sunday short stack

"Nihilism is best done by professionals."
- Iggy Pop

• This is the first sunday short stack composed on my fancy new Mac. I guess I'm in with the cool kids now.
• RIP The Nonist
• Roald Dahl: the World War II David Duchovny?
• Cracked has the disturbing origins of five common nursery rhymes.
• Does George Orwell = Evelyn Waugh?
• Does Christian Bale = Kermit the Frog?
  
• Neatorama has six (+ five) hoaxes that fooled the world.
• The Guardian lists the 50 greatest arts videos on YouTube. Kiss your Sunday goodbye.
• Gustav, get thee gone.
  

stop overloading my lady brain

Joe Conason at Salon: Even as a political tactic, choosing Palin may well backfire. Presumably the same Clinton voters who were willing to vote for McCain mostly to vote against Obama -- despite the Arizona senator's right-wing record on reproductive rights and pay equity -- will be pleased by the choice of Palin. But by definition those voters were already attracted to the Republican side. The calculation is that millions of undecided Hillary backers will cross partisan lines because a woman is on McCain's ticket. But will they believe that Palin is comparable to Clinton just because both happen to be female? Or will they regard that comparison as an insult to their heroine?

the writerly life

The latest issue of Boldtype features books on writing books.

'cause I'm champagne...

Good news: I have no idea what a "financial shingle" is, but one called Werc Werk Works is producing a sequel (!) to Todd Solondz's 1998 film Happiness.

Bad news: Aaron Sorkin is writing a film about...Facebook?

a ticket from the dictionary police

What makes a word a real word?

But if all these words look wordish, sound wordish, and act wordish, why are they all hedged about with the namby-pamby "I know it's not a real word" disclaimers? (Note: wordish is a perfectly good word.) We all know that there are words that no one can complain about (when was the last time you heard a grammar rant about apple or Tuesday or fair?) and words that almost everyone finds offensive (no need to print them in a newspaper). What we don't have a firm grasp on is the acceptability of a wide range of other words, especially words we've hung affixes on. Redness is OK, but what about grossness? Heroism is fine, but what about thespianism? We have similar problems with words that have undergone a shift in function or part of speech ("shopping at thrift store" becoming thrifting, anonymous becoming verbed as anonymize), nonstandard forms (funner, huger, interestinger), and, of course, any slang words someone hasn't personally heard or used (chillaxing, wackaloon). What does a word have to do to be a "real word"?

scenes from sunset junction 2008

I swear, this is not becoming a photo blog (I already have one of those), but I wanted to get these Sunset Junction shots up before it's September. Yes, that says "bacon wrapped hot dogs" and one of these years, I will try the funnel cake.

We got our dance on with !!!...

...and Kinky.

Don't ask.

still sorta blue. still more photos.

sunday short stack

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good." - Samuel Johnson

• See you later at Sunset Junction. I will be arriving on the wings of your love, Jeffrey Osborne.
  
• Dark Roasted Blend has a gallery of human, uh...ingenuity?
  
• Can you guess the 100 most common English words?
• Can you guess where my accent is from?
• Stephen Holden looks at the summer's art films.
• Viggo's coming...
• 23/6 has animated Get Your War On.
• Polihood offers a virtual neighborhood for political action.
• Stream songs from the new David Byrne/Brian Eno album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.

stop spreading the news

I'm leaving today...New York, that is. Well, technically tomorrow, but today will be my last day and I'm feeling blue. Here are a few of my favorite summer photos:

like a slug in a sandpaper trenchcoat

While Bulwer Lytton's ancestors may not approve, the annual winners for the worst opening sentence have been announced. Garrison Spik is the winner:

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

Via WI

sunday short stack

"I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth." - Janeane Garofalo

• One Word: Don't think. Just write.
• The A.V. Club has 22 unflattering moments from autobiographical comics.
• How old do you think I am?
• Scott Wade has collected a gallery of dirty car art.
• Top 10 Literary Virgins
• Who Is Alexander Grothendieck?
• Nele Azevedo redefines ethereal art with his melting ice men sculpture.
• And you thought your wiring was out of control.
• Is Google making us stupid?
  

korean scientists only charge $53,000 to clone a dog

WFMU's Beware of the Blog pitches the true story of Joyce McKinney as a Coen Brothers film.

A young cheerleader from North Carolina moves to Wyoming where she wins the state beauty pageant. Then she enrolls in graduate school at Brigham Young University where she becomes obsessed with Wayne Osmond (the second oldest Osmond). Wayne rejects her, but happiness is around the corner because she meets and falls in love with a 19-year-old Mormon classmate. They have a lot of sex. Alas, the Mormon is shamed by their sex-before-marriage and runs away to do missionary work. He leaves no forwarding address.

Our heroine then hires a pair of kooky private detectives who track the Mormon to London. She heads to the U.K., and with the help of a dim-witted accomplice, drugs the Mormon with Chloroform, kidnaps him, and scurries him away to a secluded farmhouse. There she ties the Mormon to a bed with furry handcuffs, and uses scriptures to beg him to marry her. When that doesn't work, she tries lots of sex. But the Mormon escapes, and when the police track down our heroine, she declares innocence, claiming that the Mormon could only orgasm while tied up. She sounds completely nutty in court - "I loved him so much that I would have skied down Mount Everest in the nude with a carnation up my nose if he asked me to." - but has a Southern Belle style that makes the media go crazy for her.

...and there's more.-

sunday short stack

"I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it.” - William S. Burroughs

• When I went to bartending school (yeah, I'm a sucker), cocktails from the '70s were a large part of the curriculum, so I'm glad to see they're "back."
• Congratulations to Michael Chabon on his Hugo Award.
• This week, you have 100 Olympic Athletes to Watch.
• Neatorama has origins of familiar phrases like "steal someone's thunder" and "have a screw loose."
• Buy the new album from The Walkmen for $5 to benefit the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
• 5 Mad Scientists Who Went Too Far and 5 Greatest Things Ever Accomplished While High
• Visit the Toaster Museum - all toasters, all the time.
• Even George Orwell has a blog.
• The Stupidest Haircuts on the Internets
• Ever wondered what flicks are screening in our parallel universe? Wonder no longer.
• 10 Things That Make Blokes Cry
• How well do you know the candidates?
• "Everything Kafka wrote, every postcard he ever sent, every page of his diary... is regarded as a potential Ark of the Covenant... Yet no-one has ever shown his readers Kafka's porn."

hamlet and friends update their facebook status

Horatio thinks he saw a ghost.

Hamlet thinks it's annoying when your uncle marries your mother right after your dad dies.

The king thinks Hamlet's annoying.

Laertes thinks Ophelia can do better.

Hamlet's father is now a zombie.

More here.

a damned mob of scribbling women

I just had reason to list some of my favorite recent writing by women, so I thought I'd post the recommendations here in case anyone is interested.

• Oryx & Crake or Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
• White Teeth or On Beauty by Zadie Smith
• The Accidentalby Ali Smith
• The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas
• We Need to Talk About Kevin or The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver
• The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing
• Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
• The End Of Alice, The Mistress's Daughter: A Memoir, or This Book Will Save Your Life by AM Homes
• The Dissident by Nell Freudenberger
• The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
• The Little Friend or The Secret History by Donna Tartt
• A Changed Man or Blue Angel by Francine Prose
• Stories by Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, Miranda July, Aimee Bender, Deborah Eisenberg, Kelly Link

For good measure, my two favorite contemporary novels by men are David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I can't recommend either of them highly enough.

see you at the debates, bitches