“Never again”…
…is the expression of an immortal.
Zuckerberg
The face behind the medium:
Zuckerberg––or Zuck, as he is known to nearly everyone of his acquaintance––is pale and of medium build, with short, curly brown hair and blue eyes. He’s only around five feet eight, but he seems taller, because he stands with his chest out and his back straight, as if held up by a string. His standard attire is a gray T-shirt, bluejeans, and sneakers. His affect can be distant and disorienting, a strange mixture of shy and cocky. When he’s not interested in what someone is talking about, he’ll just look away and say, “Yeah, yeah.” Sometimes he pauses so long before he answers it’s as if he were ignoring the question altogether. The typical complaint about Zuckerberg is that he’s “a robot.” One of his closest friends told me, “He’s been overprogrammed.” Indeed, he sometimes talks like an Instant Message—brusque, flat as a dial tone—and he can come off as flip and condescending, as if he always knew something that you didn’t. But face to face he is often charming, and he’s becoming more comfortable onstage. At the Computer History Museum, he was uncommonly energetic, thoughtful, and introspective—relaxed, even. He addressed concerns about Facebook’s privacy settings by relaying a personal anecdote of the sort that his answers generally lack. (“If I could choose to share my mobile-phone number only with everyone on Facebook, I wouldn’t do it. But because I can do it with only my friends I do it.”) He was self-deprecating, too. Asked if he’s the same person in front of a crowd as he is with friends, Zuckerberg responded, “Yeah, same awkward person.”
Incidentally, why I am still on facebook is beyond me.
quotes out of context
I just read it, and I’m a woman, and that’s pretty much sexy.
Each one is like a little snowflake. There are different poses or scenarios or features or attributes. Whatever is there. I try to describe what I see, so they get a picture in their head.
It really is one of my favorite shows. Some people say it’s filth. It’s not. She helps me be current in pop culture.
“That would be a little strange. Doesn’t that just give much more dimension if a woman is actually doing it? It’s not a lurid lecherous guy slobbering all over it.
“It’s a lurid lecherous woman,” she laughed.
Want a raise? Wash your vagina.
What is the very first thing you should consider if you want a raise? What is the most important thing of all?
Yup, wash that vagina, and wash it good.
Latest Issue of New York Tyrant–Recommended
This issue includes work by several flockers (yours truly included) and friends of the flock. Cooper Renner and Brandon Hobson are in this one, along with a number of people who have had things appear in elimae and in Derek White’s SleepingFish magazine.
I just got a copy yesterday and have had a great morning reading it. There is a fine interview included: Jacob White has a conversation with Padgett Powell. The questions and responses are splendid. Here’s a sample:
JW: Barthelme often mentioned Beckett as a “problem” for him as a writer, due to the power of Beckett’s style, which Barthelme felt he had to free himself from, or somehow get around. Of course Barthelme was himself a powerful stylist, and I wonder what you, as a student of his, might say to writers who find your own style similarly powerful and therefore similarly worrisome.
PP: It’s the worrisome I would address. I read as a child certain writers with worry (Faulkner) and without worry but with great frequency (or volume) (Mailer). I got to where I read an author until I had the score: his tricks, his obsessions, his game. As I matured I got better at this and when I had the score I got impatient more quickly than I earlier had and repudiated them more thoroughly. Thus what I think I am saying is I think loving a guy is all right because at a point it will effect an allergy and you will reject the affection (and any inclination to mimic overtly) and keep whatever was truly useful to you (which ideally will be some covert thing). All these cases are different: with Faulkner I thought if I read another book (beyond about five) I would actually succumb to him as I think you can argue Cormac M did, so I stopped, and then I developed the allergy, and today I can’t read him without impatience at the hokeyness of it. Mailer I read as a teenager wanting to be Mailer; easy to quit that. Tennessee Williams somewhat the same, but since he lost his mind and kept writing you can actually keep reading him and liking him as he goes crazy and his tricks consume him. Similar case is Hemingway: he nuts up so bad at the end that you can see all over how and why he was good when he was good. Walker Percy got consumed by his tricks very steadily and predictably and dully. O’Connor was constant except for the immature thesis work.
The only trouble I suffered in reading to steal was Barthelme, whom I came to very late and whom I did not (have not) read that much of. There was the matter of his personal influence on me that complicated the allergy-making and I became some kind of illegitimate son, I’m afraid. But this did not come from reading and liking the reading or not liking it.
All this boils down to this: read, like it, reread it, worship it, mimic it, believe in it, live by it, whatever you want to do, and then you will quit all that and write something you are not impatient with until you begin to develop a vision of your own tricks and develop an allergy to yourself, which is another chapter….
this just in
I bought the nieces and nephews magazines for their birthdays and put a card with some cash in each one. Riley, the oldest, got Tiger Beat. Madie got Golf Pro. Zoe got Guns & Ammo. Jack got Cooking with Paula Deen. I got a text from my sister this morning: By the way, Jack is graciously letting me look at HIS Paula Deen magazine. Possession is nine tenths of the law.
headline of the day
Playboy app for Apple iPad only shows content from the neck up
New Yorker cartoons captioned with Kanye West Tweets
I can’t stop laughing…
the Portuguese version of the magazine had recruited Christ in a photo tribute to the late author Jose Saramago
The pictures show an airbrushed, idealised Jesus with familiar centre-parting, long hair, beard and robes radiating an unearthly glow as he watches various topless models. Two women enjoy a lesbian clinch, another reads a book, a fourth seems to be a prostitute touting for business while the last woman appears to have died in Christ’s arms.
Bit Off a Bit More Than We Could Chew…
the dining room, as it stands tonight. With a dinner party on tap tomorrow evening.
New elimae
The new issue of elimae is now up, and I am now in Malta. The first new posting to the Travel Log since I left from Ft Lauderdale is also up: it encompasses the first week of the cruise. More to follow.
PS to Cindy: Have you read Yoel Hoffmann?
Red
I recently read the review in The New Yorker. I think I would love seeing this.
Has anyone seen it? Lucy? Perhaps in London? (Lucy, I know you are busy just now.) If not, perhaps one or two of you New Yorkers (or folks about to be in NYC) would go see it and report? Is it as good as it sounds?
I Have A Question
I went to the Post Office first thing this morning to fetch a package. Ahead of me was a guy who had a P.O. box application. I learned–from his escalated conversations with managers–that he had gone online to the USPS site early this morning, found that this particular branch had boxes available, reserved and paid for one, and made a special trip to finalize it. Turns out, only one person–the branch manager–can issue a P.O. box, and he’s on vacation. The customer (early 30s, smart, fat–has to be an IT guy) obviously was not happy with the poor service (I snorted when the manager on duty said to him, “How online suppose to know what we got at this station?”). But what the guy was really upset about was that he needed a P.O. box today. Right now. And he wasn’t about to leave until he got one.
So I ask you, dear clusterflock: Why might a person be so in need of a same-day post office box?
The new elimae
is now posted.
Harvard Book Store gets Espresso Book Machine
What forward-thinking authors and publishers are after is a means of leveraging the “long tail” principle, which holds that declining distribution and inventory costs have made it possible to profit by selling tiny quantities of many different products rather than—as was formerly the rule—immense quantities of only a few products. By bridging the still-pronounced divide between electronic and “tangible” publishing, advances like the Espresso Book Machine could represent the realization of this model in the familiar space of the bookstore. “Even with conservative assumptions about demand, we will profit from this service,” Heather Gain, marketing manager of the Harvard Book Store, told Bookselling This Week.
See Poets & Writers article here. Heads up, Andrew–although you have probably already seen this article.
Dead Theory
Did anyone happen to catch the feature in The Atlantic about The Grateful Dead? Apparently management theorists and academics are using the band as a sociological case-study for business strategy and brand identity:
[The] musicians who constituted the Dead were anything but naive about their business. They incorporated early on, and established a board of directors (with a rotating CEO position) consisting of the band, road crew, and other members of the Dead organization. They founded a profitable merchandising division and, peace and love notwithstanding, did not hesitate to sue those who violated their copyrights. But they weren’t greedy, and they adapted well. They famously permitted fans to tape their shows, ceding a major revenue source in potential record sales. According to Barnes, the decision was not entirely selfless: it reflected a shrewd assessment that tape sharing would widen their audience, a ban would be unenforceable, and anyone inclined to tape a show would probably spend money elsewhere, such as on merchandise or tickets. The Dead became one of the most profitable bands of all time.
Most enjoyable.
this unique 18-minute genre has its own requirements
From a Wired article on how to ace a TED Talk:
“I’m surprised to see that half the people here know my career in some detail and the other half don’t know who I am,” he says.
Science is fine, but not when it messes with our illusions.
If she had included solar power and African child warriors, it would have been so perfect a TED talk that there would have been no need for others.
Wolfram wraps his talk by saying that when it comes to trying to boil down the universe to a simple algorithm, “it’s almost embarrassing not to at least try.”
“Just because someone has an ego,” he says, citing a writer whose name I can’t read from my scribbled notes, “doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”
‘I don’t recommend those old stories to anyone.’
The stories in question have been mentioned here before.
It’s lonely in the modern world.
Even in your company, I feel so alone. (Dwell, September 2009.)
Unhappy Hipsters. (Thanks, Kate.)
reinventing content
Apple’s goal is to offer a new platform for content creators to reinvent books, magazines and online content — in addition to offering a new avenue for content producers to make money. That platform will likely be far broader than just a tablet device, and will extend to every device or computer that iTunes touches.
Mo’forum in Paris this weekend
I have a habit of wandering into rooms and buildings on my walks around a city and while in Paris last November I wandered into this huge drawing/zine expo by the Canal St. Martin. I took one of these flyers announcing what looks like the same arrangement again, happening this weekend, so if you’re in Paris you might want to have a look in.
Heavy Metal magazine, January 1978
January elimae
is now posted for your viewing enjoyment.
Happy new year to you all!
A tablet/e-reader demo
Done by Sports Illustrated, oddly enough. Makes me almost want to read a magazine. Almost.
via a ton of folks
December elimae
is now posted. I hope you will find something to enjoy.
