I’m a big fan of Chicago photographer Paul Octavious and his creations, but this latest one The Cloud Collector in his Puffin Clouds series on Flickr? Wonderful. Just wonderful. If you like it, you should buy it. Your walls are lonely.

Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.
—David Starr

You should probably listen to Esperanza Spalding more than you do.

The motto for every missionary, whether preacher, printer, or schoolmaster, ought to be ‘Devoted for Life.’
—Adoniram Judson

As Whiskerino 2009 winds down with 12ish days of beard growing, photo showing online community remaining, I can’t help thinking, “wow, I didn’t really participate fully this year, other than the obvious gigantic hair on my face.” It’s amazing what marriage, a high-capacity-demanding job you love, and just plain life in general will do to eat all the time you used to have for such things. Onward and upward. Life is better now.

It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.
—Jean-Luc Godard

But we don’t stop [at simply being disappointed]…we need to express it. Vent it. Hiss it and spit it and hurl it like fistfuls of mental manure at the great wall of hey, screw you.

You have but to take a peek in the comments section below…any column, any article on this or any news site whatsoever, to see just how mean and nasty we have become. It does not matter what the piece might be about. Obama’s speech. High speed rail. Popular dog breeds. Your grandmother’s cookies. [It] will be so crammed with bile and bickering, accusation and pule, hatred and sneer you can’t help but feel violently disappointed by the shocking lack of basic human kindness and respect, much less a sense of positivism or perspective.
—Mark Morford, Why are you so terribly disappointing?

Morford doesn’t come to any grand conclusions or offer any fixes here, but that’s one heck of a apt, well-written critique of the general state of additional commentary online. The internet has at once connected much of the world, and unearthed our latent desire to vomit all our personal opinions and loathing at anyone, or at no one.

I hate the internet. I love the internet. My name is Joshua, and I’ve just started to ignore 95% of comments on 95% of websites.

We can break the cycle of blandness. We can jam up the assembly line that spits out one dull, lookalike piece of crap after another. We can say, ‘Why not do something with artistic integrity and ideological courage?’
—Tibor Kalman

File under: Been On Repeat For At Least A Month. I could listen to Joy Williams sing my grocery list and I would be happy about it.

Talent is in such short supply [that] mediocrity can be taken for brilliance rather more than genius can go undiscovered.
—Charles Saatchi