12.28.2008
12.27.2008
Photo: Jose Hernandez / National Geographic Magazine
Hernandez: "This is a shot of three eagles fighting over a fish in Homer, Alaska, from March 2008. You can see the fish at the top of the image flying by itself, but it was caught in its fall by another eagle."
This photo won an honorable mention in the "Nature" category in National Geographic's 2008 International Photography Contest (click to see winners in various categories).
Fimoculous: 2008 End-of-Year Lists
Fimoculous gathers links to 2008's end-of-year lists on one page. There are ninety book lists so far, along with lists on everything from advertising to words. I like Tampa Bay Online's 50 Things We Know Now (That We Didn't Know This Time Last Year), which includes links to the stories behind them for more information.
"Little Blue Pills Among the Ways CIA Wins Friends in Afghanistan"
--The Washington Post
Yep. We're trading boners for info.
--The Washington Post
Yep. We're trading boners for info.
Why reenact wars when you can reenact Far Side cartoons?
by entitee, from the Far Side Reenactment Pool on Flickr. Setting up a shot to contribute might be a fun way to spend a few hours.
12.07.2008
Toothpaste for Dinner
I was sick and seeing double most of the weekend--too dizzy to read or watch a movie. The upside was digging around in the Toothpaste for Dinner archives as an alternative to more strenuous visual pursuits. Some favorites so far:
12.05.2008
Apostrophe's! Extra apostrophe's! Use 'em for plural's!
There are so many wonderful t-shirt's on the internet that I never buy any, fearing an uncontrollable downward spiral. This, though--this could break the seal:
T-shirt $16 at Sharing Machine (choose "Toothpaste for Dinner" for merch related to the webcomic).
T-shirt $16 at Sharing Machine (choose "Toothpaste for Dinner" for merch related to the webcomic).
From The Guardian, "Body swap research shows that self is a trick of the mind":
"Brain scientists have succeeded in fooling people into thinking they are inside the body of another person or a plastic dummy.
The out-of-body experience - which is surprisingly easy to induce - will help researchers to understand how the human brain constructs a sense of physical self. The research may also lead to practical applications such as more intuitive remote control of robots, treatments for phantom limb pain in amputee patients and possible treatments for anorexia." (read rest of article)
--
I went to Oberlin College, but am ashamed to say I never thought to check out the Oberlin Public Library. I see now that this was a mistake:
"OBERLIN, Ohio, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- A public library in Oberlin, Ohio, has a holiday display that features a legless Santa Claus being pushed down the stairs by a sadistic Christmas tree.
Conceptual artist Keith McGuckin, who created the Oberlin Public Library display, created a narrative to accompany the image that explains Santa's legs were destroyed by an alcohol-fueled incident involving power lines, and the tree pushing St. Nick's wheelchair down a flight of stairs plans to visit a strip club with the money he took from Santa's Salvation Army kettle, The Chronicle-Telegram (Elyria, Ohio) reported Thursday." (read rest of article, which includes mention of previous Oberlin library displays by McGuckin, including ones with "Nazi gingerbread men and drug-smuggling elves.")
UPDATE: Library director decided to take display down, said it was "becoming too much of a distraction."
"Brain scientists have succeeded in fooling people into thinking they are inside the body of another person or a plastic dummy.
The out-of-body experience - which is surprisingly easy to induce - will help researchers to understand how the human brain constructs a sense of physical self. The research may also lead to practical applications such as more intuitive remote control of robots, treatments for phantom limb pain in amputee patients and possible treatments for anorexia." (read rest of article)
--
I went to Oberlin College, but am ashamed to say I never thought to check out the Oberlin Public Library. I see now that this was a mistake:
"OBERLIN, Ohio, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- A public library in Oberlin, Ohio, has a holiday display that features a legless Santa Claus being pushed down the stairs by a sadistic Christmas tree.
Conceptual artist Keith McGuckin, who created the Oberlin Public Library display, created a narrative to accompany the image that explains Santa's legs were destroyed by an alcohol-fueled incident involving power lines, and the tree pushing St. Nick's wheelchair down a flight of stairs plans to visit a strip club with the money he took from Santa's Salvation Army kettle, The Chronicle-Telegram (Elyria, Ohio) reported Thursday." (read rest of article, which includes mention of previous Oberlin library displays by McGuckin, including ones with "Nazi gingerbread men and drug-smuggling elves.")
UPDATE: Library director decided to take display down, said it was "becoming too much of a distraction."
12.04.2008
When does a grand piano thrown from a window have less force and impact than a letter placed in a hand?
My friend MAC forwarded me yesterday's Writer's Almanac poem, "Piano" by Patrick Phillips (published 2008). Over it she placed William Meredith's "The Illiterate," published in 1958.
The Illiterate
--William Meredith
Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think that this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.
His uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
that keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?
Piano
--by Patrick Phillips
Touched by your goodness, I am like
that grand piano we found one night on Willoughby
that someone had smashed and somehow
heaved through an open window.
And you might think by this I mean I'm broken
or abandoned, or unloved. Truth is, I don't
know exactly what I am, any more
than the wreckage in the alley knows
it's a piano, filling with trash and yellow leaves.
Maybe I'm all that's left of what I was.
But touching me, I know, you are the good
breeze blowing across its rusted strings.
What would you call that feeling when the wood,
even with its cracked harp, starts to sing?
--
Phillips's poem is from Boy, published in 2008 by the University of Georgia Press, part of the VQR Poetry Series, and blurbed by Natasha Trethewey and Tom Sleigh. I haven't read it, and don't know Phillips, but--didn't this make him cringe? To borrow so much of another poem's syntax and structure, be so desperate as to stick a pink elephant (or busted grand piano) in it, and come out with something far less effective and good? And then--to publish it? (And speaking of others' poems, doesn't the "you are the good/breeze blowing across its rusted strings" sound like it belongs in Billy Collins's "Litany"?) Ouch.
UPDATE:from Patrick Phillips (who gave me permission to post): Today I came across your post about my poem "Piano," and just wanted to clarify that the first line of "Notes" in my book Boy reads: "'Piano' is after William Meredith's 'The Illiterate.'" The Meredith poem is one of my favorites, and I wrote "Piano" "after" Meredith, meaning consciously in his wake, under his spell, and in the shadow of his great poem. Sorry you didn't like the result, and sorry you encountered my poem without the note that makes my debt to "The Illiterate" explicit.
The Illiterate
--William Meredith
Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think that this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.
His uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
that keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?
Piano
--by Patrick Phillips
Touched by your goodness, I am like
that grand piano we found one night on Willoughby
that someone had smashed and somehow
heaved through an open window.
And you might think by this I mean I'm broken
or abandoned, or unloved. Truth is, I don't
know exactly what I am, any more
than the wreckage in the alley knows
it's a piano, filling with trash and yellow leaves.
Maybe I'm all that's left of what I was.
But touching me, I know, you are the good
breeze blowing across its rusted strings.
What would you call that feeling when the wood,
even with its cracked harp, starts to sing?
--
Phillips's poem is from Boy, published in 2008 by the University of Georgia Press, part of the VQR Poetry Series, and blurbed by Natasha Trethewey and Tom Sleigh. I haven't read it, and don't know Phillips, but--didn't this make him cringe? To borrow so much of another poem's syntax and structure, be so desperate as to stick a pink elephant (or busted grand piano) in it, and come out with something far less effective and good? And then--to publish it? (And speaking of others' poems, doesn't the "you are the good/breeze blowing across its rusted strings" sound like it belongs in Billy Collins's "Litany"?) Ouch.
UPDATE:from Patrick Phillips (who gave me permission to post): Today I came across your post about my poem "Piano," and just wanted to clarify that the first line of "Notes" in my book Boy reads: "'Piano' is after William Meredith's 'The Illiterate.'" The Meredith poem is one of my favorites, and I wrote "Piano" "after" Meredith, meaning consciously in his wake, under his spell, and in the shadow of his great poem. Sorry you didn't like the result, and sorry you encountered my poem without the note that makes my debt to "The Illiterate" explicit.
12.03.2008
12.02.2008
Pass me another grandkid, will ya, honey?
We have received, who knows why, a Lillian Vernon catalog in the mail, and among the "always personalizable" tchotchkes offered is a floor mat that says "GRANDKIDS ARE PROOF THAT GOD LOVES US AND WANTS US TO BE HAPPY." That's right: they took the attributed-to-Ben-Franklin quote, threw out "beer," and inserted grandkids.
-
I answered the phone on the ref desk and the caller said "Whih finna yo inneh finna?" The funny thing about working in a library and writing cartoons set in a library is that one really can't use most of the material the job presents. Whih finna yo inneh finna? is the best reference question I've ever received, but it just doesn't work in panels. The caller was asking, I managed to deduce, which finger is your index finger.
-
Sly: Chad Sweeney's "33 Translations of One Basho" in Issue 14 of Coconut.
-
Reviewing old bookmarks, I found "On the Fence and in the Spotlight", a short June 2008 Washington Post article about the experience of one undecided superdelegate. The Obama campaign's wooing of Heather Mizeur, a lesbian, included a special phone call from lesbian Obama supporter Melissa Etheridge, who remarked to Mizeur, "I said, 'I can't call a superdelegate. What am I going to say to a superdelegate?' They gave me some talking points and your bio, and after I read through your biography, I said, 'Aha! They want the gay one to call the gay one.'" Poor Hillary probably would've had to arrange a Skype call with the full cast of The L Word to compete, though throughout the article, Mizeur (who chose Obama) has only fond words for what she saw of Hillary's personality--and "meh" ones for Obama's.
I hadn't been aware of how much aggressive campaigning is done solely to superdelegates.
-
Also found this video compilation of Wilhelm screams:
If I were Lars Von Trier, or Woody Allen, or Wong Kar-Wai, or Monika Treut, or any other filmmaker whose work doesn't usually bring to mind "Wilhelm scream," I'd sure as hell use a Wilhelm scream somewhere in a movie. Even if just in the credits. I might also (as myself, not a filmmaker) purchase a product, let's say a deodorant, whose advertisement featured a Wilhelm scream at an insignificant moment.
-
I answered the phone on the ref desk and the caller said "Whih finna yo inneh finna?" The funny thing about working in a library and writing cartoons set in a library is that one really can't use most of the material the job presents. Whih finna yo inneh finna? is the best reference question I've ever received, but it just doesn't work in panels. The caller was asking, I managed to deduce, which finger is your index finger.
-
Sly: Chad Sweeney's "33 Translations of One Basho" in Issue 14 of Coconut.
-
Reviewing old bookmarks, I found "On the Fence and in the Spotlight", a short June 2008 Washington Post article about the experience of one undecided superdelegate. The Obama campaign's wooing of Heather Mizeur, a lesbian, included a special phone call from lesbian Obama supporter Melissa Etheridge, who remarked to Mizeur, "I said, 'I can't call a superdelegate. What am I going to say to a superdelegate?' They gave me some talking points and your bio, and after I read through your biography, I said, 'Aha! They want the gay one to call the gay one.'" Poor Hillary probably would've had to arrange a Skype call with the full cast of The L Word to compete, though throughout the article, Mizeur (who chose Obama) has only fond words for what she saw of Hillary's personality--and "meh" ones for Obama's.
I hadn't been aware of how much aggressive campaigning is done solely to superdelegates.
-
Also found this video compilation of Wilhelm screams:
If I were Lars Von Trier, or Woody Allen, or Wong Kar-Wai, or Monika Treut, or any other filmmaker whose work doesn't usually bring to mind "Wilhelm scream," I'd sure as hell use a Wilhelm scream somewhere in a movie. Even if just in the credits. I might also (as myself, not a filmmaker) purchase a product, let's say a deodorant, whose advertisement featured a Wilhelm scream at an insignificant moment.
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