Dear Henry
When we saw Henry Rollins speak
a fewten years ago, he told a story about a fan who wrote to him with a peculiar problem. Seems the guy is a paramedic and one night they come upon a car crash where a beautiful naked woman is lying on the ground unconscious. They spring into action, get her in the back of the ambulance and begin emergency resuscitation. Now, the guy is alone in the back of the ambulance with the woman, and he can’t get over how hauntingly beautiful she is.And she’s not responding. All her vitals were failing and he knows she’s not going to make it. As she expires, the paramedic, who had suddenly and quickly developed feelings for her, kisses her on the lips. By the time they reach the hospital, the woman is dead. Trouble is, the paramedic is now completely in love with her. So much so he can’t sleep, he can’t eat and he’s having trouble working.
Rollins said his first reaction was to write back, “YOU SICK $@#!!! GO KILL YOURSELF!” But no, the paramedic’s obviously in pain and obviously needs his help. So he thinks about it for awhile and attempts to seek out helpful advice. That night at some awards ceremony he runs into none other than Tom Waits and figures if anyone has some words of wisdom for the poor, lovestruck — but slightly demented — paramedic it would be Waits.
Michael Steele = Michael Scott
And I Quote, “Gazing at breasts makes men healthy.”
Just 10 minutes of staring at the charms of a well-endowed female, is roughly equivalent to a 30-minute aerobics work-out.
(Via @wilshipley.)
Joseph/Jesus Costume
The ‘market price’ of this Joseph/Jesus costume is $45.00, but it can be gotten for only $26.95 at Planet Santa! (Check out the Biblical Costumes page.) Caveat emptor: “Does not include the wig and beard set.” That much said, bear in mind that “this is great for many biblical or middle eastern roles.”
So you could wind up saving money big-time, as your Joseph/Jesus costume might do for: Muhammad, John the Baptist, Job, Ali Baba, Nebuchadnezzar, Abraham, Sinbad, the Mahdi, David (or Jonathan), Saladin, Moses, or any number of prophets, major or minor. (Not suitable for the Sheik of Araby, the Thief of Baghdad, or that Turkish officer with a hard-on for Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia.)
Bookfuturism
Tim Carmody introduces Bookfuturism.com:
The basic premise of Bookfuturism.com is that it’s like The Daily Kos, TPMCafé, or yes, Young Philly Politics for book and media nerds. Any one can create an account and begin creating content, whether blog posts, book pages, links to important stories, or commentary on another user’s entries. It has no institutional or corporate sponsorship or structure. All it has are a bunch of men and women who care passionately about reading and writing and want to under stand its future, so they can be a part of it.
And, with that introduction, a slew of projects emerged:
It’s a commons, which means it’s a place to share news and ideas and to collaborate on projects. There’s already one project under way — a collection of essays on the future of reading edited by Clusterflock’s Andrew Simone — that’s being developed in partnership with the site. Some of the contributors — I’m one of them — are going to write our entries in public and incorporate feed back from the community before we ship it off to be printed, as a real, live physical book. (Bookfuturists love paper and print. As Robin Sloan has said, books are great techné.) And we have other collaborations already in the works, from meetups to conferences to reading groups. If you’re interested in reading and technology, this will be the place to be.
Yep, you read right: a collection of essays edited by yours truly and Brian McFarland of Suicide Press. My hope for the collection of essays is to create a sustained narrative, without making it too high-falutin’ (read: needlessly academic), by looking at what the reader, publisher, writer, and designer wish to do with print in order to glimpse a clearer view of where we, as a print culture, need to be. This is to be a forward thinking book without romanticism or technogasms: practical, clear, and level headed.
If you are interested in contributing, head on over to Bookfuturism.com and join the conversation or email me.
2010 Triumph Thruxten SE
Obama’s Nobel Remarks
A transcription of President Obama’s speech at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony:
And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. (Laughter.) In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who’ve received this prize — Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela — my accomplishments are slight. And then there are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened cynics. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women — some known, some obscure to all but those they help — to be far more deserving of this honor than I.
But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by 42 other countries — including Norway — in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.
Still, we are at war, and I’m responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill, and some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the costs of armed conflict — filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.
My New Line of Gourmet Cat Food
Ground Sparrow Dinner
Flaked Goldfish in Savory Sauce
Waterbug Delight
Sliced Mouse with Giblets and Gravy
click the link for a picture
We mention all this because according to Metro UK, a Chinese trucker named Sing Li lost his windshield, replaced it with cardboard and then drove 500 miles with his head sticking out the window.
The Iceberg Cometh
The Bureau of Meteorology said the once-in-a-century cliff of ice, which dislodged from Antarctica about a decade ago before drifting north, was being monitored using satellites.
“Mariners are advised that at 1200 GMT on December 9, an iceberg approximately 1,700 kilometres (1,054 miles) south-southwest of the West Australian coast was observed,” it said, giving the iceberg’s coordinates.
“The iceberg is 140 square kilometres in area — 19 kilometres long by eight kilometres wide.”
This is my peaceful water
Tell him something pretty
That last episode of Deadwood really fucked me over.
The snowfall in my neck of the woods is impressive, all right –
but my house is not nearly so spacious.
Today could mark the beginning of a long winter.
It’s as if I wrote it myself
Mouth-frothing for Malcolm Gladwell is at near-fever pitch this year. I’m not saying the guy doesn’t make an interesting argument for how success is nurtured (or can’t be nurtured . . . or whatever the theory of “Outliers” is), but can we get some love for author and McSweeney’s publisher Dave Eggers? Firstly, the guy is seriously committed to educational reform — setting up his 826 tutoring centers in cities across the country. More importantly, perhaps, he’s putting out some of the most compelling contemporary writing on victims of injustice (both domestically and internationally) through titles like “What Is the What,” “Zeitoun” and his “Voice of Witness” oral history series. But beyond being worthy endeavors, they’re actually really good stories.
From The Top 10 Unsung Global Thinkers.
Pogue on the Nook
In four days, my Nook locked up twice and displayed an “Android operating system has crashed” message twice. You can change the type size for books, newspapers and even your own PDF documents — but not for B&N’s own essays on the Nook’s Daily screen. The software isn’t even smart enough to ignore little words like “a” and “the” when alphabetizing; “Pride and Prejudice” comes before “The New York Times.”
Navigating the Nook makes the 1040 tax form seem like a breeze. You’ve got two page-turn buttons (< and >) on each side of the reading screen, up/down/back buttons on the color screen, and a Home button above the color screen. Quick: Which one returns you to the table of contents?
Barnes and Noble says an update, coming next week, should fix the problems. Gosh, I sure hope I haven’t made a mistake buying one.
Mann’s Guide to Others
Only the A Team gets to come inside the tent, and only if they have something swell to add. But, it better be good. This isn’t Everybody Gets a Ribbon Day.
Merlin Mann is well known for being right about stuff. I’m a little scared of him because he is 1) imposing and 2) very smart, but recently in internet-land there was some sort of fight about how much you owe people that you don’t know. Do you owe random strangers a response when they @ you on twitter? What if you get over 100 a day. Is everyone a potential customer?
Nope. I don’t want people to be into what I do, say, think, or believe because I pretended to know them on a computer network; there’s plenty of books and sites to overserve those folks already. As long as the gold stars and the autofollows and the adds keep coming, they’ll stay happy as pigs in slop. And, why not?
Me? I’m way more interested in connecting with the people who’ve realized how hollow and unrewarding that kind of wholesale nonsense really is — how malignant it can be to shore up one piece of made-up life with another piece of made-up life. People who’ve learned the hard way what a drag and a burden it is to sweat your “personal brand” in the pursuit of a better-fitting mask.
People aren’t the dollars they can hand you. You don’t owe everybody some of yourself. There isn’t that much to go around.
Sperm whale foreskin is supposedly the softest leather on earth
Warning: if reading the word “penis” over and over again makes you uncomfortable, you might want to avert your eyes.
dear clusterflock
In line or on line?
Tyler Cowen’s Ethnic Dining Guide
D.C.-centric, but I love the idea.
seppukoo.com
It offers ritual suicide for Facebook users in five easy steps.
For Andrew.
an unusual clock
The video was taken at Design Miami 2009. (via)
a new approach to relieving fear
U.S. researchers have found a drug-free way to block fearful memories, opening up the possibility of new treatment approaches for problems such as post traumatic stress disorder, they reported on Wednesday.
The findings in people build on studies in rats that showed that reactivating a memory — by showing people objects that stimulate the fearful memory — opens up a specific time window in which the memory can be edited before it is stored again.
“Before memories are stored, there is a period where they are susceptible to being disrupted,” said Elizabeth Phelps of New York University, whose study appears in the journal Nature.
American religion
Among black Protestants the evil eye figure is 32 percent.
from the moderated comments
I have tertiary syphilis.
spam name
Cash Creation.
