Archive for the ‘Sickness’ Category
In which The Tsarina takes over The Gay Recluse. On your entry tonight, The Tsarina remarks by quoting Henry Miller (1941): “There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.” [Via reader CBNY.]
Filed under: Quotes, Resignation, Sickness, The Russian Blue, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: 1941, Crazy Worlds, Guest Blogging, Henry Miller, Salvation, The Tsarina
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with the George Washington Bridge. Today I read a disturbing post on the NYT’s City Room blog about a pair of teenagers who broke into a vacant apartment in Brooklyn, doused a cat with lighter fluid and then set it on fire. According to the article, “[t]he […]
Filed under: Brooklyn, Disease, Dream, Film, Gay, GWB Project, Memory, Philosophers, Sickness | 3 Comments
Tags: A Short Film about Killing, Cats, Crimes, Cruelty, Death, Judith Shklar, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Punishments, Richard Rorty, Teenagers
On Vexed
In which The Gay Recluse is vexed. Lately we’ve been thinking about how much we still kinda h8 the words ‘gay’ and ‘queer.’ Though we know that many in ‘the community’ consider this a ‘settled issue’ — and perhaps this is a vestige of our own self-h8red, which is not small by any measure — […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Drivel, Gay, History, Language, Quotes, Resignation, Ruins, Science, Search, Sickness | 15 Comments
Tags: Queer, Vexed, Vext
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with the George Washington Bridge. My fifth grade teacher, Mr. W, was a large, macho man with a mustache and a tight perm. (You could actually be macho and have a perm in 1978.) He liked to aggressively talk about boys and girls “dating” and “kissing,” and […]
Filed under: Conspiracy, Gay, Government, GWB Project, Health, Memory, Nostalgia, Resignation, Sickness | 10 Comments
Tags: Cleaning Supplies, Fifth Grade, Girls, Harold & Maude, Knives, Macho Men, Suicide, The George Washington Bridge
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with the George Washington Bridge. You’d be surprised how often ‘str8 bros’ write in to tell us how ‘wrong’ we are in our assertions that this or that is homophobic, that we really shouldn’t be offended by something that’s ‘not that offensive,’ that we’re actually hurting the […]
Filed under: Architecture, Gay, GWB Project, Health, Language, Letters, Pessimism, Sickness, Stereotypes | 1 Comment
Tags: Hassles, Homophobia, Letters, Str8 Bros, The George Washington Bridge
In which The Gay Recluse says fuck yall. Do you read The Atlantic? If so, be sure to check out this month’s ish, which has “Gay Sex” on the cover for a pull quote that says “Gay people, too, deserve to be wanted sexually,” as if that could ever be enlightening in any context, and […]
Filed under: Conspiracy, Drivel, Gay, Sickness, Stereotypes | 9 Comments
Tags: Dark Ages, Homophobia, Jeffrey Goldberg, Losers, Olds, The Atlantic
In which The Gay Recluse reads Roberto Bolaño in stages. In the fourth book of 2666, we are presented with something of an encyclopedia of the literally thousands of crimes (99 percent of them against women) that occur in Bolano’s fictional border city of Santa Teresa — modeled on the real Juarez — over a […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Conspiracy, Decay, Disease, Dissonance, Gay, Landscape, Language, Literature, Sickness, Writers-Chilean | 1 Comment
Tags: 2666, Feminism, Juarez, Murder, Rape, Roberto Bolaño, Serial Killers, The Part About the Crimes, Torture
In which The Chaos Detective goes to Munich. Click through for “hi-quality” on YouTube or watch on Facebook. Stay tuned for the fifth and final installment of “City of Dreams.” THE CHAOS DETECTIVE City of Dreams (Part 1) City of Dreams (Part 2) City of Dreams (Part 3)
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Conspiracy, Film, Government, History, Landscape, Search, Sickness, Technology, The Chaos Detective, Travel | 1 Comment
Tags: City of Dreams, Hofgarten, Kempinski Hotel, Ludwig II, Munich
In which The Gay Recluse watches teevee. There are times when we cannot believe how long we’ve been alive, and concurrently, how long — assuming a regular life span — we still have to go. Though admittedly it’s a thought that most often arrives during an afternoon meeting at work, it also crosses our mind […]
Filed under: Conspiracy, Decay, Dissonance, Dream, Drivel, Landscape, Ruins, Search, Sickness, The Winter Garden, Washington Heights, Weather | 6 Comments
Tags: Cats, Depression, Fears, February, Layoff, Meetings, Recession, Snow, Tedium, Teevee, Work
On The Part About Fate (2666)
In which The Gay Recluse reads Roberto Bolaño in stages. In the third book of Roberto Bolaño’s epic 2666, we leave behind the maybe-psychotic descent into madness of Professor Amalfitano for a broader type of madness known as the fringes of modern/capitalistic civilization. Bolaño does this by way of a Harlem-based reporter who goes by […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Conspiracy, Infrastructure, Literature, Search, Sickness, Writers-Chilean | Leave a Comment
Tags: 2666, Boxing, Fate, Mexico, Murder, Noir, Roberto Bolaño
In which The Gay Recluse orders Sachertorte. In the United States — except for the rare exception — there is a well-documented dearth of hot gay statues. Occasionally you’ll see a statue and think, “hmm, he’s a lil gay.” (Or she, obv.) Or: “Why is that guy’s head between that other guy’s legs? It’s not […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Competitions, Conspiracy, History, Hot Gay Statues, Infrastructure, Landscape, Search, Sickness, Stereotypes, Travel | 5 Comments
Tags: Audubon Terrace, Bravo, David Beckham, Franz Liszt, Gonzagagasse, Johann Strauss, Models, NSFW, Pablo Picasso, Parliament, The L-Word, Vienna
In which The Gay Recluse dreams of decorating garden walls and office spaces. While in Vienna, we visited the Secession Building. According to Wikipedia: “The Vienna Secession was founded on 3 April 1897 by artists Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Max Kurzweil, Otto Wagner, and others…In 1898, the group’s exhibition house […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, City Pattern Project, Communism, Conspiracy, Dream, Fashion, Landscape, Pessimism, Ruins, Search, Sickness, Travel | 4 Comments
Tags: Art, Garden Walls, Jugendstil, Offices, Secession Building, Tedium, Vienna
In which The Gay Recluse holds a contest. But not really. Today we received the above (and well, below) photograph from Eric Patton of Sore Afraid. (Which btw we recommend for anyone — like us! — interested in refreshingly unrelenting pessimism, literary angst, truthful travel writing and related rumination.) This statue, obv one of the […]
Filed under: Architecture, Decay, Dissonance, Hot Gay Statues, Landscape, Search, Sickness, Traffic, Travel | 3 Comments
On the Scent of Cinnamon
In which The Gay Recluse files a book report. After we read Keith Banner’s The Smallest People Alive, we could not have imagined a more fucked-up society/culture than the low-class Midwest (US) described so effectively by Banner; imagine our surprise then, when we turned to another set of short stories — The Scent of Cinnamon […]
Filed under: Disease, Dissonance, Gay, Landscape, Literature, Ruins, Sickness, Writers-British | 1 Comment
In which The Gay Recluse seeks to vex. Oh noes! It seems that we’ve upset Reader Arundel with our obsessive-compulsive need to repeat the same or similar photographic images over and over! Here’s what Arundel wrote: Hi. I forget where I first came across your blog, but I enjoy your posts and insights. Thank you. […]
Filed under: Addiction, Dissonance, Dream, Drivel, Letters, Pessimism, Sickness | 6 Comments
Tags: Affectations, Causual Readers, Distractions, Eyesores
On Seduced and Abandoned
In which The Gay Recluse watches movies. Tonight we watched Seduced and Abandoned, the 1964 film by Italian director Pietro Germi. Set in a small town in Sicily, it follows a family with a 15-year-old girl who in a moment of passion sort of consents (but sort of not) to have sex with her older […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Film, Obsession, Ruins, Search, Sickness | 2 Comments
Tags: Italian Directors, Marriage, Pietro Germi, Seduced and Abandoned, Sicily, Stefania Sandrelli
In which The Gay Recluse loves Robert Bresson. In Diary of a Country Priest (1951), Robert Bresson offers us a portrait of a beautiful and painfully sensitive young priest who has just arrived to his new parish. For reasons that are never quite explained, the priest is mocked and detested by the local citizens; those […]
Filed under: Conspiracy, Film, Gay, Search, Sickness, Stereotypes, Writers-French | 2 Comments
Tags: Counts, Diary of a Country Priest, Farm Girls, Grief, Priests, Robert Bresson, The Dark Ages
In which The Gay Recluse is like, srsly, wtf? There’s really nothing we can say about Proposition 8 that hasn’t already been said, but we’re going to add our two cents anyway, just because it’s the right thing to do. (Oh and supposedly we’ll be eligible for a $50 gift certificate on Amazon.) Obvs there […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Competitions, Disease, Dissonance, Gay, Law, Pessimism, Sickness | 3 Comments
Tags: Bloggers, California, Fifty Dollars, Gift Certificates, Haters, Homophobia, John McCain, Proposition 8, Sarah Palin, Vote No on Prop 8
In which The Gay Recluse says wtf, dudebro? Although it’s not impossible to imagine a scenario in which a straight-guy literary critic does not expose himself as a moronic dudebro as he mocks other straight guys by writing 1) “Lev Grossman fellates Updike with a knowing look as Updike cradles his bald head in a […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Drivel, Gay, Quotes, Sickness, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, Writers-American | 2 Comments
Tags: Cocksuckers, Dudebros, Literary Critics, Post-gay, Rules, Straights
The Gay Recluse 