Think you know why the caged bird sings?******************************
I was feeling a little too comfortable in my cage, so I bashed it in and freedom tastes pretty sweet
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Oh, my friends, it has been quite some time since I've written a true blog post, eh? Life has been busy, to say the least, but I have no excuse now...I am all cozy in the corner of a new [potential] favorite coffee shop with a delicious cappuccino in front of me and a couple free hours ahead...
Lots to write about. The air is crisp and full of grins lately and I am loving that I can glide out of my apartment (now in the Lower East Side) in jeans, flats, a shirt and scarf w/o instantly becoming a puddle of sweat. I always have this debate with myself when Fall and Spring roll around. Which is my favorite?! I don't know, both are wonderful...but I can tell you that Autumn brings me back to myself. It's like VT is swooping in to say "hi" from 300 miles away and I am whisked back to the days of jumping into piles of leaves, getting lost for hours in the woods, lying face down on the earth, breathing in the smell of cold mud and putting my ear to the soil, listening for the earth's heartbeat. I am headed to VT for a weekend in October...very excited. No matter the season, the 1st thing I always do when I return is run to the backyard and lie in the lush grass, look up, and remember that stars shine brightly somewhere.
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Oscar Bermeo interviews Rachel McKibbens:
OB: Can you describe your poetic process? How does a Rachel McKibbens poem come together?
RM: I stand around in dark alleys, praying to get victimized. No good poem is bloodless. You have to have a really shitty life if you want to come up with something worthwhile to write. Lots of babydaddies and garage tats are a bonus. If you want to really knock 'em out of the park, I suggest having a mother who leaves you in a hot car with the windows rolled up while she plays bingo at the cult factory.
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...I don't know if I agree with the whole "you have to have a really shitty life if you want to come up with something worthwhile to write" idea...but I like her style
For me, [a very amateur poet who writes lines on the back of her hand while waiting in line for an ice cream cone] it's more like letting everything melt away, letting go of your mind, becoming only the things you truly know...returning to the roots and trying mercilessly to take that universe of feeling and, while maintaining its vastness, shoving it into a tight, little container. This container may also be understood as: language.
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Adam O'Riordan discusses erotic poetry and manages to make it a little dull: Our concern with the erotic and recurring desire to condemn or re-evaluate the boundaries of what constitutes good taste or acceptable content leads us to a wider issue: is poetry something we come to be civilised by or is it a place where we go to unleash our desires and to hear them echoed?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/sep/16/uses-erotic-poetry
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These images were captured from a fwd I got this morning....kind of hilarious:
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Mike Chasar (of Poetry & Popular Culture, a pretty badass blog) interviews Jim Buckmaster about the function of poetry at Craigslist:
P&PC: Gary Wolf's Wired article suggested you match certain haiku with certain offenses. How does that pairing happen?
Jim: Each haiku was composed to address a particular aspect of our user interface, often to take the place of an error message.
http://mikechasar.blogspot.com/2009/09/poetry-popular-culture-heroes-interview.html
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The Death of Bunny Munro author Nick Cave reveals his plans to erect a golden statue of himself in his hometown. HAHAHAA
I do have a small model of it that's a foot high. It's gold. I'm naked on a rearing horse. I have a modest loincloth on. It's this rather wonderful homoerotic work of art that I was hoping to put in the middle of this tiny little town where I was born. Unfortunately the fortunes of Warracknabeal are so grim at the moment with the recession and this chronic draught that's going on that it feels a little in bad taste to erect a giant gold statue. But one day...
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1924323,00.html
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Trevor Corson, author of The Secret Life of Lobsters (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ECEEIQ?ie=UTF8&tag=artandlies-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B002ECEEIQ ), on the escalating violence among lobster fishermen over territorial disputes in Maine.
"I heard of one old-timer who refused to upgrade from a wooden boat to a fiberglass boat because he felt wood would stop a bullet better."
http://food.theatlantic.com/sustainability/learning-from-maines-lobster-wars.php
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On the day after Dan Brown single-handedly destroyed/saved the publishing industry (Lost Symbol...hurl...), one former publishing executive rants about what a horrible business publishing is:
"The sheer book-length nature of books combined with the seemingly inexorable reductions in editorial staffs and the number of submissions most editors receive, to say nothing of the welter of non-editorial tasks that most editors have to perform, including holding the hands of intensely self-absorbed and insecure writers, fielding frequently irate calls from agents, attending endless and vapid and ritualistic meetings, having one largely empty ceremonial lunch after another, supplementing publicity efforts, writing or revising flap copy, ditto catalog copy, refereeing jacket-design disputes, and so on -- all these conditions taken together make the job of a trade-book acquisitions editor these days fundamentally impossible. The shrift given to actual close and considered editing almost has to be short and is growing shorter, another very old and evergreen publishing story but truer now than ever before. (Speaking of shortness, the attention-distraction of the Internet and the intrusion of work into everyday life, by means of electronic devices, appear to me to have worked, maybe on a subliminal level, to reduce the length of the average trade hardcover book.)..."
Oh, it goes on from there! And on and on and on...and....on....and...on
http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Reviews-Essays/Redactor-Agonistes/ba-p/1367
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The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom sounds pretty awesome. Stories about the man who theorized the existence of antimatter and yet was so shy that hardly anyone ever noticed him include a group of physicists who coined the term "Dirac" as a unit of measurement for the fewest possible noises a person could make in polite company ("one utterance per hour"). Seed Magazine (kickass) has an interview with the author, Graham Farmelo:
At the end of a lecture, Dirac agreed to answer questions. Someone in the audience piped up: “I didn’t understand the equation on the top right of the blackboard, professor.” Dirac was silent for more than a minute. When the moderator asked him if he’d like to answer the question, Dirac shook his head and said, “That wasn’t a question. It was a comment.”
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/studying_the_strangest_man/
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Krakauer on All Things Considered, talking about his new book:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112816210
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So, there is a book called A World According to Women: an End to Thinking (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0704371626?ie=UTF8&tag=artandlies-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0704371626), written by a woman. Charming! Yes, it's one of these, "what's wrong with you bitches?!" kind of books, saying women are all weepy and too pop culture obsessed. And what does all this lead to? Totalitarianism. Of course. Anyway, blah blah blah, who really cares, these books show up all the time. But the critic who was assigned this in the Telegraph needs to, uh, grow some balls.
"The book contains interesting ideas but too many sweeping statements and a condescending tone."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/6133690/A-World-According-to-Women-by-Jane-McLoughlin-review.html
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A couple of months ago the Vowel Movers linked to the odd Levi's campaign featuring Walt Whitman. Now they've found a video of Elle Macpherson reading Tennessee Williams's poetry to promote her new line of intimate apparel. Apparently the advertising director didn't realize Macpherson was already in her underwear.
http://vowelmovers.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/poetry-fans-are-you-riveted/
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THE AWESOMENESS MANIFESTO
What is awesomeness? Awesomeness happens when thick — real, meaningful — value is created by people who love what they do, added to insanely great stuff, and multiplied by communities who are delighted and inspired because they are authentically better off. That’s a better kind of innovation, built for 21st century economics.
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/09/is_your_business_innovative_or.html
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Oh dear LORD, I remember being in these kids' position back in the day...rough...
Oh, The Temptation from Steve V on Vimeo.
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10 Common Typography Mistakes:
http://www.thedesigncubicle.com/2008/12/10-common-typography-mistakes/
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David Byrne on what makes cities work:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574403293064136098.html
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COOL, doing this! Been head-over-heels in love w/ Helvetica ever since watching the documentary... ::sigh::
http://www.josefrichter.com/helvetimail/
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I...I...I...I wanna see this!!!!!!
http://www.mcny.org/exhibitions/current/mannahatta-manhattan-a-natural-history-of-new-york-city.html
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New favorite game:
http://cheeseorfont.mogrify.org/
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OK, seriously? I don't even know what to say other than, Where was I for the dancer casting call?!?! This video is....absurd in the best of ways. I may have just found my Halloween costume (ok, just using Halloween as an excuse to dress this way and feel really good about myself...)
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HEROINE (A new type!)
Heroine is inspired by the typeface Windsor, designed by Eleisha Pechey in 1905. Windsor is the typeface used in the titles of many Woody Allen movies. A modern interpretation of this rusty pearl is something that always have been missing in the major type libraries. But Heroine is not only an interpretation, it goes beyond that. With the addition of swashes and alternate letters in several styles it becomes very addicitive.
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Sweeeeet!
http://www.creativecaravan.net/
Caravan is a free house swap and sublet resource for Creative Folk Only. It’s been dubbed as the Craigslist for Creatives.
Caravan is free to use though you need to register to get in touch with other listers. This is to stop real estate agents and erectile dysfunction drug pushers from getting onto the site. If you want to register to get in touch with a lister, click ‘list for free’ and skip straight to registration.
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This site makes me pretty happy. THE OLD ROBOTS:
http://www.theoldrobots.com/index2.html
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David McCandless noticed these days that he can spend hours at his computer, in a cloud. A swampy blur of digital activity, smeared across various activities and media and software. Emailing, writing, tweeting, designing, browsing, taking calls, Skyping, Facebooking, RSS Feeding – all blurred into a single technological trance.
What better thing to do then to visualize it all? Here it is, the Hierarchy of Digital Distractions by David McCandless:
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/the-hierarchy-of-digital-distractions/
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Haha, "The United Steaks of America":
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/04/the-united-steaks-of-amer_n_277529.html
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Happy Socks!
http://www.happysocks.com/
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Ok, how's that for a long blog post? Are you happy?! I know you are...
Go out and enjoy the air!
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