I’ve just started listening to Michael Chabon’s recent book of essays, Manhood for Amateurs, and this line from early in caught my attention:
Every work of art is one half of a secret handshake.
It articulates so well my experience of reading books as a child. Or looking at art, for that matter. I feel now that I experience most works of art (including ones I manage to make) as one half of a fist bump.
------------
Janet Maslin refers to Josh Kilmer-Purcell's new memoir--one of many, many memoirs in the last few years about urban sophisticates moving to somewhere countryish, milking goats, and raising chickens--as "Chicken Lit." I like this designation almost as much as "Bonnet Rippers" (don't know who said it first) for Amish romances.
-----
[on cutting hours at public libraries]
"Public Broadcasting is a good example for public libraries (and a competitor for donor support). Does public radio turn off their transmitter when they need money? No, they put on specially good programming and have pledge drives. My local library puts donor names on bricks; I'd like to see libraries put donor names on opening hours."
-from "Are Public Libraries in a Death Spiral?" by Eric Hellman (via Katherine Gould's PVLD Director's Blog)
Also: NYPL President Paul LeClerc Testifies at City Hall in Response to Proposed Cuts to Libraries (full text of testimony)
-----------
Boneshaker Books, opening in what had previously been Arise!Bookstore's space on Lyndale Avenue, Minneapolis, has an intriguing offer for book lovers (or book writers):
"Do you have a favorite book that you or your organization thinks every bookstore should stock? Join our Skeleton Crew with a $250 donation. You'll get to select a book that Boneshaker Books will stock, permanently. That's right: we promise to always have your selection in stock."
Kind of scary. Kind of awesome. Don't tell any Tea Party members.
6.10.2010
6.04.2010
Caught in the oil at The Big Picture
The Big Picture has a new gallery up, by AP photographer Charlie Riedel. Eight photographs of seabirds mired in oil in Louisiana. Don't miss it.
"I Am Sitting in a Video Room 1000"
In homage to Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting in a Room,", YouTube user canzona uploaded a video to YouTube, ripped it from YouTube, uploaded it to YouTube again, and repeated the process 1000 times.
Here's the original video (or click to view):
You can see more (all?) videos from the process at canzona's YouTube channel.
(via BoingBoing)
Here's the original video (or click to view):
You can see more (all?) videos from the process at canzona's YouTube channel.
(via BoingBoing)
6.01.2010
Scratch N' Sniff
Two fun things via Folderol:Amy's Vintage Scratch N' Sniff Sticker Library and
Sesame Street Fighter by ~gavacho13
5.31.2010
"Kiss From a Rose" at David & Anna's Wedding
Just as the reception after my brother's wedding was beginning to wind down, someone requested "Kiss From a Rose." What resulted was my & my family's favorite part of the day: Dave & Anna's friends surrounding them as they slow danced, in this kind of undulating anemone of warm wishes--a bodily serenade. The video's of very low quality (you can just barely spot the bride & groom dancing in the center--look for the dress), but I'm really grateful to 12-yr-old Bella for being the only one in the room to realize that the moment needed recording, even if all she had was a low-end digital camera (view below or click to watch):
5.26.2010
Shyness as a form of self-attention
Embarrassingly, this simple observation blew my mind:
"[L]et’s not confuse shyness with modesty or humility. Charles Darwin, who was very interested in shyness, correctly diagnosed it as a form of “self-attention” — a preoccupation with self. How do I fit in here? What do they think of me?"--from a 04/10 article, "Shyness," by James Parker on Boston.com
I consider myself shy
= I consider myself too much.
"[L]et’s not confuse shyness with modesty or humility. Charles Darwin, who was very interested in shyness, correctly diagnosed it as a form of “self-attention” — a preoccupation with self. How do I fit in here? What do they think of me?"--from a 04/10 article, "Shyness," by James Parker on Boston.com
I consider myself shy
= I consider myself too much.
Documerica on Flickr
For its Documerica Project (1971-1977), the EPA hired freelancers to photograph "images relating to environmental problems, EPA activities, and everyday life in the 1970s." The photos have been posted to Flickr as part of the US National Archives Flickr stream (link goes to their sets). Like many of the collections public institutions have made available at the Flickr Commons, they make for good browsing.
(photo: Ernst Halberstadt)
I remember sitting in cylinders like these. They were fantastic. I haven't seen any in a park in a long time.
A 1973 electric car that looks a lot like the current Smart car:
(Frank Lodge)
Load any one set and be bathed in the dimly bright coolish warmth of the 70s-photos color palette: (for example).
(Danny Lyon)
Documerica
(photo: Ernst Halberstadt)
I remember sitting in cylinders like these. They were fantastic. I haven't seen any in a park in a long time.
A 1973 electric car that looks a lot like the current Smart car:
(Frank Lodge)
Load any one set and be bathed in the dimly bright coolish warmth of the 70s-photos color palette: (for example).
(Danny Lyon)
Documerica
5.16.2010
Meara O'Reilly's Chladni Singing
Via BoingBoing, and absolutely mesmerizing--
Sound designer, instrument builder, and singer O'Reilly writes, "Chladni patterns were discovered by Robert Hook and Ernst Chladni in the 18th and 19th centuries. They found that when they bowed a piece of glass covered in flour, (using an ordinary violin bow), the powder arranged itself in resonant patterns according to places of stillness and vibration. Today, Chladni plates are often electronically driven by tone generators and used in scientific demonstrations, but with carefully sung notes (and a transducer driving the plate), I'm able to explore the same resonances. I'm currently writing songs based on sequences of patterns."
I can't wait to explore O'Reilly's site (list of projects includes "Sung Language Studies," "Glass and Water Tone Generator," "Maritime Listening Device" and more) further.
Sound designer, instrument builder, and singer O'Reilly writes, "Chladni patterns were discovered by Robert Hook and Ernst Chladni in the 18th and 19th centuries. They found that when they bowed a piece of glass covered in flour, (using an ordinary violin bow), the powder arranged itself in resonant patterns according to places of stillness and vibration. Today, Chladni plates are often electronically driven by tone generators and used in scientific demonstrations, but with carefully sung notes (and a transducer driving the plate), I'm able to explore the same resonances. I'm currently writing songs based on sequences of patterns."
Chladni Singing from meara o'reilly on Vimeo.
I can't wait to explore O'Reilly's site (list of projects includes "Sung Language Studies," "Glass and Water Tone Generator," "Maritime Listening Device" and more) further.
5.14.2010
Letters with Character
As part of the promotion for What He's Poised to Do, Ben Greenman's forthcoming book of stories inspired by letters, Harper Perennial invites folks to submit a letter written to a fictional character.
HP is posting selected letters at a Letters With Character: the blog. My favorites so far are
the letter to Lowly Worm of Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go;
the letter to Malone of Samuel Beckett's Malone Dies;
the letter to Charlie of Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower;
and the letter to Olympia of Katherine Dunn's Geek Love.
HP is posting selected letters at a Letters With Character: the blog. My favorites so far are
the letter to Lowly Worm of Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go;
the letter to Malone of Samuel Beckett's Malone Dies;
the letter to Charlie of Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower;
and the letter to Olympia of Katherine Dunn's Geek Love.
5.11.2010
Cory Doctorow: front matter from For the Win
Cory Doctorow's second YA book, For the Win, launched today. Below is the front matter in its entirety, which I think is incredibly worthwhile reading even if you aren't interested in and don't plan to read the book itself:
INTRODUCTION
For the Win is my second young adult novel, and, like my 2008 book Little Brother, it is meant to do more than tell a story. For the Win is a book about economics (a subject that suddenly got a lot more relevant about halfway through the writing of this book, when the world's economy slid unceremoniously into the toilet and got stuck there), justice, politics, games and labor. For the Win connects the dots between the way we shop, the way we organize, and the way we play, and why some people are rich, some are poor, and how we seemed to get stuck there.
I hope that readers of this book will be inspired to dig deeper into the subjects of "behavioral economics" (and related subjects like "neuroeconomics") and to start asking hard questions about how we end up with the stuff we own, and what it costs our human brothers and sisters to make those goods, and why we think we need them.
But it's a poor politics that can only express itself by choosing to buy or not buy something. Sometimes (often!), you need to organize to make a difference.
This is the golden age of organizing. If there's one thing the Internet's changed forever, it's the relative difficulty and cost of getting a bunch of people in the same place, working for the same goal. That's not always good (thugs, bullies, racists and loonies never had it so good), but it is fundamentally game-changing.
It's hard to remember just how difficult this organizing stuff used to be: how hard it was to do something as trivial as getting ten friends to agree on dinner and a movie, let alone getting millions of people together to raise money for a political candidate, get the vote out, protest corruption, or save an endangered and beloved institution.
The net doesn't solve the problem of injustice, but it solves the first hard problem of righting wrongs: getting everyone together and keeping them together. You still have to do the even harder work of risking life, limb, personal fortune, reputation,
Every wonderful thing in our world has fight in its history. Our rights, our good fortune, our happiness and all that is sweet was paid for, once upon a time, by principled people who risked everything to change the world for the better. Those risks are not diminished one iota by the net. But the rewards are every bit as sweet.
AUDIOBOOK
The good folks at Random House Audio produced a fantastic audio edition of this book. You can buy it on CD, or you can buy the MP3 version from a variety of online booksellers. I also sell it myself on my site.
Unfortunately, you can't buy this book from the world's most popular audiobook vendors: Apple's iTunes and Amazon's Audible. That's because neither store would allow me to sell the audiobook on terms that I believe are fair and just.
Specifically, Apple refused to carry the book unless it had "digital rights management" on it. This is the technology that locks music to Apple's devices. It's illegal to move DRM-crippled files to devices that Apple hasn't blessed, which means that if I encourage you to buy my works through Apple, I lose the ability to choose to continue to sell to you from Apple's competition at some later date in the future. That seems like a bad deal for both of us.
To its credit, Audible (which supplies all of the audiobooks on iTunes) was willing to sell this book without DRM, but they insisted on including their extremely onerous "end user license agreement," which also prohibits moving my book to a device that Audible hasn't approved. To make it easy for them, I offered to simply record a little intro that said, "Cory Doctorow and Random House Audio grant you permission to use this book in any way that does not violate copyright law." That way, they wouldn't have to make any changes to their site or the agreements you have to click through to use it. But Audible refused.
I wouldn't sell this book through Wal-Mart if they insisted that you could only shelve it on a Wal-Mart bookcase and I won't sell it through any online retailer that imposes the same requirement on your virtual bookshelves. That's also why you won't find my books for sale for the Kindle or iPad stores -- both stores insist on the right to lock you into terms that I believe are unfair and bad for both of us.
I'm pretty bummed about this. For the record, I would gladly sell through both Apple and Audible if they'd let me sell it without DRM, and under the world's shortest EULA ("Don't violate copyright law.") In the meantime, I thank you in advance for patronizing online audiobook sellers who respect the rights of both authors and audiences. And I am especially grateful to Random House Audio for backing me in this fight to get a fair deal for all of us.
THE COPYRIGHT THING
The Creative Commons license at the top of this file probably tipped you off to the fact that I've got some pretty unorthodox views about copyright. Here's what I think of it, in a nutshell: a little goes a long way, and more than that is too much.
I like the fact that copyright lets me sell rights to my publishers and film studios and so on. It's nice that they can't just take my stuff without permission and get rich on it without cutting me in for a piece of the action. I'm in a pretty good position when it comes to negotiating with these companies: I've got a great agent and a decade's experience with copyright law and licensing (including a stint as a delegate at WIPO, the UN agency that makes the world's copyright treaties). What's more, there's just not that many of these negotiations -- even if I sell fifty or a hundred different editions of For the Win (which would put it in top millionth of a percentile for fiction), that's still only a hundred negotiations, which I could just about manage.
I hate the fact that fans who want to do what readers have always done are expected to play in the same system as all these hotshot agents and lawyers. It's just stupid to say that an elementary school classroom should have to talk to a lawyer at a giant global publisher before they put on a play based on one of my books. It's ridiculous to say that people who want to "loan" their electronic copy of my book to a friend need to get a license to do so. Loaning books has been around longer than any publisher on Earth, and it's a fine thing.
Copyright laws are increasingly passed wihtout democratic debate or scrutiny. In Great Britain, where I live, Parliament has just passed the Digital Economy Act, a complex copyright law that allows corporate giants to disconnect whole families from the Internet if anyone in the house is accused (without proof) of copyright infringement; it also creates a "Great Firewall of Britain" that is used to censor any site that record companies and movie studios don't like. This law was passed without any serious public debate in Parliament, rushed through using a dirty process through which our elected representatives betrayed the public to give a huge, gift-wrapped present to their corporate pals.
It gets worse: around the world, rich countries like the US, the EU and Canada have been negotiating a secret copyright treaty called "The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" (ACTA) that has all the problems that the Digital Economy Act had and then some. The plan is to agree to this in secret, without public debate, and then force the world's poorest countries to sign up for it by refusing to allow them to sell goods to rich countries unless the do. In America, the plan is to pass it without Congressional debate, using the executive power of the President. Though this began under Bush, the Obama administration has pursued it with great enthusiasm.
So if you're not violating copyright la right now, you will be soon. And the penalties are about to get a lot worse. As someone who relies on copyright to earn my living, this makes me sick. If the big entertainment companies set out to destroy copyright's mission, they couldn't do any better than they're doing now.
So, basically, screw that. Or, as the singer, Wobbly and union organizer Woody Guthrie so eloquently put it:
"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."
DONATIONS AND A WORD TO TEACHERS AND LIBRARIANS
Every time I put a book online for free, I get emails from readers who want to send me donations for the book. I appreciate their generous spirit, but I'm not interested in cash donations, because my publishers are really important to me. They contribute immeasurably to the book, improving it, introducing it to audiences I could never reach, helping me do more with my work. I have no desire to cut them out of the loop.
But there has to be some good way to turn that generosity to good use, and I think I've found it.
Here's the deal: there are lots of teachers and librarians who'd love to get hard-copies of this book into their kids' hands, but don't have the budget for it (teachers in the US spend around $1,200 out of pocket each on classroom supplies that their budgets won't stretch to cover, which is why I sponsor a classroom at Ivanhoe Elementary in my old neighborhood in Los Angeles; you can adopt a class yourself here).
There are generous people who want to send some cash my way to thank me for the free ebooks.
I'm proposing that we put them together.
If you're a teacher or librarian and you want a free copy of For the Win, email freeftwbook@gmail.com with your name and the name and address of your school. It'll be posted to http://craphound.com/ftw/donate/ by my fantastic helper, Olga Nunes, so that potential donors can see it.
If you enjoyed the electronic edition of For the Win and you want to donate something to say thanks, go to http://craphound.com/ftw/donate/ and find a teacher or librarian you want to support. Then go to Amazon, BN.com, or your favorite electronic bookseller and order a copy to the classroom, then email a copy of the receipt (feel free to delete your address and other personal info first!) to freeftwbook@gmail.com so that Olga can mark that copy as sent. If you don't want to be publicly acknowledged for your generosity, let us know and we'll keep you anonymous, otherwise we'll thank you on the donate page.
I've done this with three of my titles now, and gotten more than a thousand books into the hands of readers through your generosity. I am more grateful than words can express for this -- one of my readers called it "paying your debts forward with instant gratification." That's a heck of a thing, isn't it?
-------------------------[end Doctorow]
----------------[all below is by Doctorow]-------------
INTRODUCTION
For the Win is my second young adult novel, and, like my 2008 book Little Brother, it is meant to do more than tell a story. For the Win is a book about economics (a subject that suddenly got a lot more relevant about halfway through the writing of this book, when the world's economy slid unceremoniously into the toilet and got stuck there), justice, politics, games and labor. For the Win connects the dots between the way we shop, the way we organize, and the way we play, and why some people are rich, some are poor, and how we seemed to get stuck there.
I hope that readers of this book will be inspired to dig deeper into the subjects of "behavioral economics" (and related subjects like "neuroeconomics") and to start asking hard questions about how we end up with the stuff we own, and what it costs our human brothers and sisters to make those goods, and why we think we need them.
But it's a poor politics that can only express itself by choosing to buy or not buy something. Sometimes (often!), you need to organize to make a difference.
This is the golden age of organizing. If there's one thing the Internet's changed forever, it's the relative difficulty and cost of getting a bunch of people in the same place, working for the same goal. That's not always good (thugs, bullies, racists and loonies never had it so good), but it is fundamentally game-changing.
It's hard to remember just how difficult this organizing stuff used to be: how hard it was to do something as trivial as getting ten friends to agree on dinner and a movie, let alone getting millions of people together to raise money for a political candidate, get the vote out, protest corruption, or save an endangered and beloved institution.
The net doesn't solve the problem of injustice, but it solves the first hard problem of righting wrongs: getting everyone together and keeping them together. You still have to do the even harder work of risking life, limb, personal fortune, reputation,
Every wonderful thing in our world has fight in its history. Our rights, our good fortune, our happiness and all that is sweet was paid for, once upon a time, by principled people who risked everything to change the world for the better. Those risks are not diminished one iota by the net. But the rewards are every bit as sweet.
AUDIOBOOK
The good folks at Random House Audio produced a fantastic audio edition of this book. You can buy it on CD, or you can buy the MP3 version from a variety of online booksellers. I also sell it myself on my site.
Unfortunately, you can't buy this book from the world's most popular audiobook vendors: Apple's iTunes and Amazon's Audible. That's because neither store would allow me to sell the audiobook on terms that I believe are fair and just.
Specifically, Apple refused to carry the book unless it had "digital rights management" on it. This is the technology that locks music to Apple's devices. It's illegal to move DRM-crippled files to devices that Apple hasn't blessed, which means that if I encourage you to buy my works through Apple, I lose the ability to choose to continue to sell to you from Apple's competition at some later date in the future. That seems like a bad deal for both of us.
To its credit, Audible (which supplies all of the audiobooks on iTunes) was willing to sell this book without DRM, but they insisted on including their extremely onerous "end user license agreement," which also prohibits moving my book to a device that Audible hasn't approved. To make it easy for them, I offered to simply record a little intro that said, "Cory Doctorow and Random House Audio grant you permission to use this book in any way that does not violate copyright law." That way, they wouldn't have to make any changes to their site or the agreements you have to click through to use it. But Audible refused.
I wouldn't sell this book through Wal-Mart if they insisted that you could only shelve it on a Wal-Mart bookcase and I won't sell it through any online retailer that imposes the same requirement on your virtual bookshelves. That's also why you won't find my books for sale for the Kindle or iPad stores -- both stores insist on the right to lock you into terms that I believe are unfair and bad for both of us.
I'm pretty bummed about this. For the record, I would gladly sell through both Apple and Audible if they'd let me sell it without DRM, and under the world's shortest EULA ("Don't violate copyright law.") In the meantime, I thank you in advance for patronizing online audiobook sellers who respect the rights of both authors and audiences. And I am especially grateful to Random House Audio for backing me in this fight to get a fair deal for all of us.
THE COPYRIGHT THING
The Creative Commons license at the top of this file probably tipped you off to the fact that I've got some pretty unorthodox views about copyright. Here's what I think of it, in a nutshell: a little goes a long way, and more than that is too much.
I like the fact that copyright lets me sell rights to my publishers and film studios and so on. It's nice that they can't just take my stuff without permission and get rich on it without cutting me in for a piece of the action. I'm in a pretty good position when it comes to negotiating with these companies: I've got a great agent and a decade's experience with copyright law and licensing (including a stint as a delegate at WIPO, the UN agency that makes the world's copyright treaties). What's more, there's just not that many of these negotiations -- even if I sell fifty or a hundred different editions of For the Win (which would put it in top millionth of a percentile for fiction), that's still only a hundred negotiations, which I could just about manage.
I hate the fact that fans who want to do what readers have always done are expected to play in the same system as all these hotshot agents and lawyers. It's just stupid to say that an elementary school classroom should have to talk to a lawyer at a giant global publisher before they put on a play based on one of my books. It's ridiculous to say that people who want to "loan" their electronic copy of my book to a friend need to get a license to do so. Loaning books has been around longer than any publisher on Earth, and it's a fine thing.
Copyright laws are increasingly passed wihtout democratic debate or scrutiny. In Great Britain, where I live, Parliament has just passed the Digital Economy Act, a complex copyright law that allows corporate giants to disconnect whole families from the Internet if anyone in the house is accused (without proof) of copyright infringement; it also creates a "Great Firewall of Britain" that is used to censor any site that record companies and movie studios don't like. This law was passed without any serious public debate in Parliament, rushed through using a dirty process through which our elected representatives betrayed the public to give a huge, gift-wrapped present to their corporate pals.
It gets worse: around the world, rich countries like the US, the EU and Canada have been negotiating a secret copyright treaty called "The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" (ACTA) that has all the problems that the Digital Economy Act had and then some. The plan is to agree to this in secret, without public debate, and then force the world's poorest countries to sign up for it by refusing to allow them to sell goods to rich countries unless the do. In America, the plan is to pass it without Congressional debate, using the executive power of the President. Though this began under Bush, the Obama administration has pursued it with great enthusiasm.
So if you're not violating copyright la right now, you will be soon. And the penalties are about to get a lot worse. As someone who relies on copyright to earn my living, this makes me sick. If the big entertainment companies set out to destroy copyright's mission, they couldn't do any better than they're doing now.
So, basically, screw that. Or, as the singer, Wobbly and union organizer Woody Guthrie so eloquently put it:
"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."
DONATIONS AND A WORD TO TEACHERS AND LIBRARIANS
Every time I put a book online for free, I get emails from readers who want to send me donations for the book. I appreciate their generous spirit, but I'm not interested in cash donations, because my publishers are really important to me. They contribute immeasurably to the book, improving it, introducing it to audiences I could never reach, helping me do more with my work. I have no desire to cut them out of the loop.
But there has to be some good way to turn that generosity to good use, and I think I've found it.
Here's the deal: there are lots of teachers and librarians who'd love to get hard-copies of this book into their kids' hands, but don't have the budget for it (teachers in the US spend around $1,200 out of pocket each on classroom supplies that their budgets won't stretch to cover, which is why I sponsor a classroom at Ivanhoe Elementary in my old neighborhood in Los Angeles; you can adopt a class yourself here).
There are generous people who want to send some cash my way to thank me for the free ebooks.
I'm proposing that we put them together.
If you're a teacher or librarian and you want a free copy of For the Win, email freeftwbook@gmail.com with your name and the name and address of your school. It'll be posted to http://craphound.com/ftw/donate/ by my fantastic helper, Olga Nunes, so that potential donors can see it.
If you enjoyed the electronic edition of For the Win and you want to donate something to say thanks, go to http://craphound.com/ftw/donate/ and find a teacher or librarian you want to support. Then go to Amazon, BN.com, or your favorite electronic bookseller and order a copy to the classroom, then email a copy of the receipt (feel free to delete your address and other personal info first!) to freeftwbook@gmail.com so that Olga can mark that copy as sent. If you don't want to be publicly acknowledged for your generosity, let us know and we'll keep you anonymous, otherwise we'll thank you on the donate page.
I've done this with three of my titles now, and gotten more than a thousand books into the hands of readers through your generosity. I am more grateful than words can express for this -- one of my readers called it "paying your debts forward with instant gratification." That's a heck of a thing, isn't it?
-------------------------[end Doctorow]
FTW, indeed.
5.07.2010
Etsy find: Tinder & Bloom
I recently bought a slim leather iPod case from Tinder & Bloom that I love:
It feels good and solid in my hand--more protective than a lot of the other handmade cases I've seen, and definitely easy to spot in a pile of mass-produced cases. It smells nice & leathery. I like a lot of artist Suzanne Allen's other cases, too (I already want another, and I'm not a buy-it-even-if-I-don't-need-it [which I won't, I don't think: my case feels sturdy]-kind of girl).
It feels good and solid in my hand--more protective than a lot of the other handmade cases I've seen, and definitely easy to spot in a pile of mass-produced cases. It smells nice & leathery. I like a lot of artist Suzanne Allen's other cases, too (I already want another, and I'm not a buy-it-even-if-I-don't-need-it [which I won't, I don't think: my case feels sturdy]-kind of girl).
Passing it on in case you're case-hunting (or looking for a great small gift for an iPod/iPhone/othergadget user). I spent $25.
4.27.2010
Already mentioned this on Facebook, and
I know it's been around for a while, but
I still love Bea Arthur Mountains Pizza.
You can request your own celebrity landscape food combos here.
I still love Bea Arthur Mountains Pizza.
You can request your own celebrity landscape food combos here.
4.09.2010
Zane Presents Barack Obama
Suzetta Perkins's new book Nothing Stays the Same arrived today at the library, with interesting cover art:
The framed Obama poster is on both the front and back cover. You can't see it in this image, but "Hope" is stamped across Obama's forehead.
The framed Obama poster is on both the front and back cover. You can't see it in this image, but "Hope" is stamped across Obama's forehead.
4.04.2010
Single Ladies Devastation
Don't you try and tell me who I am.
I shared this on Facebook, but want to post here, too. As of now, it's racked up 1,567,355 views on YouTube, and I think at least 30 of those were me. See below or click to view.
I followed a path from the family's YouTube channel to Ragamuffin Soul, Carlos Whittaker [The Spoiler]'s blog, which I enjoyed wandering around in--especially when I found this post.
I shared this on Facebook, but want to post here, too. As of now, it's racked up 1,567,355 views on YouTube, and I think at least 30 of those were me. See below or click to view.
I followed a path from the family's YouTube channel to Ragamuffin Soul, Carlos Whittaker [The Spoiler]'s blog, which I enjoyed wandering around in--especially when I found this post.
4.03.2010
One Sentence
I'm still reading and enjoying One Sentence (I mentioned it here about a year ago) which posts "True stories, told in one sentence" from a variety of anonymous contributors--PostSecret without the visuals, and probably with more focus on the construction of the sentence. Here are some sentences from the blog I've held on to since last posting about it:
I came across an old lady laying on the side of the road in the middle of the night and when I approached her she looked up and asked, "Did I win the race?"
My ex-wife would freeze up every time she told the story of coming home from church as a child and finding all the dolls she had left lined up in tiny chairs replaced by the dead squirrels that her father had killed that morning.
We told my older sister that if she had wanted to decorate the tree with us, then she should have gone to community college.
I became bitter about the whole thing when the story in the newspaper was more about how the family had lost their fruit stand and less about how the fruit stand crushed you to death.
As a child, my parents convinced me that when the ice cream truck played its song, it meant the ice cream was finished.
When I told my dad I'd misplaced my class ring, he told me his was lost 30 years ago when "a girl died in a car accident."
During a 6.2 earthquake that shook our building violently, my half-asleep husband sat up, looked at me in confusion and asked, "What are you doing?"
I came across an old lady laying on the side of the road in the middle of the night and when I approached her she looked up and asked, "Did I win the race?"
My ex-wife would freeze up every time she told the story of coming home from church as a child and finding all the dolls she had left lined up in tiny chairs replaced by the dead squirrels that her father had killed that morning.
We told my older sister that if she had wanted to decorate the tree with us, then she should have gone to community college.
I became bitter about the whole thing when the story in the newspaper was more about how the family had lost their fruit stand and less about how the fruit stand crushed you to death.
As a child, my parents convinced me that when the ice cream truck played its song, it meant the ice cream was finished.
When I told my dad I'd misplaced my class ring, he told me his was lost 30 years ago when "a girl died in a car accident."
During a 6.2 earthquake that shook our building violently, my half-asleep husband sat up, looked at me in confusion and asked, "What are you doing?"
4.02.2010
Notes on Reality Hunger, Fantasy Hunger, & David Shields
I picked up David Shields's Reality Hunger after reading not reviews of it, but mentions of how polarized the reviews of it have been. The book is apparently a new classic, a jolt to the solar plexus that belongs on every syllabus, a wake-up call for the 21st century--or a piece of crap.
I found it neither. I'm looking up reviews after the fact to try to figure out why so many have responded so intensely to the book. I enjoyed it; I'll give it a 3 out of 5 stars on GoodReads. I don't think it said anything new, unless the newness is in David Shields being the one saying it. The main thrusts seem to be:
A) all memoir is fiction, people, just like all history and biography: bits are fictionalized, whether they be "perfect recollections" of conversations that took place decades ago or claims that one spent three nights in jail when one did not. Hence, it is kind of silly to be morally outraged by James Frey. (With this I did not disagree--though I do think one could claim a little outrage if the book was only published because the publisher thought it was true--outraged that it might have remained in the slush pile otherwise. But if you're an editor/publisher and you're only publishing a book because you think it's true, I think you should reconsider whether you'd still find the book of quality if it were "not true"). All memoirists, if writing for an audience, are manipulating things. There is no memory that is not manipulated. Agreed.
B) David Shields likes mashups and remixes and books that cannot be easily classified into one category. Not only that, but these are the only forms that are relevant to life today. The first sentence there works; the second really doesn't, as Shields seems to be mistaking a personal preference or a change in one's own reading habits or way of thinking for some new huge cultural shift. The speed and ease with which one might now mash up songs/videos/digital texts has wildly increased [and does mark a new huge shift], yep, and people are doing awesome things. But mashups and cut-ups and hymns-quoted-in-symphonies have been around for ages. Shields claims that narrative bores him not just because it bores him but because of this moment in time--and therefore narrative is dead. That is: narrative has come to bore him, he seems to believe, because he lives in the 21st century and not some other.
I share a lot of Shields's taste in literature. But I didn't enjoy sweeping generational saga-narratives with near-countless characters loooong before the rise of remix culture. I don't think narrative is dead, but IF it were, it wouldn't be because it's 2010. William Carlos Williams said, nearer to the beginning of the 20th century, "All sonnets say the same thing." One could as easily say that "all straightforward narratives say the same thing," which seems to be what Shields is trying to say. But, Shields, don't you see? All fragments with white space around them say the same thing, too! Honestly. "Oh, boy, another sonnet, which like a cat will always land on its feet, and where everything will be resolved in the final couplet." --that's Williams (well, I'm paraphrasing [grin]). But also, "Oh boy, another poem in fragments with lots of white space around them that reflect, how, like, nothing is reconciliable, and mumble mumble aporia lacuna gasp." Or "Another fucking collage."
The Onion indirectly made a much stronger argument for the death of the novel (or memoir or nonfiction or poetry that isn't chopped up into small chunks) a few weeks back with its brief, home-hitting article Nation Shudders At Large Block of Uninterrupted Text. But that's really more about the [potential] death of a delivery mechanism: the long-ass chunk of text. Japan's wildly popular cell phone novels have plots and narratives--people are just receiving them a little bit at a time, which likely heightens suspense and excitement about where the plot is going. I don't think that cell phone "lyric essays," Shields's form of choice, would succeed as well.
Plot isn't dead. Ask the cell phone novel. Ask James Patterson's empire--sometimes in the library it seems like every third book we own is "by" James Patterson, and he recently signed a deal to produce 17 more books in the next 3 years. James Patterson's books are nothing BUT plot. Yeah, Shields probably means that plot is dead in "literary" fiction, but he cites the popularity of reality shows as evidence of our culture's "reality hunger," so he isn't just talking about high art, either. Plot isn't dead, and it won't be as long as James Patterson or someone agreeing to write as James Patterson lives. Dialogue and character development, maybe, but not plot.
Up until my late 20s I pictured life like one long story…one fairly straightforward narrative. I feel now like it's more of a series of very loosely connected stories. Shields is right in that our lives now don't resemble long straightforward narratives. But really, did they ever? Say you're a serf in the 13th century. You only have a first name. Day after day, you have to do the same thing in the same place. You never travel more than a few miles from the place where you were born. Does this resemble a straightforward narrative? Not to me. Long, straightforward narratives were no more "appropriate to the time period" then than they are now. Narratives came into existence because of a hunger for narrative. Fictional characters came into existence because of a hunger for fictional characters. I don't look around and see any evidence that that hunger is gone from the culture at large. Gone for Shields, maybe, and never much of a hunger for me, either. But, for goodness' sake, look at Harry Potter: character! Hero! Quest! People are absolutely still hungry for story. And fantasy novels have been more popular in the last few years than "realistic fiction" has, by a landslide (with, in addition, a rise in adults reading children's & YA fantasy literature)…a hunger for LESS reality?
I found it neither. I'm looking up reviews after the fact to try to figure out why so many have responded so intensely to the book. I enjoyed it; I'll give it a 3 out of 5 stars on GoodReads. I don't think it said anything new, unless the newness is in David Shields being the one saying it. The main thrusts seem to be:
A) all memoir is fiction, people, just like all history and biography: bits are fictionalized, whether they be "perfect recollections" of conversations that took place decades ago or claims that one spent three nights in jail when one did not. Hence, it is kind of silly to be morally outraged by James Frey. (With this I did not disagree--though I do think one could claim a little outrage if the book was only published because the publisher thought it was true--outraged that it might have remained in the slush pile otherwise. But if you're an editor/publisher and you're only publishing a book because you think it's true, I think you should reconsider whether you'd still find the book of quality if it were "not true"). All memoirists, if writing for an audience, are manipulating things. There is no memory that is not manipulated. Agreed.
and
B) David Shields likes mashups and remixes and books that cannot be easily classified into one category. Not only that, but these are the only forms that are relevant to life today. The first sentence there works; the second really doesn't, as Shields seems to be mistaking a personal preference or a change in one's own reading habits or way of thinking for some new huge cultural shift. The speed and ease with which one might now mash up songs/videos/digital texts has wildly increased [and does mark a new huge shift], yep, and people are doing awesome things. But mashups and cut-ups and hymns-quoted-in-symphonies have been around for ages. Shields claims that narrative bores him not just because it bores him but because of this moment in time--and therefore narrative is dead. That is: narrative has come to bore him, he seems to believe, because he lives in the 21st century and not some other.
I share a lot of Shields's taste in literature. But I didn't enjoy sweeping generational saga-narratives with near-countless characters loooong before the rise of remix culture. I don't think narrative is dead, but IF it were, it wouldn't be because it's 2010. William Carlos Williams said, nearer to the beginning of the 20th century, "All sonnets say the same thing." One could as easily say that "all straightforward narratives say the same thing," which seems to be what Shields is trying to say. But, Shields, don't you see? All fragments with white space around them say the same thing, too! Honestly. "Oh, boy, another sonnet, which like a cat will always land on its feet, and where everything will be resolved in the final couplet." --that's Williams (well, I'm paraphrasing [grin]). But also, "Oh boy, another poem in fragments with lots of white space around them that reflect, how, like, nothing is reconciliable, and mumble mumble aporia lacuna gasp." Or "Another fucking collage."
The Onion indirectly made a much stronger argument for the death of the novel (or memoir or nonfiction or poetry that isn't chopped up into small chunks) a few weeks back with its brief, home-hitting article Nation Shudders At Large Block of Uninterrupted Text. But that's really more about the [potential] death of a delivery mechanism: the long-ass chunk of text. Japan's wildly popular cell phone novels have plots and narratives--people are just receiving them a little bit at a time, which likely heightens suspense and excitement about where the plot is going. I don't think that cell phone "lyric essays," Shields's form of choice, would succeed as well.
Plot isn't dead. Ask the cell phone novel. Ask James Patterson's empire--sometimes in the library it seems like every third book we own is "by" James Patterson, and he recently signed a deal to produce 17 more books in the next 3 years. James Patterson's books are nothing BUT plot. Yeah, Shields probably means that plot is dead in "literary" fiction, but he cites the popularity of reality shows as evidence of our culture's "reality hunger," so he isn't just talking about high art, either. Plot isn't dead, and it won't be as long as James Patterson or someone agreeing to write as James Patterson lives. Dialogue and character development, maybe, but not plot.
Up until my late 20s I pictured life like one long story…one fairly straightforward narrative. I feel now like it's more of a series of very loosely connected stories. Shields is right in that our lives now don't resemble long straightforward narratives. But really, did they ever? Say you're a serf in the 13th century. You only have a first name. Day after day, you have to do the same thing in the same place. You never travel more than a few miles from the place where you were born. Does this resemble a straightforward narrative? Not to me. Long, straightforward narratives were no more "appropriate to the time period" then than they are now. Narratives came into existence because of a hunger for narrative. Fictional characters came into existence because of a hunger for fictional characters. I don't look around and see any evidence that that hunger is gone from the culture at large. Gone for Shields, maybe, and never much of a hunger for me, either. But, for goodness' sake, look at Harry Potter: character! Hero! Quest! People are absolutely still hungry for story. And fantasy novels have been more popular in the last few years than "realistic fiction" has, by a landslide (with, in addition, a rise in adults reading children's & YA fantasy literature)…a hunger for LESS reality?
Now that I think about it: isn't the popularity of reality shows due to a hunger for fantasy, not for reality? American Idol/America's Next Top Model: an ordinary person like me gets to send in her photo or audition in front of powerful people she'd never meet in "real life," and maybe they'll see she's a diamond in the rough, and she'll rise to superstardom in the space of weeks! The Biggest Loser: I get a personal trainer, a first-class gym and a personal chef, all as top-notch as Oprah's, to help me lose weight! And free time to concentrate on nothing but getting fit! Supernanny: an awesomely effective taskmaster with a British accent comes into my home and solves all my kids' behavior problems like that! The Bachelor. Survivor: I get to live outside and test my physical & psychological mettle like I've always wanted to! I get weeks off from work to do this!
Reality shows are fantasies come true. A hunger for reality would be a desire to watch people who want to lose weight check diet books out of the library, make themselves meager, halfhearted breakfasts, and try to exercise somewhere between parenting and work duties without collapsing from exhaustion. Just because the contestants on The Biggest Loser are working hard doesn't mean their situation isn't a fantasy. COPS might've been closer to something one should call a reality show.
Anyway--Shields finds straightforward narratives, now, inherently boring. But "novels of ideas" can also be boring. Lyric essays can be boring as hell. Mashups can be boring (Shields does admit as much in reference to Girl Talk's mashups. Hear, hear). Collage (a technique Shields heartily approves) can be boring--just look at 80% of the collage greeting cards for sale at Etsy (a site I heartily approve, but still). Aphorisms can be boring (all aphorisms say the same thing). Shields seems to imagine working in these forms automatically gives value to one's work--a bad collage is better than a great narrative, makes more sense at this moment in time than a great narrative. I really disagree with him here.
I didn't get much of a "manifesto" vibe from Reality Hunger (subtitle: A Manifesto). My favorite quotes from it did strike me as manifesto-like: clean, direct statements of an argument that make one go Unh and that hit with the weight of facts:
Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings. --Auden
The way to write is to throw your body as the mark when all your arrows are spent. -- Emerson
...and the heaviest, most painful one, one I was already familiar with, but that still had me burst out, when I read it, "I want another ticket!"--the most powerful quote in the book, for me:
In the end one experiences only oneself. -- Nietzsche
Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings. --Auden
The way to write is to throw your body as the mark when all your arrows are spent. -- Emerson
...and the heaviest, most painful one, one I was already familiar with, but that still had me burst out, when I read it, "I want another ticket!"--the most powerful quote in the book, for me:
In the end one experiences only oneself. -- Nietzsche
3.31.2010
Commonplace
I'm reading Reality Hunger, David Shields's commonplace book, and it led me to rummage around until I found a few pages of quotes and passages I'd kept, typed out from my reading, when I was an undergrad. They never had an arc beyond my liking them. I still like a lot of them:
"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops." --Kurt Vonnegut
"'You have to let other people be right,' was his answer to their insults. 'It consoles them for not being anything else.'"--Andre Gide
"It is better to say 'I am suffering' than to say 'This landscape is ugly.'"--Simone Weil
"Indeed, her injuries were the cleanest areas of her body."--Patricia Cornwell
"There is a curious, extremely interesting term in Japanese that refers to a very special manner of polite, aristocratic speech known as 'play language,' asobase kotoba, whereby, instead of saying to a person, for example, 'I see that you have come to Tokyo,' one would express the observation by saying 'I see that you are playing at being in Tokyo'--the idea being that the person addressed is in such control of his life and his powers that for him everything is a play, a game. He is able to enter into life as one would enter into a game, freely and with ease. And this idea is carried so far that instead of saying to a person, 'I hear that your father has died,' you would say, rather, 'I hear that your father has played at dying.'"--Joseph Campbell
"Had we a theatre, would you, tragic one, stand there again and again--" --Rilke
"help me sing of grandpa who went to the store for a tube of toothpaste 16,000 lines of dactylic hexameter ago and never returned"--Mark Leyner
"Nature has given way to aura. A man cuts himself shaving and someone is signed up to write the biography of the cut."--Don Delillo
"'How strange it is that they can't tell us what they themselves seem to know,' a tall, thin beast murmured.'"--Madeleine L'Engle
"I have always been fascinated by that story which a friend found for me in a geography textbook: certain Australian tribes, when one of their members dies, eliminate a word from the vocabulary as a sign of mourning. This makes language equivalent to life, asserts that men are in control of what they say and that they give it orders rather than receive them from it."--Roland Barthes
"Even when we don't desire it,/God is ripening." --Rilke
"The place we rip open again and again/that always heals--that's God."--Rilke
"She always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day."--Virginia Woolf
"I want to take your hands off my hips/and put them on a statue's hips"--Frank O'Hara
"the high lore's in the mail"--Pattie McCarthy
"We say 'far away,' the Zulu has for that a word which means, in our sentence form, 'There where someone cries out, 'O mother, I am lost.' The Fuegian soars above our analytic wisdom with a seven-syllabled word whose precise meaning is, 'They stare at one another, each waiting for the other to volunteer to do what both wish, but are not able to do.'"--Buber
"Can I safely say that Greece was mainly/water, rock, and ideas?"--David Berman
"You can press his pants/but you cannot pant//when he presses you/against his Tuscan postcards"--John Yau
"Please do not understand me too quickly."--Gide
"If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion...but also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion." --Ursula LeGuin
"That feelings yield no personal life is understood only by a few. For the most personal life of all seems to reside in feelings, and if, like the modern man, you have learned to concern yourself wholly with your own feelings, despair at their unreality will not easily instruct you in a better way--for despair is also an interesting feeling."--Buber
"Baboons love maize. I have seen them running through maize fields in an orgy of gluttony, sticking an ear of maize under each arm, grabbing more ears, letting the first ears drop, replacing them with more ears, which fall when the next two ears are stolen. At the end of the row the baboon emerges with two ears of maize--and a whole trail of fallen and abandoned ears."--William Maples
"As long as he had his own car he was an American and could not die"--Joyce Carol Oates
"Believe me, for certain men at least, not taking what one doesn't desire is the hardest thing in the world."--Camus
"Liking is probably the best form of ownership, and ownership is the worst form of liking."--Jose Saramago
"What do you expect, one is what one is, partly at least."--Beckett
"What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish? What all men's minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?"--Melville
-----------
I'm enjoying the Shields--I'm about half-way through--but I'm not finding it as fresh and illuminating as some reviewers are, or as off-putting as other reviewers are. Part of me keeps thinking, "But poets have known this stuff for decades."
3.20.2010
I didn't click through to this gallery of prom photos of lesbian couples for a few days after seeing the link. Mistake. It's really heartening. Very good medicine.
Autostraddle's looking for more photos for the gallery, curated in response to the school in Mississippi that cancelled the prom entirely in response to a lesbian student's request to bring a female date.
Autostraddle's looking for more photos for the gallery, curated in response to the school in Mississippi that cancelled the prom entirely in response to a lesbian student's request to bring a female date.
Thanks to Abby Henderson for the link.
3.06.2010
Eurythmics at the 1984 Grammys
How is it I remained unaware until now that Annie Lennox performed in some serious male drag at the 1984 Grammys? By "serious," I mean without camping it up, without giving a cute reassuring wink to indicate that she'd be a girl again when the performance was over. The plainness, frankness, of this performance makes it far more exciting and transgressive to me than Madonna's much-talked-about VMA performance from the same year.
See below or click to view.
See below or click to view.
2.28.2010
Your Parents' Books
Name a few books (if any) you can remember being on your parents' shelves when you were a little kid, along with any key sentences you recall from when you "read" them.
1) The Immigrants by Howard Fast
"You have deflowered me, Daniel Lavette."
2) Cujo by Stephen King
"It was matting her blue sailor dress, blood, oh dear God dear Jesus Joseph and Mary so much blood"
3) Trinity by Leon Uris
[never opened it, but my brother was almost named "Conor"]
1) The Immigrants by Howard Fast
"You have deflowered me, Daniel Lavette."
2) Cujo by Stephen King
"It was matting her blue sailor dress, blood, oh dear God dear Jesus Joseph and Mary so much blood"
3) Trinity by Leon Uris
[never opened it, but my brother was almost named "Conor"]
Wow, do I love this shirt.
Made up entirely of Lacoste alligators, designed by Fernando and Humberto Campana and handmade by the Coopa Roca Women's co-operative in Brazil.
2.17.2010
Lonely Glasses
Via HTMLGIANT, Canadian designer Jess Atkinson's "Lonely Glasses," "non-prescription glasses that function as an anti-lonely device, giving the user the feeling of being surrounded by people when worn.”
1.17.2010
1.03.2010
A Journey Round My Skull
My favorite new blog find of 2009 was Will's A Journey Round My Skull. It features dazzling book illustrations from around the world, with a focus on forgotten illustrators and children's books. Every post is a visual feast. A great blog for fans of graphic design, poster art, etc. Almost every day I find an image I want to live with. Some examples...
From post The Raven, an illustration from Lorenzo Mattotti and Lou Reed's The Raven:
From post Frolicsome Flowers of Evil, an illustration from Frolicsome Flowers-They See the Wonderful "Rajah Rug" by T. Benjamin Faucett (I'd like to use this on a party invitation):
From post Iranian Kids' Books, Part 2, an illustration from Farshid Mesghali's The Blue-Eyed Boy:
From post Rokuro Taniuchi 5:
...and on and on. I haven't even begun to dig into Will's (I don't know his last name) blogroll, but it looks amazing, too.
From post The Raven, an illustration from Lorenzo Mattotti and Lou Reed's The Raven:
From post Frolicsome Flowers of Evil, an illustration from Frolicsome Flowers-They See the Wonderful "Rajah Rug" by T. Benjamin Faucett (I'd like to use this on a party invitation):
From post Iranian Kids' Books, Part 2, an illustration from Farshid Mesghali's The Blue-Eyed Boy:
From post Rokuro Taniuchi 5:
...and on and on. I haven't even begun to dig into Will's (I don't know his last name) blogroll, but it looks amazing, too.
12.12.2009
What Orwell feared....what Huxley feared.
I've been meaning to post a link to Stuart McMillen's excellent Amusing Ourselves To Death, a brief illustrated breakdown of Orwell's ideas about the future vs. Huxley's (based on a book by Neil Postman). 1984 tends to get mentioned far more frequently in discussions of the future (or present), I think--but the vision in Brave New World looks mighty familiar.
11.25.2009
Happy Thanksgiving
...to all who have ever sat (or continue to sit) at the "kids' table":
From Shouts & Murmurs: The Wisdom of Children by Simon Rich (New Yorker, 2007):
A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids’ Table
MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want to become crazy.
DAD: O.K.
GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.
DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.
UNCLE: I’m having sex right now.
DAD: We all are.
MOM: Let’s talk about which kid I like the best.
DAD: (laughing) You know, but you won’t tell.
MOM: If they ask me again, I might tell.
FRIEND FROM WORK: Hey, guess what! My voice is pretty loud!
DAD: (laughing) There are actual monsters in the world, but when my kids ask I pretend like there aren’t.
MOM: I’m angry! I’m angry all of a sudden!
DAD: I’m angry, too! We’re angry at each other!
MOM: Now everything is fine.
DAD: We just saw the PG-13 movie. It was so good.
MOM: There was a big sex.
FRIEND FROM WORK: I am the loudest! I am the loudest!
(Everybody laughs.)
MOM: I had a lot of wine, and now I’m crazy!
GRANDFATHER: Hey, do you guys know what God looks like?
ALL: Yes.
GRANDFATHER: Don’t tell the kids.
From Shouts & Murmurs: The Wisdom of Children by Simon Rich (New Yorker, 2007):
A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids’ Table
MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want to become crazy.
DAD: O.K.
GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.
DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.
UNCLE: I’m having sex right now.
DAD: We all are.
MOM: Let’s talk about which kid I like the best.
DAD: (laughing) You know, but you won’t tell.
MOM: If they ask me again, I might tell.
FRIEND FROM WORK: Hey, guess what! My voice is pretty loud!
DAD: (laughing) There are actual monsters in the world, but when my kids ask I pretend like there aren’t.
MOM: I’m angry! I’m angry all of a sudden!
DAD: I’m angry, too! We’re angry at each other!
MOM: Now everything is fine.
DAD: We just saw the PG-13 movie. It was so good.
MOM: There was a big sex.
FRIEND FROM WORK: I am the loudest! I am the loudest!
(Everybody laughs.)
MOM: I had a lot of wine, and now I’m crazy!
GRANDFATHER: Hey, do you guys know what God looks like?
ALL: Yes.
GRANDFATHER: Don’t tell the kids.
11.11.2009
Fake AP StyleBook
I learned about Fake AP StyleBook this morning via folderol. Though folderol wasn't, I'm apparently late to the game, as the 382-tweet Twitter account, active since October 20th, has already attracted an agent and possible book deal.
I spent my morning productively reading all 382 tweets. Here are my favorites:
--------------------
FakeAPStyleBook posts:
"Bloody Mary" on first and second mentions, "Mary" on third to avoid summoning her through the mirror.
Use the word "cluster" like this: "Ricardo Montalban proffered a porcelain tray of delicious caramel nut clusters."
The Times New Roman font is neither new nor of Roman descent. 'Sup with that? SEE ALSO: Courier Font Not Used By Actual Couriers.
"Video Cassette Recorder" on first reference, "VCR" on second, "We're still talking about these?" thereafter.
Terms of art are only four years in length and art is not constitutionally allowed more than two consecutive terms.
Avoid excessive use of contractions. The baby will come when it comes.
Use "The Incredible Hulk" the first time in piece, then just "Hulk." See also Sensational Dionne Warwick, Mesmerizing Janet Reno.
Do not spell out laughs. Describe them: "He laughed muppetly."
In a byline, "With additional reporting by" can be shortened to "Big Ups To."
A 'queue' is a short line of people or other objects. A 'queueueueueue' is a longer line.
List sexual positions in alphabetical order. Remember, "alphabetical order" is itself a sexual position.
When covering a flood always include a photo of a dog stranded on a roof. Throw your own dog up there if needed.
The plural of BFF is "Heathers."
When referring to Lake Titicaca leave a lot of space afterwards for your readers to just laugh and laugh. (See also: "Ball State")
For unnamed sources, agree on an attribution that gives the reader an idea of who it is. Ex.: "rhymes with President Bobama"
Do not use Latin names of plants and insects. Use their American names, such as "viney grower" and "shit bug."
Do not use "Whoomp! There it is!" unless it actually is there.
Breasts should not be referred to as "jugs" unless you need it to rhyme with something else in the article. See also: cans, sweater puppies.
Stories about people who claim to have psychic abilities must always be written as though they aren't liars, for some reason.
''Hanson Dark'' or ''Menudo Latte'' may be used in place of ''Jonas Brothers.''
To denote air quotes, "use quotes."
Replace "situation deteriorated/worsened" with "shit [just] got real." Ex: On day three of the hostage crisis, shit got real.
The plural of "Pokemon" is "vermin."
Instead of either "multi-talented" or "multitalented" use "bisexual".
It is poor newsroom etiquette to throw yourself out of the window to prove that your co-worker is Superman.
Slander is harder to prove, so avoid libel charges by just yellin' that shit out the window.
The correct modifier for a student seeking a master's degree is "in for a disappointment."
Instead of prepositions, it's preferable to end sentences with propositions, so why don't we start a dry cleaning business?
When faced with a challenging name, simply refer to the individual by nicknames like "Scout" or "Champ".
Use "verbal" to compare words with some other form of communication ("poor verbal skills"), use "oral" to be more popular.
"Lego" is the plural. There is no singular because what the hell can you do with only one of them?
Use "inflammable" for wimpy stuff like sparklers, "flammable" for shit that blows up REAL GOOD.
The plural of "vagina" is "vaginas." The plural of "penis" is gross, nobody wants to read about that.
Avoid using the colloquialism "gonna." EXCEPTION: "You gonna eat the rest of that sandwich?"
Do not change weight of gorilla in phrase, “800-lb gorilla in the room.” Correct weight is 800 lbs. DO NOT CHANGE GORILLA'S WEIGHT!
While it’s tempting to call them ‘baristi’ because of the Italian roots, the plural of ‘barista’ is ‘journalism majors.’
Precede basic statements of fact with 'allegedly' to avoid accusations of bias: 'the allegedly wet water,' 'the allegedly poisonous poison'
Change British spelling to American spelling or risk being hung as a spy for the Queen.
Affect is verb: "The songs of Liza Minnelli affected the crops." Effect is noun: "Behold the effect Liza has on the corn!"
Use "i.e." when providing a specific clarifying example, and use "e.g." when referencing noted actor E.G. Marshall.
You may not say "no one could have suspected..." until you have interviewed everyone on planet Earth.
Take note; the semicolon is never to be used correctly.
Dr Pepper doesn't have a period in it. An easy way to remember this is 'Doctors are dudes and dudes don't get periods.'
--------------------
I spent my morning productively reading all 382 tweets. Here are my favorites:
--------------------
FakeAPStyleBook posts:
"Bloody Mary" on first and second mentions, "Mary" on third to avoid summoning her through the mirror.
Use the word "cluster" like this: "Ricardo Montalban proffered a porcelain tray of delicious caramel nut clusters."
The Times New Roman font is neither new nor of Roman descent. 'Sup with that? SEE ALSO: Courier Font Not Used By Actual Couriers.
"Video Cassette Recorder" on first reference, "VCR" on second, "We're still talking about these?" thereafter.
Terms of art are only four years in length and art is not constitutionally allowed more than two consecutive terms.
Avoid excessive use of contractions. The baby will come when it comes.
Use "The Incredible Hulk" the first time in piece, then just "Hulk." See also Sensational Dionne Warwick, Mesmerizing Janet Reno.
Do not spell out laughs. Describe them: "He laughed muppetly."
In a byline, "With additional reporting by" can be shortened to "Big Ups To."
A 'queue' is a short line of people or other objects. A 'queueueueueue' is a longer line.
List sexual positions in alphabetical order. Remember, "alphabetical order" is itself a sexual position.
When covering a flood always include a photo of a dog stranded on a roof. Throw your own dog up there if needed.
The plural of BFF is "Heathers."
When referring to Lake Titicaca leave a lot of space afterwards for your readers to just laugh and laugh. (See also: "Ball State")
For unnamed sources, agree on an attribution that gives the reader an idea of who it is. Ex.: "rhymes with President Bobama"
Do not use Latin names of plants and insects. Use their American names, such as "viney grower" and "shit bug."
Do not use "Whoomp! There it is!" unless it actually is there.
Breasts should not be referred to as "jugs" unless you need it to rhyme with something else in the article. See also: cans, sweater puppies.
Stories about people who claim to have psychic abilities must always be written as though they aren't liars, for some reason.
''Hanson Dark'' or ''Menudo Latte'' may be used in place of ''Jonas Brothers.''
To denote air quotes, "use quotes."
Replace "situation deteriorated/worsened" with "shit [just] got real." Ex: On day three of the hostage crisis, shit got real.
The plural of "Pokemon" is "vermin."
Instead of either "multi-talented" or "multitalented" use "bisexual".
It is poor newsroom etiquette to throw yourself out of the window to prove that your co-worker is Superman.
Slander is harder to prove, so avoid libel charges by just yellin' that shit out the window.
The correct modifier for a student seeking a master's degree is "in for a disappointment."
Instead of prepositions, it's preferable to end sentences with propositions, so why don't we start a dry cleaning business?
When faced with a challenging name, simply refer to the individual by nicknames like "Scout" or "Champ".
Use "verbal" to compare words with some other form of communication ("poor verbal skills"), use "oral" to be more popular.
"Lego" is the plural. There is no singular because what the hell can you do with only one of them?
Use "inflammable" for wimpy stuff like sparklers, "flammable" for shit that blows up REAL GOOD.
The plural of "vagina" is "vaginas." The plural of "penis" is gross, nobody wants to read about that.
Avoid using the colloquialism "gonna." EXCEPTION: "You gonna eat the rest of that sandwich?"
Do not change weight of gorilla in phrase, “800-lb gorilla in the room.” Correct weight is 800 lbs. DO NOT CHANGE GORILLA'S WEIGHT!
While it’s tempting to call them ‘baristi’ because of the Italian roots, the plural of ‘barista’ is ‘journalism majors.’
Precede basic statements of fact with 'allegedly' to avoid accusations of bias: 'the allegedly wet water,' 'the allegedly poisonous poison'
Change British spelling to American spelling or risk being hung as a spy for the Queen.
Affect is verb: "The songs of Liza Minnelli affected the crops." Effect is noun: "Behold the effect Liza has on the corn!"
Use "i.e." when providing a specific clarifying example, and use "e.g." when referencing noted actor E.G. Marshall.
You may not say "no one could have suspected..." until you have interviewed everyone on planet Earth.
Take note; the semicolon is never to be used correctly.
Dr Pepper doesn't have a period in it. An easy way to remember this is 'Doctors are dudes and dudes don't get periods.'
--------------------
10.21.2009
Four minutes spent listening to just about any 86-yr-old speak on what s/he's seen is worth my time. Via BoingBoing, the April 09 testimony of an 86-yr-old WWII vet and lifelong Republican at a hearing on gay marriage in Maine:
9.23.2009
MacArthur poets
After learning yesterday that Heather McHugh is one of the 2009 recipients of a MacArthur Fellowship (better known as MacArthur Genius Award/Grant), I got curious as to how many poets (and which poets) had previously been named fellows.
The answers?
40 poets, including McHugh, have received MacArthur Fellowships since the MacArthur Foundation began offering them in 1981.
Here they are, from least recent to most recent recipient:
A.R. Ammons
Joseph Brodsky
Derek Walcott
Robert Penn Warren
Brad Leithauser
A.K. Ramanujan
Robert Hass
Charles Simic
Galway Kinnell
John Ashbery
Daryl Hine
Jay Wright
Douglas Crase
Richard Kenney
Mark Strand
May Swenson
Allen Grossman
Jorie Graham
John Hollander
Alice Fulton
Eleanor Wilner
Amy Clampitt
Irving Feldman
Thom Gunn
Ann Lauterbach
Jim Powell
Adrienne Rich
Sandra Cisneros
Richard Howard
Thylias Moss
Susan Stewart
Linda Bierds
Edward Hirsch
Ishmael Reed
Campbell McGrath
Anne Carson
Lucia Perillo
C.D. Wright
Peter Cole
Heather McHugh
The answers?
40 poets, including McHugh, have received MacArthur Fellowships since the MacArthur Foundation began offering them in 1981.
Here they are, from least recent to most recent recipient:
A.R. Ammons
Joseph Brodsky
Derek Walcott
Robert Penn Warren
Brad Leithauser
A.K. Ramanujan
Robert Hass
Charles Simic
Galway Kinnell
John Ashbery
Daryl Hine
Jay Wright
Douglas Crase
Richard Kenney
Mark Strand
May Swenson
Allen Grossman
Jorie Graham
John Hollander
Alice Fulton
Eleanor Wilner
Amy Clampitt
Irving Feldman
Thom Gunn
Ann Lauterbach
Jim Powell
Adrienne Rich
Sandra Cisneros
Richard Howard
Thylias Moss
Susan Stewart
Linda Bierds
Edward Hirsch
Ishmael Reed
Campbell McGrath
Anne Carson
Lucia Perillo
C.D. Wright
Peter Cole
Heather McHugh
9.03.2009
9.02.2009
I haven't quit blogging...I've just been blogging on the inside.
A few things I've been meaning to post:
*Prolific author Terry Pratchett, diagnosed two years ago with early-onset Alzheimer's, has spoken in favor of the right to die (which I heartily support): "I believe that if the burden gets too great, those who wish should be allowed to be shown the door. In my case, in the fullness of time, I hope it will be in the garden under an English sky. Or, if wet, the library."
*After finishing Dave Eggers's Zeitoun (good), I found myself revisiting images of the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. weBranding's Project Katrina photo set is very strong.
*I enjoyed this short interview with George Takei, best known for his role as Sulu on Star Trek, but more recently known as a gay activist who married his partner of 22 years in San Francisco. Takei mentions asking Gene Roddenberry in the 80s why there weren't any queer crew members on the Enterprise: "“He gave me the stock answer that [being gay] doesn’t matter [in the 24th century],” Takei says. “I said, ‘Well, if it doesn’t matter, why don’t we see them?”" (Roddenberry did, Takei credits, tackle other political issues of the time on the show--TV's first interracial kiss was between Capt. Kirk and Uhura). Takei also speaks of having been imprisoned, as a very young boy, in a Japanese internment camp during WWII.
*If, like me, your mind seems to gawp helplessly when trying to imagine where we'll be in twenty--or even ten--years, you might appreciate the What's Next? Top Trends blog's posts on "The Future of Libraries" (scenario one, scenario two, scenario three, scenario four). They're well-written, thoughtful, and not at all just about libraries. An excellent read.
*Rachel Dacus has compiled a list of "Quick Turnaround Journals"--print and online journals that respond quickly to poetry submissions.
*"In the future, a famous person will die every fifteen minutes." -- Joanne McNeil (from article here)
*Hubby Hubby
*Prolific author Terry Pratchett, diagnosed two years ago with early-onset Alzheimer's, has spoken in favor of the right to die (which I heartily support): "I believe that if the burden gets too great, those who wish should be allowed to be shown the door. In my case, in the fullness of time, I hope it will be in the garden under an English sky. Or, if wet, the library."
*After finishing Dave Eggers's Zeitoun (good), I found myself revisiting images of the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. weBranding's Project Katrina photo set is very strong.
*I enjoyed this short interview with George Takei, best known for his role as Sulu on Star Trek, but more recently known as a gay activist who married his partner of 22 years in San Francisco. Takei mentions asking Gene Roddenberry in the 80s why there weren't any queer crew members on the Enterprise: "“He gave me the stock answer that [being gay] doesn’t matter [in the 24th century],” Takei says. “I said, ‘Well, if it doesn’t matter, why don’t we see them?”" (Roddenberry did, Takei credits, tackle other political issues of the time on the show--TV's first interracial kiss was between Capt. Kirk and Uhura). Takei also speaks of having been imprisoned, as a very young boy, in a Japanese internment camp during WWII.
*If, like me, your mind seems to gawp helplessly when trying to imagine where we'll be in twenty--or even ten--years, you might appreciate the What's Next? Top Trends blog's posts on "The Future of Libraries" (scenario one, scenario two, scenario three, scenario four). They're well-written, thoughtful, and not at all just about libraries. An excellent read.
*Rachel Dacus has compiled a list of "Quick Turnaround Journals"--print and online journals that respond quickly to poetry submissions.
*"In the future, a famous person will die every fifteen minutes." -- Joanne McNeil (from article here)
*Hubby Hubby
8.20.2009
7.06.2009
The Flag of Equal Marriage
This would've been just in time for the 4th of July if I'd read my feeds this weekend. The flag of equal marriage is "an evolving protest flag for equal marriage rights in the United States." Stars on the US flag were added in the order of each state's admission to the union; those stars that stand for states that actively perform same-sex marriages will be added as more states decide in favor of equality for GLBTQ couples. Above, the January 2010 flag, with stars for Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
7.02.2009
"Persepolis 2.0"
Payman and Sina have taken images from Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and remixed them with new captions and dialogue to illustrate the day before and the first few days after the election in Iran. Much attention is paid to social media's role in organizing and supporting protesters:
Persepolis 2.0
Persepolis 2.0
6.24.2009
Can't help but think this would make a good subject
...for a great YA historical novel (or bad poem).
Via BoingBoing, an article in the July 2009 issue of The Psychologist on "dancing plagues" (and other forms of mass hysteria):
The year was 1374. In dozens of medieval towns scattered along the valley of the River Rhine hundreds of people were seized by an agonising compulsion to dance. Scarcely pausing to rest or eat, they danced for hours or even days in succession. They were victims of one of the strangest afflictions in Western history. Within weeks the mania had engulfed large areas of north-eastern France and the Netherlands, and only after several months did the epidemic subside. In the following century there were only a few isolated outbreaks of compulsive dancing. Then it reappeared, explosively, in the city of Strasbourg in 1518. Chronicles indicate that it then consumed about 400 men, women and children, causing dozens of deaths…
[click to read more of "Looking Back: Dancing Plagues and Mass Hysteria" by John Waller]
Via BoingBoing, an article in the July 2009 issue of The Psychologist on "dancing plagues" (and other forms of mass hysteria):
The year was 1374. In dozens of medieval towns scattered along the valley of the River Rhine hundreds of people were seized by an agonising compulsion to dance. Scarcely pausing to rest or eat, they danced for hours or even days in succession. They were victims of one of the strangest afflictions in Western history. Within weeks the mania had engulfed large areas of north-eastern France and the Netherlands, and only after several months did the epidemic subside. In the following century there were only a few isolated outbreaks of compulsive dancing. Then it reappeared, explosively, in the city of Strasbourg in 1518. Chronicles indicate that it then consumed about 400 men, women and children, causing dozens of deaths…
[click to read more of "Looking Back: Dancing Plagues and Mass Hysteria" by John Waller]
6.23.2009
Godwin's Law, etc.
In looking for the definition of "teme" yesterday, I came across "Meme, Counter-meme", a great, short, older Wired article by Mike Godwin on the "Nazi-comparison meme" (and countering it):
It was back in 1990 that I set out on a project in memetic engineering. The Nazi-comparison meme, I'd decided, had gotten out of hand--in countless Usenet newsgroups, in many conferences on the Well, and on every BBS that I frequented, the labeling of posters or their ideas as "similar to the Nazis" or "Hitler-like" was a recurrent and often predictable event. It was the kind of thing that made you wonder how debates had ever occurred without having that handy rhetorical hammer...I developed Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one... (read whole article)
---
Oprah.com's got a list of "Five Books Everyone Should Read at Least Once". Her choices (or Oprah.com writer Vince Passaro's choices?): Lolita, T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century, Waiting For Godot, and Things Fall Apart. Huh. I've tried to think of five books I think everyone should read and can't seem to do it. Everyone? Everyone? One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish floats to mind, or maybe Buber's I and Thou. You?
---
A list of the top 100 classical hits based on their exposure in "today's pop culture". Also, on Metafilter, What is that song they always use when…?--a list of musical cliches.
---
Brilliant idea, so-so execution until the last minute or so (which is worth waiting for): Buffy V. [the creepy] Edward Cullen, a video remix by Rebellious Pixels
It was back in 1990 that I set out on a project in memetic engineering. The Nazi-comparison meme, I'd decided, had gotten out of hand--in countless Usenet newsgroups, in many conferences on the Well, and on every BBS that I frequented, the labeling of posters or their ideas as "similar to the Nazis" or "Hitler-like" was a recurrent and often predictable event. It was the kind of thing that made you wonder how debates had ever occurred without having that handy rhetorical hammer...I developed Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one... (read whole article)
---
Oprah.com's got a list of "Five Books Everyone Should Read at Least Once". Her choices (or Oprah.com writer Vince Passaro's choices?): Lolita, T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century, Waiting For Godot, and Things Fall Apart. Huh. I've tried to think of five books I think everyone should read and can't seem to do it. Everyone? Everyone? One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish floats to mind, or maybe Buber's I and Thou. You?
---
A list of the top 100 classical hits based on their exposure in "today's pop culture". Also, on Metafilter, What is that song they always use when…?--a list of musical cliches.
---
Brilliant idea, so-so execution until the last minute or so (which is worth waiting for): Buffy V. [the creepy] Edward Cullen, a video remix by Rebellious Pixels
6.04.2009
My Little Zombie Pony
Oh, yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes:
Zombie Ponies by Flickr user dbx1 (via BoingBoing). We have ponies that could use a good makeover.
Zombie Ponies by Flickr user dbx1 (via BoingBoing). We have ponies that could use a good makeover.
6.02.2009
Total Eclipse of the Heart: Literal Video Version
Yes, there have been other literal music videos (click link below to see them), but this one outdoes the rest. At least treat yourself to the first 2 1/2 minutes:
--literal version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by dascottjr
--more literal music videos
--literal version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by dascottjr
--more literal music videos
6.01.2009
Sex With Ducks
Riki "Garfunkel" Lindhome and Kate "Oates" Micucci sing a song in response to a Pat Robertson quote that legalizing gay marriage would lead to legalizing sex with ducks. Below or click to view.
See also: Garfunkel and Oates's "Pregnant Women Are Smug"
See also: Garfunkel and Oates's "Pregnant Women Are Smug"
5.28.2009
Thank you, Ann Hodgman,
for your book club discussion questions in this week's New Yorker, the most hysterical piece of book-related writing I've read since John Crace's digested read of Jodi Picoult's Handle with Care.
Letting the hoe handle suck
Last weekend I found a copy of Jeffrey Kacirk's Informal English: Curious Words & Phrases of North America for 2 bucks. Here are some highlights:
booklegger -- 1. a person who deals in forbidden books 2. a book dealer who follows unfair practices
get the mitten -- to be rejected or discarded by one's sweetheart [you reach for the hand...and get the mitten]
gosling patch -- the period in which a boy's voice is changing. Also: in the goslings: in the period of changing voice
hat of woods -- a low growth of trees on the top of a small hill
leg drama -- a ballet
let the hoe handle suck -- to loaf and talk while one is supposed to be working
long sugar/long sweetness -- molasses
sposh -- a mixture of mud and snow or water
strawberry friend -- a moocher ("Many city people visit their backwoods cousins only when strawberries are ripe to get enough free berries for a year's supply of jam. Ozarks")
tetnit -- a child born of elderly parents
booklegger -- 1. a person who deals in forbidden books 2. a book dealer who follows unfair practices
get the mitten -- to be rejected or discarded by one's sweetheart [you reach for the hand...and get the mitten]
gosling patch -- the period in which a boy's voice is changing. Also: in the goslings: in the period of changing voice
hat of woods -- a low growth of trees on the top of a small hill
leg drama -- a ballet
let the hoe handle suck -- to loaf and talk while one is supposed to be working
long sugar/long sweetness -- molasses
sposh -- a mixture of mud and snow or water
strawberry friend -- a moocher ("Many city people visit their backwoods cousins only when strawberries are ripe to get enough free berries for a year's supply of jam. Ozarks")
tetnit -- a child born of elderly parents
Board Books for Babies of GLBTQ Parents
Though some of us might prefer to do it in wedlock, there's no law stopping queers from having babies. Looking for a good baby shower gift for GLBTQ parents-to-be, but want something a little more literary than the camp classic Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner onesie?Tricycle Press recently released Daddy, Papa, and Me and Mommy, Mama, and Me, both board books by Lesléa Newman. LucÃa Moreno Velo's Manu series books--published in Spain but available through a US distributor--are bilingual board books about a toddler with two moms.
Now, if only Fiona Watt of (also great board-books-as-gifts for babies/toddlers, whoever their parents love) That's Not My Dinosaur [Puppy/Truck/etc] fame would put out a That's Not My Mama title (That's not my mama...her dress is too frilly. That's not my mama...her lipstick is too shiny. THAT'S my mama...her mohawk is so spiky).
5.27.2009
"And then I die. Because we all have to die."
They've been out for a while, but I only recently clicked through to view Isabella Rossellini's "Green Porno" short films hosted by the Sundance Channel. If you haven't seen them yet, I can report that oh, my, they are worth the click. Here's "Limpet":
See more from the Green Porno series here.
See more from the Green Porno series here.
5.26.2009
Three more lines
to add to my long-ago 7/10 of the 10 Lines Meme:
Urge and urge and urge,/Always the procreant urge of the world. (Whitman)
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. (Shakespeare)
The first gaming system was the domesticated flame. (Lerner)
--
I wish there were (more?) poetry audiobooks. Not recordings of poetry readings. Not audio anthologies of 50 poets' 2 greatest hits, or 2 poets' 50 greatest hits. Books, in full, read aloud by readers who read aloud well. Harmonium. 77 Dream Songs. I've got The Complete Shakespeare Sonnets in audio, read by Ossie Davis, Kathleen Turner, Ruby Dee, etc., but that's it.
Urge and urge and urge,/Always the procreant urge of the world. (Whitman)
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. (Shakespeare)
The first gaming system was the domesticated flame. (Lerner)
--
I wish there were (more?) poetry audiobooks. Not recordings of poetry readings. Not audio anthologies of 50 poets' 2 greatest hits, or 2 poets' 50 greatest hits. Books, in full, read aloud by readers who read aloud well. Harmonium. 77 Dream Songs. I've got The Complete Shakespeare Sonnets in audio, read by Ossie Davis, Kathleen Turner, Ruby Dee, etc., but that's it.
5.24.2009
Bernard Pras: Portraits from Everyday Objects
French artist Bernard Pras (scroll for biography) arranges everyday objects, then photographs them at such an angle as to recreate iconic portraits and artworks.
Stuff...
...is Mao:
Great short video "tour" of a Pras assemblage:
links to more Pras works on the web
Stuff...
...is Mao:
Great short video "tour" of a Pras assemblage:
links to more Pras works on the web
5.23.2009
Our soon-to-be-outdated beliefs
Kottke points to a question posed on Reddit that has yielded some interesting answers:
So many of our grandparents were racist, and some of our parents are homophobes. Which of our own [time's] closely held beliefs will our own children and grandchildren be appalled by?
"That circumcision was once common," that some drugs are illegal while pharmaceuticals are practically pushed on us, that we smoked cigarettes, and that there was "religious overtolerance" are some of the answers posted to Reddit. I only skimmed but didn't see my number one on there: that we didn't [in most places] allow people--especially terminally ill people who feel they are being kept alive against their will and feel that they have no quality of life, but anyone, really--the right to die via assisted suicide.
Washington passed a "Death with Dignity" law this last election, and the new right to die there was recently exercised for the first time. Patient Linda Fleming, who had pancreatic cancer, said "The pain became unbearable, and it was only going to get worse. I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of my death." I am happy for her that she was able to choose to be so.
So many of our grandparents were racist, and some of our parents are homophobes. Which of our own [time's] closely held beliefs will our own children and grandchildren be appalled by?
"That circumcision was once common," that some drugs are illegal while pharmaceuticals are practically pushed on us, that we smoked cigarettes, and that there was "religious overtolerance" are some of the answers posted to Reddit. I only skimmed but didn't see my number one on there: that we didn't [in most places] allow people--especially terminally ill people who feel they are being kept alive against their will and feel that they have no quality of life, but anyone, really--the right to die via assisted suicide.
Washington passed a "Death with Dignity" law this last election, and the new right to die there was recently exercised for the first time. Patient Linda Fleming, who had pancreatic cancer, said "The pain became unbearable, and it was only going to get worse. I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of my death." I am happy for her that she was able to choose to be so.
5.22.2009
PUSH BUTTON RECEIVE BACON
"Spotted in a men's room at Hunter College in NYC." --Urban Prankster (photo via Noah Britton's cell phone)
5.21.2009
handicraft instructor, inchoate eyes
RunPee tells you the optimal time to run and pee while you're watching a movie, boon to all who regularly choose the largest Diet Coke the concession stand offers. I remember once running to pee after about 10 minutes of Christ dragging the cross up the hill in Mel Gibson's Passion, then returning to my seat for another 20 minutes of Christ dragging the cross up the hill (Stroll.............Pee).
---
From Dennis Cooper's blog: 69 Modern Classics Condensed via Amazon's SIPs (Statistically Improbable Phrases), a quiz. Many read nicely as is:
12. red hunting hat, tiny little kid
13. hands for the conch
19. pink hawthorn, little nucleus, little clan, little phrase
51. little china figures, judge stroked, judge nodded
57. black pickpocket, baize bag
61. handicraft instructor, inchoate eyes
---
From Brave New World:
"Who said that the technology and digital revolution was only for the young? When Ivy Bean heard that a 97-year-old French woman was the oldest member of Facebook she decided to join. She soon attracted 5,000 friends and has 17,775 people waiting to be her friend. Unless you know someone older, Ivy from Bradford is now the oldest Facebook member at 103 years old and has now joined Twitter and already has 9500 followers!"
The story's a few days old. I'm @IvyBean104's 14,510th follower on Twitter.
Some sample tweets from her account:
"hello all spending the morning reading wont be able to use lap top much today other residents are using it be in touch later
i am so happy i have got all these followers its really good
had a very nice lunch going to watch a film this afternoon i think we are watching the sound of music
me and my friend mabel are going to have a game of connect 4
Deal or no deal in 4hrs
@adam_lambert good luck"
---
From Dennis Cooper's blog: 69 Modern Classics Condensed via Amazon's SIPs (Statistically Improbable Phrases), a quiz. Many read nicely as is:
12. red hunting hat, tiny little kid
13. hands for the conch
19. pink hawthorn, little nucleus, little clan, little phrase
51. little china figures, judge stroked, judge nodded
57. black pickpocket, baize bag
61. handicraft instructor, inchoate eyes
---
From Brave New World:
"Who said that the technology and digital revolution was only for the young? When Ivy Bean heard that a 97-year-old French woman was the oldest member of Facebook she decided to join. She soon attracted 5,000 friends and has 17,775 people waiting to be her friend. Unless you know someone older, Ivy from Bradford is now the oldest Facebook member at 103 years old and has now joined Twitter and already has 9500 followers!"
The story's a few days old. I'm @IvyBean104's 14,510th follower on Twitter.
Some sample tweets from her account:
"hello all spending the morning reading wont be able to use lap top much today other residents are using it be in touch later
i am so happy i have got all these followers its really good
had a very nice lunch going to watch a film this afternoon i think we are watching the sound of music
me and my friend mabel are going to have a game of connect 4
Deal or no deal in 4hrs
@adam_lambert good luck"
5.20.2009
@Astro_Mike
One nice thing about Twitter is that you don't need an account or need to be "following" a user in order to view the user's tweets. Here's astronaut Mike Massimino's Twitter page, where you can read what he's tweeting from space. Some samples:
We see 16 sunrises and sunsets in 24 hrs, each one spectacular as the sun lights up the atmosphere in a spectrum of colors.
Just flew over the US, Baja to Miami in about 10 minutes! Beautiful Day!
Getting ready for bed, sleeping in space is cool, tie down your sleeping bag and float inside of it, very relaxing--
...and speaking of Twitter: is anyone (or everyone) you know Tweeting Too Hard?
We see 16 sunrises and sunsets in 24 hrs, each one spectacular as the sun lights up the atmosphere in a spectrum of colors.
Just flew over the US, Baja to Miami in about 10 minutes! Beautiful Day!
Getting ready for bed, sleeping in space is cool, tie down your sleeping bag and float inside of it, very relaxing--
...and speaking of Twitter: is anyone (or everyone) you know Tweeting Too Hard?
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