Indie Gift Guide #1
I know it’s the holidays because I received two dozen catalogs in the last two days. Ditch that sludge. I try to make stuff or buy from all the crazy indie places I run across online. Taste the tees at Threadless; I bought ‘em last year for the college kids on my list, and right now they’re only $10. Try the prints at Nucleus; I bought the Red Trolley for myself. There’s always vinyl robots at the Giant Robot Store, artist books at Printed Matter, and knight-knight pillows at The Drama Store. There’s comics at Fantagraphics, design books at You Work for Them, and Praise Seitan hoodies at Herbivore Clothing. I really wish Gauri Nanda’s smart bags were in production already. Meanwhile, you can wrap up your Little Bits in Emigre’s holiday Puzzler paper. Good luck getting the Vortex Fruit Bowl through airport security. Just Kick It. Clothe a Geek. Buy what Japanese people like. And don’t forget Small Cards, JPG 3, and 134 Squirrels. Stay tuned for IGG #2.
Memory
We were fishing with his grandfather and he cut off the mold of the cheese and he ate it.
Sport and Art
Just as athletes pass the point beyond which they can produce at a professional level, so too with designers, writers, artists. While it is understandable, and even perhaps expected, that one who has participated with passion in an endeavor, who has developed themselves toward a goal all of their lives and suddenly finds themselves at the point beyond which they are able to compete at a commendable level, might find it difficult to switch their focus to another pursuit, the artist or writer or designer who hangs on past their prime engenders the same confusion and empathy as the sport’s hero who lingers beyond his greatness.
Texas-style Hummus
This is a variation of one of the most delicious soul foods of the Middle East, Hummus bi Tahini. Hummus is a ubiquitous street food, made fresh daily and available everywhere across the Arab Middle East. By now it has made its way into the restaurants, stores, bistros and delis across North America and has become a culinary favorite of many Americans. Traditional Hummus is made from Chickpeas or Garbanzo beans. This variation is, I think, even better, and roots this dish deep in the heart of Texas and the South. Here’s how I make it.
1 can of Blackeye Peas, drain and reserve the liquid.
2-3 liberal tablespoons of Tahini (raw sesame seed paste). This product is readily available in most supermarkets today, all Middle Eastern markets, and can be purchased on-line.
3-4 garlic cloves
Juice of three lemons (or limes) – add the juice of another lemon if you like a more tart flavoring.
1-2 teaspoons salt.
What it’s all Coming To
Here in Texas they are called “waterbugs” – roaches the size of Kafka’s thumb, for those of you lucky enough to live outside of their range. The most remarkable thing about them is their highly developed repertoire of evasive tactics. Walk into a room where one has crawled up a wall to the ceiling and you may discover their “good offense” defense: they will fly right at you like a damaged helicopter. I guess the shrieking and flapping of arms that ensues tends to provide great cover for escape. On the floor I have seen them employ the zig-zag run used by foot soldiers to approach and destroy a machine gun nest. And often they will run in a circle, demonstrating the way in which and ever-changing angle tends to defeat a slow-to-adjust linear attack. Somewhere in China there is probably a style of Kung Fu called – The Waterbug.
So how do they acquire these tactics? It’s hard to imagine that any one of them would live long enough to benefit from the trial and error leading to emergent behavior. And surely they don’t teach each other such things – although it’s not too hard to imagine one of them dressed in tweed and lecturing. That leaves natural selection, with those bugs that successfully escape being the ones to pass on their genes. But how do such specific behaviors get into genes? It seems to be a stretch, but I guess if termites can build elaborate mounds complete with arched supports and air-conditioning systems, then waterbugs can accumulate the fruits of a long military history. Given enough cycles of procreation and death – a kind of picture flip-book of evolution when viewed from geologic time – complex expressions will appear. Each generation comparable to the refresh rate of a monitor.
Imagine this: An aging widow, living alone in a dim boarding house room, rolls up a Watchtower magazine and goes after a waterbug. The insect employs its spiraling circle tactic, but the slow speed of the old woman’s effort throws off its judgment and – whap! she nails it.
Days pass, and again the woman rises in the gloom and takes up her swatter. But this time the creature runs up a wall, leaps and flutters out into the room – and lands on the huge open Bible that rests there on its own stand. The woman approaches. She raises her swatter, then pauses, not wanting to splatter the pages. And then she gasps. The insect has raised its brown, chitinous rear, and its waving antennae have come to rest on a particular verse. The woman abandons the chase as the bug slinks away; she leans forward, placing a finger on the indicated verse – wondering what God could be struggling so to tell her.
Later, in the night, a host of waterbugs flutter down to the little table. They pause there, as if warming themselves at the inscrutable hearth of the great book’s gilt-edged pages….
Intuition Vs Consciousness
I have often thought about the roles of intuition and consciousness in the creation of literature. When I first began to write, the distinctions were irrelevant to me, not because they were both integrated, but because I thought there was only one way to write, intuitively.
The point of narrative discovery was simply that, discovery. The act of following an emotional impulse to its logical conclusion. Even if that conclusion was completely hidden at the moment the pen hit the paper.
The Last Romance
From a review at Pitchforkmedia who rated it an 8:
Throughout The Last Romance, Arab Strap’s more familiar lyrical themes are thankfully bolstered by their boldest and most assured music to date, as they build confidently on the advances made on 2003’s Monday at the Hug & Pint. Gone entirely are their once-frequent plunky drum machines, replaced by a skillfully balanced array of piano, strings, and horns. And though as a vocalist Moffat remains his curmudgeonly limited self, never before have his vocals been so thoughtfully integrated into Middleton’s arrangements…
A New Type of Designer
I found this at Design Observer (the full article can be found here):
We used to know what designers did. They understood the relationships between form and function, aesthetics and usefulness. And they produced stuff. People who do something rather different are now being hailed as the coming thing. The new stars of design work on rather nebulous, intangible things such as services and business models. They collaborate, so it’s difficult to see where their authorship begins and ends. And their arrival has caused toxic shock to the design world, resulting in an awful lot of bad feeling.
Tomorrow, the Design Council will announce its biggest initiative to date: a 10-year project to design solutions to social problems in five regions of the country, starting in the North East. At the end of each two-year phase, the region concerned will be left with up to 10 new practical public projects. John Thackara, programme director, suggests one possible example as ‘a new way of getting fresh food into the city: a food-buying co op, or a school that is learning about nutrition and wants to team up with a grower. Or it might be a new way of doing the school run without cars. What we end up with may be both large and small, may involve building things or devising new ways of organising life.’
Paying for Performance
I found this at Marginal Revolution:
Under the pilot, a national testing firm will devise a series of reading and math exams to be given to students at intervals throughout the school year.
Students will earn the cash equivalent to a quarter of their total score — $20 for scoring 80 percent, for instance — and an additional monetary reward for improving their grades on subsequent tests….
Levin said details about the number of exams, what grades would be tested, funding for the initiative — which would be paid for with private donations — and how the cash will be distributed are still being hammered out….
“There are people who are worried about giving kids extra incentives for something that they should intrinsically be able to do,” Fryer said. “I understand that, but there is a huge achievement gap in this country, and we have to be proactive.”
Silk
Alessandro Baricco’s Silk, translated from the Italian by Guido Waldman, is inspired by the French silk trade of the 1860s when Japan was still essentially a closed nation to the outside world. It is a flawed but fascinating novella, under 100 pages long, easily worth the time one spends reading it. It is also an erotic novel whose eroticism is almost entirely implied–the one openly erotic chapter is both unnecessary and too baldly conventional to benefit the book as a whole. Historical, without a glut of facts and figures; full of love and longing, without the brazen vulgarity of so much American writing.
We Are Not Alone
I found this article on BoingBoing and it is so beautiful to me. Researchers studying captive dolphins found that they “produced 317 distinct forms of play behavior during the five years that they were observed.” Dolphins have their own X Games.
Many researchers have suggested that in line with this theory [evolution], animals inherited a predisposition to play because “it helps animals gain knowledge of the properties of objects, perfect motor skills, and recognize and manipulate characteristics of [their] environment,” Kuczaj’s group wrote.
One sign of the importance of play, they added, is that many animals play at the risk of loss of life and limb, including dolphins.
The scientists also cited research suggesting young dolphins deliberately make their games as hard as possible, possibly to enhance the learning experience.
A List of Suggested Magazines
The following is the result of a brief survey among friends concerning the magazines they would subscribe to if they could.
Racist Ideologies
From my Sociology textbook:
Any racial or ethnic group can use racist ideologies to explain their own or another group’s behavior. One example of a racist ideology is the hypothesis offered by former Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates to explain why so many blacks have died from restraining chokeholds: their “veins and arteries do not open up as fast as they do on normal people” (John Gregory Dunne, 1991. “Law and in Los Angeles.” New York Review of Books)
Sweaty Palms
Kasan, a Zen teacher and monk, was to officiate at a funeral of a famous nobleman. As he stood there waiting for the governor of the province and other lords and ladies to arrive, he noticed that the palms of his hands were sweaty. The next day he called his students together and confessed he was not yet ready to be a true teacher. He explained to them that he still lacked the sameness of bearing before all human beings, whether beggar or king. He was still unable to look through social roles and conceptual identities and see the sameness of being in every human. He immediately resigned his post as a teacher and became the pupil of another master in order to devote himself to greater practice.
A traditional Zen story
heyd and seek
Heyd Fontenot is so beloved by his fellow man that he causes an outburst of spontaneous applause whenever he walks into a room. I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes! The man is adored, and I’m part of his ever-growing fan club.
Besides getting standing ovations for his sunshiney-with-an-edge personality, Heyd is an accomplished artist, designer, and director. Check out his drawings and paintings at heydfontenot.
Here’s a sample:
Getting Things Done
As part of the personal MBA program I have undertaken (more on that later) I am reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done, The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. It is a very helpful, fairly straightforward business-type self-help book on setting up a system to manage all the tasks a person’s life encompasses. That said, I came across this passage last night:
There are various ways to give it all up. You can ignore the physical world and its realities and trust in the universe. I did that, and it was a powerful experience. And one I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Surrendering to your inner awareness, however, and its intelligence and practicality in the worlds you live in, is the higher ground. Trusting yourself and the source of your intelligence is a more elegant version of freedom and personal productivity.
Some of My Favorites
- to access onStar, press your blue button
- what can brown do for you?
- I can’t taste my beer
- you do not want to be odor right now
Tom Verlaine
I can think of no guitarist in “rock” music who interests me as much as Tom Verlaine. One key, to be sure, is that his best guitar playing is housed in first rate songs, which he also writes. Eric Clapton and many other guitarists have the problem of using their skills to play mediocre music. Another key is taste: Verlaine isn’t particularly interested in “flash”; he’s interested in music. His solos are often single notes following each other fairly slowly: they are compositions, that is to say, not simply nimble fingers. Other guitarists can play those notes, but they don’t think to. “Breakin’ In My Heart”, from the first solo album after Television disbanded, is a marvel–a great rave-up tune, a great “choked” vocal, and a fine, though fairly conventional, solo. The later “Days On the Mountain,” available in a live version on “The Miller’s Tale,” is more indicative of Verlaine’s true gifts: a long languid song, a languid “simple” solo, technical skill and artistic taste combining to create a great piece of music.
Calcium without the mustache
Calcium is not only found in milk. It seems that the propaganda that has assaulted the American public has succeeded in making most of us believe that we will get osteoporosis if we don’t drink our milk.
This information does not come from an extremist group with an animal rights agenda, but from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, one of many sources supplying data of this sort.
The most healthful calcium sources are green leafy vegetables and legumes, or “greens and beans” for short. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, collards, kale, mustard greens, Swiss chard, and other greens are loaded with highly absorbable calcium and a host of other healthful nutrients. The exception is spinach, which contains a large amount of calcium but tends to hold onto it very tenaciously, so that you will absorb less of it.
Beans are humble foods, and you might not know that they are loaded with calcium. There is more than 100 milligrams of calcium in a plate of baked beans. If you prefer chickpeas, tofu, or other bean or bean products, you will find plenty of calcium there, as well. These foods also contain magnesium, which your body uses along with calcium to build bones.
Carthage Apples
Pomegranates are currently the fad fruit, but they are also delicious and in season and after having one in Cairo I’ve been mildly obsessed with them. They’re such a freakish fruit and I can’t eat one without thinking of poor Persephone doomed to spend part of every year in Hades because she absent-mindedly ate a few of its seeds. It might have been worth it.
Here’s two ways to eat them, one sweet one savory. For both of them, you need to get all the seeds out of the pomegranate and collect any stray juice to use in the recipes (but be careful, it stains). The easiest way to do this is to cut the pomegranate into halves or quarters (over a bowl to collect the juice) and then pick the seeds out of the pith.
heavens to etsy
Looking for some hand-made items for Kwannakuh gifts that make it look like you care more than you actually do? Try etsy, the eBay for the DIY set. The site is easy to navigate and is well-organized; unlike eBay, everything is for sale and not up for auction.
For the person who has everything, you can pick up this delightful fleece hambone, crafted by one SweetMeats, for $27.
I don’t know exactly what it’s used for, but it sure is cute. And you can totally act like you worked your fingers to the hambone to make it. Who’ll know?
Hierarchy in Human Interaction
It seems to me, as much as we might be disinclined to admit it, hierarchies exist in human interaction much as they do in other areas in the animal kingdom. People with perceived power are treated differently than those who don’t. Of course, at this level, the discussion is obvious. Where it turns interesting is when friends or family are involved. The subtle attributes of power are at play in every conversation, in every negotiation, in every interaction. If loggerheads are reached and the more powerful stands his or her ground, the less powerful will eventually submit. If loggerheads are reached and the less powerful stands his or her ground, usually a torment of psychological confusion is endured by the lesser. The question is, if these hierarchies exist in human interaction (which I’m convinced they do), how do we navigate the interactions with each other so that we are neither tyrant nor fool?
Weekly Picture 35
Hanging Plant, McDonald’s, Brooklyn, NY, November, 2005
Ree Morton
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