snailbean

The onion is okay! In a regular-looking onion, a bud makes a ring of fleshy leaves around itself (-> onion rings)-- here it looks like several buds got started at the same time and had to compete for space. It looks a bit like a garlic bulb, which is a similar chubby-leaf type… Read More

Aw man a strawberry is nothing like a pepo! Pepoes are characteristic of the Cucurbitae; strawberries are 1. a fleshy receptacle (the red part) with 2. Lots of tiny fruits, called achenes (the "seeds").

Vic Chesnutt! He was an Athens-based singer-songwriter in the 90s-00s. His songs were dark and goofy and idiosyncratic, and what gets me is his obvious glee in using language-- wordplay/catachresis, but also this totally peerless playfulness in pronunciation and meter. (He sometimes… Read More

Oasis, 'Supersonic'-- the massive ego of it vs. my inchoate AM personhood is silly + good.

Considered Godfrey Gao as instructed + am no longer on board with this whole contention.

I finished Blood Meridian a few days ago. I struggled with it-- the prose and the world were hypnotic, but then every few pages the most awful thing I'd ever read happened, and it hurt. It was sort of a 'why are you hitting yourself' reading experience until the resolution,… Read More

Quibble re: peanuts: the fruits aren't part of the root system. After the flowers are fertilized they turn into fuchsia spikes, grow downward, and tuck their peanut babies into the soil like they want them to be safe. It's sweet. (Also, I'm sad to have learned that artichokes… Read More

Shearwater covered Randy Newman's "God's Song" for the AV Club's holiday series a few years ago, and it's wonderfully bleak: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyp0moggT7E

I was a librarian for a number of years, and I miss the easy access to strangers' book lives-- I learned so many great things. I'm totally willing to be interrupted for that.

I don't eat animals, but I'm frustrated by debates like this-- neither side justifies framing it as a universal question, so none of the arguments stick. To me, vegetarianism is pretty clearly a matter of personal circumstance and conviction: it's "should I", not "should… Read More