Gordon Lish: Collected Fictions
For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like.
(Via @orbooks | http://ORBooks.com)
The death of Jermyn Street
I had just settled in my easy chair when a key turned in the lock and a nattily-dressed man in his 60s let himself in. He held a bottle of Teachers’ scotch under his arm. He walked to the sideboard, took a glass, poured a shot, and while filling it with soda from the siphon, asked me, “Fancy a spot?”
“I’m afraid I don’t drink,” I said.
“Oh, my.”
This man sat on my sofa, lit a cigarette, and said, “I’m Henry.”
“Am I…in your room?”
“Oh, no, no, old boy! I’m only the owner. I dropped in to say hello.”
This was Henry Togna Sr. He appears in a Dickens novel I haven’t yet read. I’m sure of it. He appeared in my room almost every afternoon when I stayed at the Eyrie Mansion.
—Roger Ebert, “I met a character from Dickens,” Chicago Sun-Times, February 5, 2010
(Via @davidmoldawer)
Going out in style
Donald Jack Wickman
WICKMAN Donald Jack Wickman – A truly pulchritudinous man, Donald Jack Wickman gallivanted off to a new adventure January 12, 2010. While he made the peregrination alone, he was surrounded by and given a rousing valediction by so many of the ones who loved him: his wife, daughters, sons, daughter-in-law, and a plethora of friends. Yet, he was greeted by those who had gone before him: his mom and dad, brothers and many more of the friends he made during his undaunted life. Some of these multitudinous friends were made amidst jumping out of perfectly good airplanes as a member of the 82nd Airborne, and others while shellacking criminals as a cop in Boulder and Thornton, Colorado, and writing himself tickets (and taking himself to court.) Don made many friends after arriving on Dauphin Island in a blue limousine, and as he travailed with his wife, Lynn, to spawn the world famous Treasure Trove. Copious friendships were also developed as he hunted down antiques and refurbished them into pristine status, while debating with the people of Mars Hill Church, and during the creation of flabbergasting paintings. All of these friends and family are invited to gather in his and his wife’s home on Friday, January 15, at 7 pm to celebrate Don’s superlative life. He may be gone from us in body, but he is surely not forgotten. So, tell your friends about him.
I hope that when I die, somebody has the awesomeness (and worthwhile material) to post such an exuberant notice for me. Rock on, Don & company.
(Thanks, sc!)
Clustersourcing
Do you recognize any of these books?
It’s my friend’s bookshelves, the one whose house burned down. She can’t bear to look at it (another friend retrieved it from her Facebook account for me), but she asked if I could somehow to enhance it enough to identify some of the books. It’s too low-resolution to sharpen, unfortunately, and I can only make out the Chicago Manual of Style. Maybe you have a more varied library than I do?
If you see anything you recognize, could you please add a note to the photo at Flickr or leave a comment? Thanks.
Fire
When I was a kid, I was convinced—I guess because of all the fire drills and fire safety education we had at school—that house fires were very common, so common that it was inevitable that at some point in everyone’s life, his or her house would burn down. I used to plan and replan my escape route, which things I would grab on my way to the fire escape, how I would rescue the guinea pigs, how I would climb down the ladder while holding them. Once I reached the last rung and dropped down into the downstairs neighbors’ garden, what would happen? Would I just wait there? What if my family didn’t make it out?
noah | networked organisms and habitats
An open-source citizen science project by three of my classmates.
I don’t have an iPhone, or even a data plan for the smartphone I do have, so I can’t submit critter spottings to Project Noah. All you people with your fancy iPhones can contribute, though, using Noah’s beta iPhone app; sign up on the site to be a tester.
Spring break in Austin?
Are any ’flockers going to SXSW? I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing for spring break, and that’s one of the options I’m considering.
Another is going to a bat mitzvah in Berkeley with my family.
Another is sitting at home with my head in my hands, moaning wretchedly.
Thoughts?
That’s it.
I’m moving to New Zealand.
(Via @thebookdesigner)
Google Wave invites
Update: Since David Lawson has already built a proper website to handle this process, I hereby recommend that you swap Wave invitations over there instead of here: WaveShare.org. Accordingly, comments here are now closed.
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LEGO + papercraft = brilliant
LEGO-compatible hole punch from MUJI Japan:
(Via SC but has been blogged six ways from Sunday elsewhere.)
Instructions on how to climb a staircase
An Absurdable.
(Via my classmates Carolina & Asli)
The gritty
This is not my favorite setting to talk in. I think it would be much more rewarding for all of us if we could sit around and have a little taste and, in a very informal way, get down to the “nitty.” Then maybe later on, we could get down to the “gritty.” That’s the only way to talk about things, about life, about people. I don’t know who devised in the institutions of learning that we should have straight-back chairs, or have architecture that is very rigid and very formal. Whoever devised this system (and I suspect it’s mostly western Europeans) had no great compassion for the art of learning. You can’t learn anything under these conditions. They’re not conducive to learning. The greatest institutions I’ve attended have been somebody’s house, or sometimes in a kitchen, when a few people get around the table and start yakking. Sometimes it’s being out at the corner on some street. Sometimes it’s been in a bar. These are the kinds of atmospheres that people normally sit around and exchange ideas in.
—Charles White, lecture at Columbia University, February 10, 1975
(From the book I’m editing.)
I immediately thought of this.
Spam considered, 14th century to the present
Open Book TV: Graham Parker at Brooklyn Navy Yard from Graham Parker on Vimeo.
An interview with Eminent Man of Science and Art Graham Parker, by way of whom we have seen this lovely chart.
Chart Showing the Aggregate Number of Idiots and the Proportion of Males and Females, White or Colored, Native or Foreign, at the Ninth Census 1870; also the increase since 1860.
Excerpted from the Statistical atlas of the United States based on the results of the ninth census 1870 with contributions from many eminent men of science and several departments of the government Comp. under the authority of Congress by Francis A. Walker, M. A., superintendent of the ninth census.
(by way of Eminent Man of Science and Art Graham Parker; entire census report at loc.gov)
Live it, love it, draw it.
DrawMo! 2009 is on.*
All you have to do is draw every day for the month of November. You can stuff the drawings under your mattress, if you like, but I think it’s more fun, and you’re more likely to keep drawing, if you share them. Accordingly, we have a group blog. If you want to join it, please leave a comment there. Furthermore, anyone can post to the Flickr pool.
1, 2, 3, draw!
* If you live in the antipodes; otherwise, happy DrawMowe’en!
L’homme sans tête
(Via @pipsan)
For Cindy
Once, when Nadeau was still living in south St. Louis, a neighbor found out he did taxidermy. “She’d had a Persian cat in her freezer for twenty years,” he remembers. “She wanted me to mount it like a beanbag so she could put it in different poses. The cat was all crystallized; it had crystals all over its face. I told her that once it’s mounted, you can’t put it in different poses. It kind of freaked me out a bit.”
—Mount My Squirrel! Local taxidermist Rick Nadeau has a lot of fun with his “little buddies,” Aimee Levitt, Riverfront Times, August 10, 2009
I brought a copy of this newspaper home from St. Louis (this was the week’s cover story; consider that for a moment) so that I could mail it to you, but then I realized that the article was probably online. Now everybody gets to share it.
Man with a Van
Man In Van from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.
(When I figure out how I found this, I’ll let you know.)
Your call is so valuable
(Via I do believe I came with a hat.)
I do believe I came with a hat.
“One gentleman’s guide to not getting thrown out; not throwing up; and how to throw a party.”
When residing in the terrace house in question, I happened to cohabitate with a character you might be previously acquainted with, Stampy McNasty. For the uninitiated, she was a two-thousand-pound quadruped who would skulk around the house with a face as long as the animal she was emulating; and whose mane of horsehair would clog the shower on a daily basis. Living in a house with noise issues and with my bedroom stationed above the kitchen where most of the activity occurred, I was privy to her stomping around like a fairy elephant each morning, the whispered phone conversations to her drug dealer (presumably for horse tranquiliser), and on occasions her hissy fits to uncompliant friends and relatives. Unfortunately, on the rare occasion that Stampy would ensnare a stallion, I would learn of his presence by extended patterns of her snorts and moans: she was a grunter. The sound would filter from the crack beneath her bedroom door and would float into my adjacent room and fill the silence with a chorus from the coital filly. It was rather unpleasant for all concerned, I assume.
—”Close your eyes and think of England.”
(Via Manhattan User’s Guide)
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Hardly Anything Is a Damn Fruit
Grapes, currants (red and black), elder- and gooseberries are all proper upstanding berries which will not deceive you or smuggle themselves into your house in pies before stealing your silver while you sleep.
—”The Fruit Is a Lie,” Schrödinger’s Kitten: Irreverent Science for Everyone, August 11, 2009
(Via Margaret)
Cybraceros
(Via Microkhan)
Revolution
“A unique picture-book for adults” in torn paper, by French artist Sara.
(Via Book By Its Cover)
Chicago?
I’m going there for two days, week after next. Never been. What should I do there? Where should I eat?
Bonus:
One of these boxes
was the one that came from Daryl and Cindy, with the aforementioned candied borage flowers in it. I was going to acknowledge said lovely gift with proof of a cake bearing said floral accoutrements, but because of some kittens (shown), I have not yet made said cake.
Kittens are distracting, y’all.