1. All credit to Alexandra Petri, by the way, for bringing this fact into my life completely unsolicited and of whom I will always endeavor to be worthy. But, yes, W. Somerset Maugham, who described himself in his own autobiography as being "in the first rank of second-raters," one time had a sex dream about Percy Shelley.

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  2. "Oh, were you planning on wearing these sparkly flats again? SO sorry. I have eated them."

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  3. Madeline Kahn is taking the week off, and I want to re-up Elon Green's wonderful piece about the greatest, most horrifying episode of the Dick Cavett show in history, when John Cassavettes, Peter Falk, and Ben Gazarra turned up on-set too drunk to discuss the movie they were there to promote.

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  4. Redwall: Live!

    A great actor reads aloud from Brian Jacques’ Redwall series in front of a crackling fire. (They do all the voices really well.)

    Interesting Bookstores

    In-depth profiles of small-town independent bookstores across the world, including interviews with the owners, patrons, and any cats-in-residence.

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  5. My great-grandparents once had a homestead near Burns, in the shadow of an extinct volcano named Glass Butte for the obsidian flows on its slopes. The land is part of a ranch now and there’s nothing there anymore, if there ever was much of anything. But I wanted to see that scrap of nothing which is, when it comes down to it, one of the reasons I exist.

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  6. These little shreds of naptha, toluene, xylene, titanium dioxide, other pigments, and a number of possible extenders including diatomaceous silica, are a drop in the slop bucket of tars and oils and plastics that wash down daily as dust, as grease, as snack wrappers, as scum, in cigarette butts and chewed gum.

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  7. MAL: How come you didn't turn on me, Jayne?

    JAYNE: Money wasn't good enough.

    MAL: What happens when it is?

    JAYNE: When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it’s picked up by scoundrels.

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  8. Behold: the North American Cuddlewolf in her natural habitat.

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  9. HAPPY WEEKEND, GOOD LUCK GETTING THIS OUT OF YOUR HEAD

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  10. Eat all the things! Talk of myths and legends and Fiennes. Open thread!

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  11. Let this young gentleman, who clearly knows what his best life looks like, guide your choices over the next few days. I have loved you all.

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  12. "Paint me like one of your French girls."

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  13. If Josh Hutcherson were your boyfriend, he would entertain your friends for hours, mixing cocktails like a wise bartender during Prohibition and listening intently to their tales of workplace microaggressions and bad scones.

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