It's the look on Prince’s face right around 5:24. How often do you get to see someone who’s enjoying themselves this much and so good at what they do? Harrison’s kid was obviously blown away, and so am I, and so is everybody else on the Interwebs.
This photo pretty much sums up yesterday, which was one of the most awesome birthdays in a long time. I was blushing and laughing because Lord-knows-how-many grad compatriots were singing Happy Birthday to me. And this was after a smaller dinner with friends, which was after receiving so many excellent Facebook messages and emails and tweets and gifts in the mail. And all of that was after Mister Husband finally returned from two weeks in Oklahoma.
My life is full of wonderful people. Many thanks to all of you.
(The photo is by Marnie, btw.)
qB’s already mad at me for spreading earworms on Twitter, so I might as well run with it. Right?
(via Rocketboom)
(via The Amateur Gourmet)
Trailer for Dream of Life, Steven Sebring’s 11-year documentary of Patti Smith. See also Objects of Life, the ancillary exhibit.
My affection for B (and C and Z) movies is no secret. And so you will not be surprised at my joy in the in-progress Daily Mole seminar on The Cinema of Patrick Swayze*. Crucial excerpt:
Though he is invariably haunted, the male B-movie lead cannot really be said to have an inner life, because he works ceaselessly at projecting everything he is feeling–through his face. Many b-movie actors build entirely satisfying careers out of just one expression (Keanu Reeves: How confused am I in this scene? Harrison Ford: How constipated am I in this scene?), but Swayze’s face reaches a five-octane range in this tour de force performance: confused, bemused, tender, mad, real mad.
I am evidently a renegade: though I have deep affection for all elements of the Swayze ouvre, my very most favorite is Point Break, closely followed by everyone else’s favorite, Road House.
*I know Mister Husband loves me because he forwarded this to me.
One night last month, I was lounging about reading the Vanity Fair excerpt from Eric Clapton’s autobiography when Mister Husband happened by. Glancing down at the intro spread, he said, “AKMA!” He had a point, I think.
From a rooftop succulent garden on the St. Paul campus.
MST3K will return as Cinematic Titanic! I am a-quiver with anticipation.
The world totally needs more glitter fish. And fish with reading glasses. And photos taken by my dad.
So’s I might stand a chance of not forgetting by next week, when I might actually have time to write again:
- Diss overwhelmedness, a la Bullet #2 in this post of Billie’s.
- The UMN caves. Which I’ve been meaning to write about for, no kidding, 3 years now.
- Fargo, specifically the Plains Art Museum and what it has to do with my Dad.
- The preponderance of Vikings in northwest Minnesota.
- Frustration with the U’s choice of wiki systems.
- Standing on Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street in Sauk Center, MN.
- The lecture on Digital Composition that I did last week for a grad seminar, and the related course I taught last Spring.
- Undoubtedly more photos. I’d love to be able to articulate what this shift toward photography has to do with my research and writing processes, but I’m not sure that’s possible just yet.
To close, one actual thing briefly stated in its entirety: If you’re the sort of person who picks up on other people’s moods and you’re in need of a boost, one of the best things you can do is make an airport run to drop off a friend who’s headed off to a long-distance rendezvous with a new love. I got a ton done after that, and I’m still happy for no good reason of my own.
So I was fiddling around with stuff on the sidebar yesterday and didn't notice that I deleted half of my template until it was too late. And even though I am the Backup Queen, I somehow managed not to create a backup of the Brand New Template. And I can’t pester Steve too much, since he just had the cutest Doozer Baby a week ago. (That's the only not-stupid part of this. In fact, that's the awesome part.) And anyway, if I were him I wouldn’t be too interested in fixing something caused by such frank idiocy. And I don’t have time to [incompetently] dive in myself, since we’re headed off to FemRhet tomorrow morning.
But the entries are back, thanks to Mister Husband. A lot of the formatting is still wonky, but it’s functional enough to wait until we return on Sunday. So hey, more photos of the center of the country! And possibly scholarly things!
My friend Kenny has the cutest pet rat.
It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity.
Kipling, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
(via Feministe)
1. Anderson Cooper devoting untold hours to analyzing Paris Hilton is the most curious, fabulous, irritating thing ever. Who else is in a better position to do this than Gloria Vanderbilt's son? An intelligent, accomplished heiress deconstructing, um, Paris.
2. Mister Husband had no idea why in the world I thought we absolutely had to watch this. Dude, Anderson just interviewed Larry King about interviewing Paris while a Temple University assistant professor offered color commentary. This sort of meta-media pileup only happens so often.
(That said, did I watch the actual interview? Yes, until the first commercial break. I couldn’t take it anymore past that.)
Boulevard of broken birdie dreams.
My mother-in-law has no idea who Paris Hilton is. I’m sorta sorry we told her.
I’ve been in Pocola, Oklahoma for the past couple of days. Tomorrow, we start heading north.
The 2007 Feminism(s) & Rhetoric(s) conference invites proposals on civic discourse, feminisms, and rhetorics. The conference draws inspiration from the 50th anniversary of Little Rock’s Central High School integration, the Clinton Presidential Library, Heifer Project International & the Clinton School for Public Service.
For conference information, go to http://femrhet.cwshrc.org
NEW EXTENDED DEADLINE: April 27, 2007
Submit your abstracts online—http://femrhet.cwshrc.org/submissions.php
Register for the conference online—http://femrhet.cwshrc.org and click Conference Registration
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Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Krista Ratcliffe
Invitation Pending Keynote Speaker/not confirmed: Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton
Featured Speakers: Hui Wu, Shirley Wilson Logan, Malea Powell, Carol Mattingly, Jessica Reyman, and more.
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This conference asks us to explore civic discourse and how civic discourse, feminism(s) and rhetoric(s) interact with, for, and against each other.
What is civic discourse? What counts as civic discourse?
How has civic discourse changed over the years for women? For feminism?
How can we expand the definition of civic discourse?
What does it mean to participate in civic discourse in the 21st century?
How do women participate in civic discourse?
How has the internet/electronic discourse affected civic discourse?
How has civic discourse become corporatized?
How has globalization impacted civic discourse?
What does it mean to be a feminist and/or rhetorician participating in civic discourse?
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We look forward to reading proposals from a wide variety of disciplines, including, but not limited to, history, ethics, new media, political science, social justice, pedagogy, law, literature, art and art theory, queer theory, international studies, cultural studies, race studies, economics, environmental studies, science, social activism, communication studies, technical communication, visual design, philosophy, and engineering.
Questions--contact Barbara L’Eplattenier (bleplatt@ualr.edu) or Marcia Smith (mmsmith@ualr.edu).
I found the desktop meme through What the Hell is Wrong With You?. I’ve become much less enthusiastic about memes in the past few years, but this one doesn’t bug me — maybe because it’s vaguely similar to the images inspired by Johndan’s workspace project.
Until I took shots of these, I never really noticed that I have an affinity for using Internet art as backgrounds, particularly if it involves animals.
"Therefore, it stands to reason that without the MP, there would be no PC’s due to the size and price of bulky super commuters. "
"Both companies made exiting strides in the software arena."
"The wiki-way gave birth to many other projects with the most notably noted being Wikipedia."
I’ve decided I’m updating things around the domain come hell or high water. So the pages will undoubtedly get uglier before they get prettier.
There's a little dip in the M section of my writing playlist that never fails to make me smile:
Have You Ever Seen the Rain? (Minutemen)
Big Fat Momma (Mississippi Fred McDowell)
I'm a Believer (The Monkees)
Up On the Sun (Meat Puppets)
Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo (The Mormon Tabernacle Choir)
Dark Green Car (Mummydogs)
shortly followed by another in the P-R section:
Gloryhallastoopid (Parliament)
Summer Cannibals (Patti Smith)
Mary Anne With the Shaky Hand (Petra Hayden)
Wave of Mutilation (Pixies)
50 ft Queenie (PJ Harvey)
Peaches (Presidents of the United States of America)
Ain't that Fine (Ray Charles)
Sympathy for the Devil (Rolling Stones)
The Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) website is now up and running. Proposals are invited from a wide variety of fields, including history, ethics, new media, political science, social justice, pedagogy, law, literature, art and art theory, queer theory, international studies, cultural studies, race studies, economics, environmental studies, science, social activism, communication studies, technical communication, visual design, philosophy, and engineering. The deadline for submissions is April 20, so don’t dally too long.
The organizers are still finalizing the keynotes and featured speakers, but it looks like Krista Ratcliffe, Hui Wu, Shirley Logan Wilson, Malea Powell, Carol Mattingly, and my old colleague Jessica Reyman will all be speaking.
Sometimes I accidentally write a whole poem — something that quacks like a poem, anyway — before remembering I’m not a poet. Which is something I might not get away with so easily in other professions, but poems — the quacking kind, anyway — don’t explode as readily as amateur rockets.
Preliminary facts: I don’t watch America’s Next Top Model, mostly because I haven’t really watched TV since I started grad school, but I kept up with the strike last year because an old friend of mine was a writer for the show. I am, however, an inveterate reader of Vanity Fair, which ran a rather fawning piece on Tyra Banks, producer and diva of ANTM, this month. And that, along with finally getting around to reading Clint’s last post and my usual concern about what writers are worth, is what finally prompted this aggregation of quotes.
Tyra is on a “mission,” she says. She even has a a “Mission Statement,” which her Endeavor agent, Nancy Josephson, later e-mails to me: “It’s important to make people feel good, to show compassion, to be uplifting“ ...“A Model Mogul,” Vanity Fair 2/07, 186
My talk show has totally changed me and opened me. I used to just be about being a good role model and helping women, but I didn’t realize the vast way I could do it. It’s made me more aware.VF 2/07, 188
Her income last year was reportedly $18 million. Her Bankable Productions also owns 25 percent of America’s Next Top Model, which is currently syndicated in 110 countries around the globe, but she won’t reveal her net worth. “Sometimes I feel guilty for how much money I have,” she tells me.VF 2/07, 170
Like every other reality-TV show, Model credits no writers; instead, viewers may glimpse the names of 12 associate or assistant producers who are actually the show’s writing team. One problem for the new CW Network is that if these “producers” were listed as writers, they would be eligible for membership in the Writers Guild of America — and the salary levels and benefits that would come with union membership. ... “Writing for reality TV,” says Catalyst, “is a contest in the industry to see who will work for the least. Because they don’t have the minimums that they have in traditionally scripted television, there is no cutoff point here as to how low it can go.” In fact, because they are not credited, the 12 Top Model writers have no salary minimums, health insurance or pension plans.
The Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) has cried foul after the producers of The CW’s America’s Next Top Model scratched a dozen striking staffers off the payroll. The WGAW Monday filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), alleging the show’s producers unlawfully eliminated the jobs of the 12 “writers” in retaliation for their decision to go on strike last July to demand union representation.“Top Model Takes Strikers Off Payroll”, Broadcasting & Cable, 11/7/06
Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) is in my hometown this year, and is being organized by two professors from my master’s program! Like Clancy says, too few conferences are held in the south. This one will be worth going to for any number of reasons, not the least of which is its proximity to the Clinton Presidential Library, which is rhetorically fascinating. Plus, if you see me there I’ll give you the native’s tour.
“What you’re thinking is what you’re becoming.” — Muhammad Ali
That sure as hell snapped me out of my funk.
Oh, the blessing and curse that is the "keep new" feature in Bloglines. It means that I’ve cluttered up that place with all sorts of good stuff, some of it a year old now. It’s all links that I meant to do something with or save for some wonderful future purpose, but never deployed. The end of the year compels me to clean some of it out, so I’m moving it over here where it can go safely into the archives of oblivion for future reference. (Am I the only one who still likes storing links in the same place I keep everything else instead of keeping them in deli.cio.us?)
New Media
Andrew Lih on How Wikipedia Ranks
danah boyd on making net neutrality relevant and writing community into being on social network sites
The blogging special issue of Reconstruction
Media from Johndan’s old blog: the Eames’ Information Machine and the original iPod launch video
Via Infocult: timeline of the Wikipedia/Britannica controversy, a history of FaceBook, the Foucault-Chomsky debates on YouTube, and frightening instructional AT&T videos.
Information Aesthetics spotlights email thread visualizations, blogosphere linkology, and treemaps
Clay Shirky argues that news of Wikipedia’s death is greatly exaggerated
Anne Galloway’s working bib on The Internet of Things
Fodder for Teaching Presentation Skills
Guy Kawasaki on the art of panels
Dean Dad’s interesting threads on grading group presentations and ">handling difficult classmates
Academic Whatnot
50 ways to take notes
Book History
From Old Books: images from, um, old books
Jill points out material aspects of the original publication of “Death of the Author”
Professionalization
Via Prolurker: The Academic Departments: Home Base for Doctoral Students and the Center of the Graduate Mission of the Institution and Thinking Beyond the Dissertation
AKMA on productively structuring argument in academic writing
Sherry on study breaks (I’d send this to new grad students if I were putting together a comprehensive advice file.)
Pop Culture
scribblingwoman rounds up Brokeback spoofs
The 50 Greatest Cartoons of All Time, with linked video for each. (High ratio of Warner Brothers, of course.)
Just Beautiful
Aunt B: Breathe In, Breathe Out.
BookBurro notices that you’re looking at a particular book and searches the web and local libraries for it. Very handy if, like me, you bounce between amazon, powell’s, abe and half.com before you buy anything.
Zotero pulls in reference data on books, articles, and websites as you view them. It also lets you sort and add tags. The bib info function was the big draw for me, but it also does a number of other things I need to explore. (After exams!)
There will probably be a heavier than usual dose of redheads, pulps, and photos as I make the 20-day run up to my comps. Ain’t nothin’ all bad, eh?
(apologies to William Carlos Williams)
I bought this little red teakettle at an outlet mall the summer I moved to Minnesota. It makes me happy several times every day.
Posted to Favorite Things Saturday.
During a break from the archives in Madison last month, I went wandering through the cobbledy streets of shops near the campus until I found a secondhand bookstore that reminded me of one I used to frequent in New Orleans. (I can't remember the name of either one, of course, and the similarities were probably exacerbated by the deep humidity of August in Madison.) The place was under the watch of two spaniels, who also closely monitored their owner as she reshelved and resold and frowned. The shelves rose well above my head and were arranged in narrow corridors that seemed to completely envelope browsers. I rummaged around until I found a short stack of E.B. White and Virginia Woolf, and left with White’s Writings from the New Yorker 1927-1976, a biography of Himself, and A Room of One’s Own. I adore White. And I am determined once again to try to like Woolf, having failed miserably on many previous attempts. (I am fond of Street Haunting. But that’s one essay among many read, as well as Orlando, To the Lighthouse, and Mrs. Dalloway.)
I am procrastinating with the Woolf, of course, and so my bedtime reading these last few nights has been White’s Writings. It occurs to me to start running the E.B. White Quote Blog, but that would be excessive. Instead I will limit myself to this one short, Save the Grizzlies, which is for Steve.
A committee has approached us to ask if we would help in the work of protecting and preserving the brown and grizzly bears of Alaska. Need we say we will? Once we spent six weeks in Alaska, and although we never happened to have an opportunity to protect a grizzly from the predatory old paper-pulp interests, which threaten their extinction, we always stood ready to. We are still ready. The islands of the Inside Passage, where the bears live, seemed to us lovely, perfect. We should not want one of them changed by the extinction of so much as one bear, or the establishment of even one pulp mill. Grizzlies are certainly less dangerous than the tabloids that are printed from paper pulp.
Of course it is our ill fortune always to see both sides of every question. The letter from the Committee on Protection and Preservation of Alaska Brown and Grizzly Bears was written, we notice, on paper. In other words, the Committee are using paper in their campaign against paper pulp. We think they really out to send out their communications on parchment, preferably made from the hides of sheep especially killed for the purpose by grizzly bears. You see? We’re no good in any cause. Too open-minded.
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Wow. I had no idea that entry on our Cat Power experience would spark such a festival of complaining in the comments. Lengthy ones, too, and all from new folks. They just keep rollin’ in.
Mommas, don’t let your babies grow up to spend their allowance on Cat Power tickets.
Update:: Many fine folks have written this morning to point me towards the New York Times feature on Chan’s sobriety. It’s definitely worth a read.
So’s I can find this and do it all over again the next time we move: Stopping Junk Mail, Email, and Phone Calls. (via Discardian)
This is my best friend, who’s headed across Africa at the end of the summer. And that’s a Valmet automatic. I’m intrigued and a little jealous, which surprises me since I’ve taken a mostly pro-gun-control position for the past 15 years. So has she, so far as I know. But she decided that learning to shoot would bring her peace of mind:
One day after I received a booster Polio shot (admittedly something that I have only a very small risk of acquiring in Africa) it occured to me...perhaps I should get a gun immunization....a little taste of gun safety and use.....to cover me in the event that I might have some contact with them or someone carrying one of them.She’s started a blog about preparation for her trip (and possibly the journey itself, depending on connectivity. It’s not like the Sahara is well wired.) As usual, her writing is vernacular and interesting, covering gun safety, the emotional factors of a trip like this, and the problems of being an American who wishes to cross a country with closed borders.
When she told me about it I absolutely had to see the pictures. My interest is almost purely literary, in a slanted fashion. My job is to sit quietly and think about stuff and then sit quietly some more and write down what I thought about. This is not very exciting. One of the Rock Bottom Remainders said something markedly similar in an article I read years ago: the writer's job is to sit alone in a little room and type. You type all day, going tickety tickety tickety. Little, tiny tickety sounds. After years of that, the urge to strap on a Fender bass, plug in, and make Big Sounds is overwhelming.
I’ve been calling myself a writer for 22 years now, having written and read pretty much every day since I was 8. The overwhelming quiet bothered me less when I was younger; I used to like it very much, actually. But I get antsier as I get older. These days I am less likely to shy away from my intensities, and as a result my own dial goes up to 11 more and more often. The idea of doing something loud and containedly dangerous makes more sense to me than it did before. My dad and I went to the shooting range on occasion when I was a kid, and I enjoyed it. I doubt I’ll go shooting again, if for no other reason than that the opportunity rarely arises.
But I’ll still think about it. Tickety tappety tap.
I've kept my half.com store open since last summer's experiment. And if it's summer, then it must be time for the annual weeding of the collections. This time we’re converting the VHS collection to DVD, and that means that I've posted a couple of rarities to the shop. Right now, there's a copy of Jarmusch's Night on Earth as well as Salvador Dali: Soft Self Portrait, narrated by Orson Welles. Both are currently out of print.
Update: There have been a number of additions in the past few days: A Night With Lou Reed, The Tubes: Live at The Greek, and four more Neil Young rarities: Freedom, Weld, The Complex Sessions, and the inimitable Human Highway, which features Devo and Dennis Hopper and is surely one of the most wonderful/terrible films ever made.
Via Infocult, some links to early experimental Henson films that are available online:
Time Piece, a 1965 surrealist meditation on the fluid nature of time. The paper cut-out fireworks also showed up in several shorts that were on Sesame Street when I was a kid. Also, the credits list "Frank Oznowicz," which is the only time I’ve ever seen his full name used.
Organized Mind, a short that aired on the Tonight Show in 1974, is more psychedelic. The update on that entry notes that while the film is actually from 1967, Henson performs the mouth and eyes live.
So I had my hair cut chin-length, which is the shortest it's been in about eight years. For whatever reason, long hair stopped feeling like me awhile ago, but I’d been too chicken to cut it off. Yesterday was the day, and S. was positively gleeful when she took a razor to it. I also dyed it a bright orangish red a couple days ago. Feels good. Right now I’m adopting the texture taffy + hair dryer + no brushing approach, which means I walked in the door yesterday afternoon and Mister Husband asked, “Um, are you going to wear it that way when we go to my mom’s house?” (My mother-in-law is 83. She still wonders about my maturity from time to time.)
The collaborative proposal just needs to have my half of the lit review dropped in and then it’s done.
But today... today I finish the grading. They’ve been presenting for the past two weeks, and final reflective letters come in today. Speech rubrics, WebCT, black tea, Dick Dale, tendonitis brace. Go.
*Landow’s simple physical descriptions outlined in the beginning of Hypertext as opposed to Genette’s poetics of transtextuality.
Willie Nelson’s reggae album is glorious. Yea, verily. We’ve been listening to it for the past two days around here.
But the downside to that is that I have an a country icon’s reggae version of The Harder They Come stuck in my head.
I have many things to write about, but little time lately. And little in the foreseeable future. Writing here will probably be sparse until the end of the month.
Where did the first half of this semester go? I feel like I’m still back in the first half of February somewhere — so much so that I was late on rent for the first time ever. It can’t possibly be the first full week of March. My birthday can’t be tomorrow. Spring Break can’t be next week. There can’t only be nine weeks left until the end of my coursework.
Being an Internet researcher, I’ve never had to travel for research and rarely have to go out of the house to get to my texts. Pretty much wherever I go, there it is. Now that I’m taking a course in book history and working on the Cyclopaedia, I have to go visit the text. It’s a 1728 edition, worth around $35,000. It’s not like I can keep a working copy in the house. So off I go to the James Ford Bell library to sit in a very cold room and gently turn the pages. It’s quite a shift.
And I have a Minnesota driver’s license as of this morning. I guess that makes us even more settled now.
While watching The Next Karate Kid, one really begins to wonder what Mister Miyagi did in his last life to deserve such a parade of whiny, arrogant American kids.
As an addendum to my previous expressions of sociolinguistic disgust, I point you to a blog devoted entirely to overuse of the word ‘literally’.
(Via the inimitable Himmer)
For the past two days, the snail has been living in a vase full of water while Motorcycle Boy was treated for parasites. (Snails can’t handle the treatment drops.) This means that the snail has not had a decent environment or any food for 48 hours. He quit roaming around on his one big foot and curled up inside his shell.
So I swapped out part of the water in the fish tank and dumped in the snail. He’s resting on the bottom now, peeking out but not moving. The fish, unpeturbed, monitors him closely every few minutes. And when I came into the room a second ago, the fish was sitting on the bottom, curled around the not-well snail.
An open letter to Chris Martin of Coldplay:
By virtue of your excessive hand gestures, your ceaseless emoting, and your jaunty scamper through the audience for the benefit of the cameras, you have indicated your obvious desire to be Bono.
You, sir, are no Bono. Only Bono may persist in being Bono, and even that allowance is somewhat doubtful. The world certainly does not need more of this sort of thing.
Please cease and desist immediately.
Thank you.
PS - For an example of how to properly rock, I am shocked to find myself referring you to Paul McCartney's performance of “Helter Skelter,” delivered not long after yours. I was in my study ignoring the whole thing, and then wondered who it was who was delivering such a particularly intense performance of that song. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was Sir Paul himself ripping shit up.
Words and phrases I detest for no good reason:
Nonagenarian. Not the meaning, just the sounds. Octogenarian is fine. Septuagenarian is even quite interestesting. But nonagenarian sticks in my head and drones. It’s a one-word earworm.
Literally. I began to actively hate it when an otherwise excellent makeup artist in New Orleans kept telling me to “literally just throw the eye shadow on. Quite literally!” She must have said the word at least 10 times during our session, and ever since I've noticed how much we all use it unnecessarily. (I myself am still repenting of this sin.) Please not to be liberal with the literallys.
At the end of the day. As in, “at the end of the day, what’s important is...” Pretentious and wordy; if it matters at the end of the day, doesn’t it just matter “in the end”? First instance of irritation: Larry Mullen Jr. in Rattle and Hum. Other instances: every single time I’ve run across it since. All members of U2 (and at least some of their spouses) are particularly guilty of this one.
One of the assigned texts for History of Writing Technologies is Gabriel Zaid’s So many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance. It’s not on the syllabus until later in the semester, but I started flipping around in it today. So far, I’m rather enchanted.
and, later:Those who aspire to the status of cultured individuals visit bookstores with trepidation, overwhelmed by the immensity of all they have not read. They buy something that they’ve been told is good, make an unsuccessful attempt to read it, and when they have accumulated half a dozen unread books, feel so bad that they are afraid to buy more.
In contrast, the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.
“Every private library is a reading plan,” Spanish philosopher José Gaos once wrote. So accurate is this observation that in order for it also to be ironic the reader must acknowledge a kind of general unspoken assumption: a book not read is a project uncompleted. ... (12)
... maybe the measure of our reading should therefore be, not the number of books we’ve read, but the state in which they leave us.
What does it matter how cultivated and up-to-date we are, or how many thousands of books we’ve read? What matters is how we feel, how we see, what we do after reading; whether the street and the clouds and the existence of others mean anything to us; whether reading makes us, physically, more alive (24).
Motorcycle Boy rarely goes into fightin’ mode. Today, I looked over and there he was, all a-flare, gills puffed and everything.
His tank is right next to a speaker on my desk. As soon as I switched from Phillip Glass’s Third Symphony to Rainer Maria’s Long Knives Drawn, he was fine.
Frankly, I would have thought the opposite would be true.
Whilst conducting serious research on Wikipedia (really), I ran across this ancient 2003 Onion column: I Appreciate the Muppets On a Much Deeper Level Than You.
Please recall, if you will, the night I first showed you The Muppet Movie. It’s bad enough that you hadn’t grown up loving the film, but afterwards you called it, and I quote, “funny.” Not “a deeply spiritual and highly personal statement of ambition tempered by ethics,” but “funny.” Was it “funny” that Kermit refused to Judas his race to a corrupt corporation, even though it meant giving up his dream of stardom?
Penguins need sweaters. Really:
Jumpers are being knitted especially for our fairy penguin population. The clothing is used when the birds have been exposed to an oil spill, absorbing the oil off their feathers and keeping the animals warm in the meantime.If you're a keen knitter, you can make a penguin jumper to add to the emergency stores. Here are knitting instructions from the Pet Porpoise Pool in Coffs Harbour, who are gathering jumpers for the cause.
How to Knit a Penguin
