’t really indicative of most of the posts, but read this former slave’s response to his ex-master’s request that he return to the plantation in Tennessee:

I served you faithfully for thirty-two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to.

Heavypetting shows the horrified pets captured on camera while their owners shoot amateur porn videos from their living rooms. All but the human silhouettes are blocked out, so the site is technically SFW. Unless you can identify the silhouette of a penis.

I prance around the internet in gold high heels. It’s hard to say goodbye to Caite White’s “Brick Watch!” blog on C-Ville.com.

Homeless soccer team wins its first match at Chelsea Piers.

Waldo Jaquith schools Mark Penn for alleging that 1.7 million bloggers profit from their work.

Horses with hair extensions.

Maria Robinson writes about the future of sex. Apparently we’re all going blind.

I keep finding myself telling people about this at parties, so here is the proof that a 5cm fir tree grew in a 28-year-old Russian man’s lung. Perhaps now I can come up with something new to talk about after a couple drinks.

Disturbing Strokes:

Lit stuff:

James Wood on Ian McEwan.

Elaine Showalter on the literary tradition of women.

“Men are terrible” interview with Martin Amis.

Thoughts on the publication of David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon commencement address.

“End the University as We Know It” NYTimes op-ed.

AV Club interview with Bret Easton Ellis.

UVA’s Mark Edmundson promotes non-directed readings in college English classes.

Review of Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor.

Whites are mostly offstage too, but for these characters, as for many blacks in the upper middle class, there’s a constant worry about the white gaze. “You didn’t, for example, walk down Main Street with a watermelon under your arm. Even if you had a pretty good reason. Like, you were going to a potluck and each person had to bring an item and your item just happened to be a watermelon, luck of the draw, and you wrote this on a sign so everyone would understand the context, and as you walked down Main Street you held the sign in one hand and the explained watermelon in the other, all casual, perhaps nodding between the watermelon and the sign for extra emphasis if you made eye contact. This would not happen. We were on display.”

Sorry for the NYTimes-heavy links. I don’t get out much, I guess.

Lately I’ve been unloading most of my sweet links on Twitter, so follow me (onestarwatt) if you want the goods more often.