Sleepingfish X
I’ve started Sleepingfish back up (online) & posted some work by Vincent Standley (an excerpt from his forthcoming novel, A Mortal Affect, which is coming soon from Calamari Press) & a collage of sorts called Heartscald by Gary Lutz (whose new book, Divorcer, is also forthcoming from Calamari). Stay tuned.
when your love for goats goes too far…
more from Naples reading Raymond Queneau…
All that Auguring Finally Broke the Sky
Various angles of a summer squall that just rolled through Rome.
The Coping Cop-out of Machines of Loving Grace
Throughout the AWOBMLG trilogy, Adam Curtis effectively shows how certain memes inform economic, social & political change in the world & in the third monkey in the machine <> machine in the monkey episode he addresses the mother of all memes: the selfish gene, as put forward by Hamilton > Price > Dawkins. And in the process Curtis manages to artfully wrangle & weave in disparate & seemingly unrelated topics (like HIV, hippies, PS2, gorillas, London’s homeless, disco-dancing & conflict in the Congo), but doesn’t touch the one topic I would’ve liked to see addressed: interspecies altruism & how to explain it genetically. I’m not talking about the classic examples of reciprocal altruism (ox-pecker<>buffalo or remora<>shark) but for example dolphins saving humans from sharks or why this orangutan seemingly has an interest in reviving this little bird, or why we humans, unlike the honey badger, even give a shit.
At first these final lines of episode 3 were a let-down, a cop-out that left me hanging (for perhaps the same reason that Deron couldn’t get past the premise):
… But Hamilton’s ideas remain powerfully influential in our society. Above all, the idea that human beings are helpless chunks of hardware controlled by software programs written in their genetic code. The question is, have we embraced that idea because it is a comfort in a world where everything we do, either good or bad, seems to have terrible unforeseen consequences? We know that it was our actions that helped cause the horror still unfolding in the Congo. Yet we have not idea what to do about it. So instead we have embraced a fatalistic philosophy of us as helpless computing machines to both excuse and explain our political failure to change the world.
But now, waking up the next morning, I can’t stop thinking about it & I’m wondering if it bothered me because it’s true & I just don’t want to accept it?
Donkeying to Nzambani rock
For Cindy.
More from the Kitui region of Kenya (reading Alain Robbe-Grillet & Alan Moorehead).
Multilingual is something to do with animals
Further thoughts on the evolution of language on safari in Kenya.
In the interest of swaying the mascot vote
A goat.
More pics & videos of goats, elephants, parrots, starlings, ducks, etc. Tried to find a honey badger, but alas, besides being nasty-ass they are elusive, and nocturnal.
The Milan Review
The Milan Review looks to be a promising new literary journal/press started by Tim Small, the editor of Italian Vice. Their inaugural issue/project [The Milan Review of Ghosts] features stories by Dave Cull, Jonathan Dixon, Glen Hirschberg, Noy Holland, Jonathon Keats, Tao Lin, Clancy Martin, E.C. Osondu, Dawn Raffel, Nelly Reifler, Rebecca Rosenblum, Deb Olin Unferth, Corinna Vallianatos and Brent Van Horne and illustrations by Matt Furie and Maison Du Crac. You can preview it here.
Harmonic Genebank Deposit
More from Ark Codex 0 folio 2.
Greetings from the Palermo Catacombs
& more footage from Sicily, including some armchair goats. thinking of y’all, happy clusterflockstocking.
Beinecke MS 408 pt II
Further musings on Voynich, Serafini, Fibnoacci phyllotaxis, seed-hunting, the Rocket Man & a recipe for artichokes the Roman way.
Searching for meaning is the meaning
Artist’s Shit
In 1961, the Italian artist Piero Manzoni did more than fling a pot of paint. He offered art-buyers 90 tins of his own excrement, at a price equal to their weight in gold. Although some critics were outraged, art lovers paid through the nose for what had passed through Manzoni’s behind. Or had it? One of Manzoni’s collaborators, Agostino Bonalumi, has now revealed that the tins are not full of faeces, but plaster. [ ... ] Does Bonalumi’s revelation mean that a 30g can of “freshly preserved, produced and tinned Artist’s Shit” is worth far less than the pots of gold paid for them? The Tate shelled out £22,300 for one in 2000, and recently another went for £84,000 at auction in Milan.
One way to circumvent this authenticity question is to jar the specimen in glass like William Burroughs did. Even if it’s not clear whether Burroughs intended it to be art or not, the two “bioartists” who got a hold of this jar are using extracted DNA from said shit to make an “art gun” to shoot his DNA into cellular nuclei.
Divine Fiat* 500
The reborn Fiat 500 is coming soon to a theatre near, which only makes sense considering Fiat’s stake in Chrysler. Not quite the original 1936 model, a.k.a. “il Topolino” (not to be confused with Il Topogrigio, which I’ve heard rumors of sightings, but still no head to put on a stick for you, Sheila)). I’ve seen a few of the original ’36 Topolini in the hood, I’ll have to snap some photos for you, Deron. In the meantime here’s one (I’m guessing circa late 50s) I spotted down south in Puglia.
I’ve driven the new 500s a few times, and have to admit they are a bit spineless. The new Fiat Pandas are similar (albeit uglier) but have more zip.
* “Divine fiat” is the creative command of God, from the Latin word fiat, “let there be,” used by God to create the universe in the Latin version of the Book of Genesis.
NOON 2011
Besides having a rather handsome hyena on the cover, the new NOON features fellow flocker Brandon Hobson (where is he these days anyway?) as well as Gary Lutz, Kim Chinquee, Christine Schutt & other usual suspects, as well as some new faces including my fellow Roman friend Chiara Barzini.
Chiara will be reading at the launch party with Brandon, and Diane Williams on May 5 in NYC.
I’d also like to take the opportunity to announce that Calamari Press will be publishing new books later this year by both Chiara Barzini and Gary Lutz, that will include these stories in NOON.
Named for the shores, not what flows between them.
Ngram This, My Pitbull
Not sure if this has made the rounds on Clusterflock, but google has this addicting new tool called the Ngram viewer which lets you mine the history of language patterns. When you enter words or phrases into the Ngram Viewer, it displays a graph showing how often these words occurred in a “corpus” of some 18 million books (depending on language chosen), by the year the book was published.
[via the sadly soon-to-be-defunct On Language column of NY Times]
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before
This year’s Calamari “ePress” financial report features rants on eBooks, Facebook, distribution & other things useful or not to others crazy enough to have a small independent press.
«Everyone experiences this, but no one knows the experiencer.»
More images & observations from Jaipur.
when your love for goatkind exceeds love for mankind
Chai man petting his cow (Jaipur)
«The habit of despair is worse than despair itself.»
More snapshots & musings from Delhi whilst reading Albert Camus & E.O. Wilson.
“Who divided by zero?”
speaking of cloning wooly mammoths
(more from ARK CODEX 0)
(the ghost of) Paul Klee on Twitter
Long before Twitter there was Paul Klee’s Twittering Machine (1922).
MOMA’s description of it could just as easily apply to Twitter Inc.: «Upon closer inspection, however, an uneasy sensation of looming menace begins to manifest itself. Composed of a wiry, nervous line, these creatures bear a resemblance to birds only in their beaks and feathered silhouettes; they appear closer to deformations of nature. The hand crank conjures up the idea that this “machine” is a music box, where the birds function as bait to lure victims to the pit over which the machine hovers. We can imagine the fiendish cacophony made by the shrieking birds, their legs drawn thin and taut as they strain against the machine to which they are fused.».
[ReTweeted from @5cense, which i've been "tweeting" daily from also before there was Twitter, Inc.]
