New Yorker: When Bees Do Blow
Noah Baumbach, writer and director of The Squid and the Whale, is the author of the Shouts & Murmurs column in this week’s New Yorker. I hardly ever read my entire New Yorker because it usually takes more than a week to get through it, but this one-page verbal purge from a coked-up bee is worth your time. On page 29 in the magazine (but also available here on the website), Baumbach writes a creative piece titled “Buzzed” in reaction to a science experiment covered by the New York Times which found that bees react to cocaine much like humans do: it “alters their judgment, stimulates their behavior and makes them exaggeratedly enthusiastic about things that might not otherwise excite them.” Please enjoy reading it before it is relegated to the Subscribers Only pages of the New Yorker website. Here is an excerpt:
Wouldn’t you love a six-pack of Stella Artois right now? That’s the best beer. Stel-la! That was actually a pretty good imitation, don’t you think? The guy who played him in the movie, the “Streetcar” . . . who am I thinking of? It’s on the tip of my . . . Jesus, what’s wrong with me I can’t come up with this dude’s name? . . . Or how about, how about: a coconut Stella Artois beer?! Wouldn’t that be the best and you could spread it all over your body and it’s U.V. 1,000 or 1,000 proof or something. God I want to sting someone . . .
Also good in the New Yorker this week is Philip Gourevitch’s The Life After (full article not available online), a sort of follow up to his book, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
