Category: Poseur Alert

"For the longest time, we've been reaching for a typeface that wasn't there. We knew it was something spare and tranquil, its letterforms reaching ambitiously outward, and we could hear it speaking in hushed but captivating tones. We imagined it as industrious, combining space-age optimism with the confidence and composure of a master craftsman. We could see the typeface among the realm of satisfying things, objects designed not merely to be used but to be enjoyed: a well-balanced knife, a performance engine; the tool that fits the hand just so," – Typography.com, reviewing the new Idlewild font. Update from a reader:

I don't know if you realize this, but Typography.com is the seller of that font, not a reviewer. It's marketing copy. And it seems in the ballpark of normal marketing copy to me – especially when you consider its audience is typographers, not laypeople.

"Remember when everybody was reading "The Sound and the Fury" in their gingham dresses and wife-beaters? (Take that, Steinbeck, you hack screenwriter.) But now that Faulkner Ultra-Lite "The Help" fever has morphed into "Hunger Games" Young Adult zeal, now is as good a time as any to remind folks of what may be the greatest winning streak in literature. The six works represented—eight if you count "Snopes" as a trilogy—is quite simply an unassailable fortress of literary perfection, positively reeking with excellence, and shining like a beacon of human enlightenment into the icy cosmos. That one can rightfully proclaim this without a twinge of doubt raises the question: Why is Faulkner so underread?" – D.H., The Economist.

"YOU GUESSED IT: We switched to iPhone yesterday. Cold turkey; no training wheels; bye-bye BlackBerry; be a man; take the plunge; no dual devices. BlackBerry was amazing over several jobs and three presidents. We have had one for so long that we remember the days when people would say: “Your calculator is ringing.” (hat tip: Michael Kennedy). But BlackBerry stopped serving us: The last several models we tried would freeze all the time, held only a couple of photos, and were set for some foreign alphabet, producing odd automatic accent marks. (That’s why Bob Barnett still uses his ancient version, with the wheel.) More and more, folks regarded our trusty ’Berry with bemusement, condescension — even pity," – Mike Allen.

There are times when the royal "we" can work in terms of a rhetorical device in a column like Playbook. Not this time.

"The shining light of pastoral charity and a unified heart is sacerdotal celibacy and enshrined virginity," – Pope Benedict XVI.

“Life and death coexist in complex and subtle ways in the penis and testicles, telling a story of triumph and tragedy,” – Colin McGinn, The Meaning of Disgust.

One of many ridiculous quotes dug up (pdf) by Nina Strohminger in an entertainingly brutal review.

"The stubbornness of resistance can becomes [sic] constitutive of an identity outside of neoliberalist rationalization, which inculcates us with an individualistic and ultimately antihuman ideology of convenience that prompts us to neglect our inescapable, Levinas-ian 'infinite responsibility to the other.' Presumably we can never be truly happy on a personal level as long as we are operating as de facto deputies of neoliberalism, but it is impossible for us to will an alternative subjectivity to what it engenders, minus the crucible of precarity. Via precarity we can answer the 'call to life,'" – Rob Horning. 

"Through cupcakes, seemingly innocent little ‘treats,' we can project fantasies of who and what we desire to be. Instead of connecting us to others, however, cupcakes keep us separate and add to our sense of isolation. … [C]upcakes evidence the narcissism born of the Internet by feeding us in shallow and un-nutritious ways. Similar to the way we cruise the Internet looking for bite-size and delicious bits of information, cupcakes enable us to cruise the sugary world of self-indulgence," - Paul Hokemeyer, psychotherapist.