Salad Ahoy!—Salim Nourallah, “Hang On,” Snowing in My Heart (2007)
i’m planning on retiring from making more “salim” records
until i find a way to sell constellation
and the rest of my back catalogue
i have been rejected by 3 american indie labels so far
i am undeterred
—Salim Nourallah, “Just the Facts”
This is criminal. Snowing in My Heartwas my favorite album of last year and Polaroid (2004) was nearly as good. I suspect there are better places for Salim’s bank account to buy the album than Amazon—and that doesn’t address the underlying issue that people this talented deserve to be making money for their talents—but this is about you more than him, so buy the CD already.
Had a hard time deciding which of these amazing images to share. Started by looking for the artist who designed the cover of the new Face Tomorrow album and was more than rewarded for my 45 seconds of effort.
—Gov. Palin takes a question about allowing bankruptcy courts to readjust principal head on.
I had been hoping for something in the Bentsen-Quayle vein but instead was reminded of a different debate from that same year.
Update: Apparently, Palin’s four-word answer was also incorrect.
As the newly crowned King of the United States, I’m going to tell you how we’re going to fix this whole economic mess, but first I want to take just a couple of seconds to announce that I’m banning all sentence constructions that involve the use of both “Wall St.” and “Main St.”
So as not to leave anybody in the lurch, I’ll note that “Walnut Ln.” and “Maple Dr.” are still available.
Another Feedback Friday. Catch the fever.
Did I listen when kfan and distorte said how brilliant Fiction Volante was? Yeah, but I thought, “Oh, I’ll get to that when I have some time” and when I did, it wasn’t there any more. But thanks to the good people at the Google cache, I was about to read maybe 30 percent of the stories, including “Substitutions.”
The thing I like best about this story is the way the title engages with the story. The first time you read it, there seems to be a clear correspondence between the story and the protagonist’s actions, and then at the end suddenly the title refers to a different substitution entirely.
Another way to get at this is to note that the story balances two main topics: a relationship and the actions of the protagonist. The first two (short) paragraphs are about the relationship, the third paragraph is about the actions (with one reference to the relationship), the fourth is about both, and the fifth is entirely about the actions. Both are interesting and there’s a fairly even balance there. But then the last paragraph comes and the title smacks you upside the head again and suddenly that balance between the relationship and the actions has changed profoundly.
I’m overanalyzing, maybe, but to see something structured this precisely and feel the way that it works on you emotionally is a nice thing.
“We have inherited a rich culture. We could work a little harder in its maintenance. The people of that time worked hard to give voice to our collective consciousness, and without wanting to sound overly dramatic about it, we have handed it back a little readily as we’ve prospered. And it doesn’t make sense, really, because the two shouldn’t be related.”
— Pierce’s review of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pierce writes (eloquently) about Ireland here but this idea about our willingness to cede rich culture as we become “richer” also feels true in the U.S. Or maybe its just that here there are more trappings of prosperity drowning out the better voices.
—Elbow, “One Day Like This,” The Seldom Seen Kid
Seven months after first hearing it, I still cannot play this song without immediately hitting repeat when it gets to the end. I’m not normally one to shill for Amazon but if you haven’t already done so, today you can get the best song of the year on one of the best albums of the year for two bucks.
The inside of my favorite book, by my favorite writer.
This is one of my five favorite books of all time. If you’ve been holding off on reading it because, hey, it’s pretty long, now’s as a good a time as any to get started. I lugged a hardcover version onto a commuter train for a summer and figured out a way to balance its thousand pages in one hand, so you can use it for cross-training as well as for expanding your understanding of what a novel—what a human being—can accomplish.
So sad.
This post was reblogged from What is your deal I'm serious what.
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