Per aspera

My purity is based on the fact that nobody offered me much money.
Leonard Cohen
That article comes from a link in the comments to an essay about the evolution of the song “Hallelujah.”
…I should add that all of this comes via a Sidelight on Making Light.

Sorry I haven’t posted much lately. I blame the ennui. Other people have posted some stuff, though.
Matt Selman: The United States of America vs. Wesley Snipes:
DEFENSE ATTORNEY: The defense would like to call to the stand… Blade.
PROSECUTOR: Objection. Blade is not a real person, but rather Mr. Snipes in sunglasses and fake vampire […]

Because, in a nutshell, I GOT YER GENDER CARD RIGHT HERE, ASSHOLES. AND IT SAYS “REGISTERED DEMOCRAT.”
-Kate Harding, at Shakesville
For the record, if any of y’all were hiding your support for Clinton under a bushel, don’t think that just because I favor Obama, you can’t talk her up if you want. It’s not like […]

Somewhere on the web, I do not remember where, I read a recommendation of Inglorious, by Joanna Kavenna, as a good book worth reading, especially if the reader has the experience to appreciate everything Kavenna gets exactly right about having a depressive episode. I’m not very far into it yet, but I’m enjoying it […]

Caroline Kennedy’s Political Romanticism
She says that Obama could be a president like her father. I assume that means that he’ll be overrated, not that he’ll bring us to the brink of nuclear war.
Ramesh Ponnuru at NRO. The guy’s an asshole, but in this case* funny is funny.
(via Matt Yglesias)
*The most important feature of this […]

The obsessive desire to make electronics into choking hazards seems a bit misguided to me.
Ezra Klein, on the Macbook Air
This doesn’t count as my promised post for today, by the way.

When it comes to health care, conservatives use policy the way pick-up artists use astrology: It’s something to talk about while they try to screw you.

-Ezra Klein

Shut up.
But you’re right, I am. I can’t believe I spend as many hours a day as I do on the interweb, and have never heard Chocolate Rain until today, when Shakes linked to it while showing this:

First: “I move my mouth away from the mic to breathe in,” as I mentioned over there, […]

Via Shakes:
What does our poll show about the black vote in the Democratic race?
Well, it shows that black voters respond to other things besides race.
Another white guy who thinks it’s remarkable that black people live and think, just like you and me. I always get this image in my head of them running around […]

I’ve developed this weird new emotion over the last five years or so, where I can be absolutely flabbergasted while simultaneously thinking ‘oh, not this same old crap again’.
-The Editors

“The cloak appears to be finely-tailored velvet, and has an inside pocket to hold Mr. Fry’s cell phone.”
For real: Stephen Fry has a blog, and his first entry reveals him to be an Olympic-level gadget geek. He makes my own technolust look like chastity. Maybe I associate him too much with Jeeves, but […]

I already don’t understand how I ever walked around an unfamiliar city without by iPhone’s google maps function. Also glad nobody’s stolen the phone yet.
-Matt Yglesias
Maybe it’s an East Coast/West Coast thing, but you don’t ever read the C-netty Silicon Valley gadget people worrying that their ostentatious wielding of shiny, new, technofetish objects will get […]

Oh go fuck yourself, Irwin, if I may enjoy the impertinence of addressing you by your first name.
-James Wolcott
I will state now for the record my intent to steal that joke and use it as my own.

Paul Begala and James Carville - they’re the people Atrios was put on this earth to kill.

-Patrick Nielsen Hayden