Although it is the second-largest city in America, in the literary imagination it is still a colony. Instead of speaking for itself, the city is spoken about. Our classic descriptions of Los Angeles were written by visitors who spent only a few weeks or months in the city; or by imported slaves of Hollywood, who act out their rebellion against the city at large; or even by natives writing mainly for an audience somewhere else. What is missing, with a few notable exceptions, is a Los Angeles literature unconcerned with the outside world, intent on explaining the city to itself—as Dickens did with London, or Balzac with Paris.[more>]
In my class at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, it seems like half the kids, including me, grew up in Los Angeles. And while the novel I'm writing is set in Los Angeles, and doesn't diverge from most literary representations of it, I have faith that some great L.A. novelists are in the making.
man hands…are these sites jokes? Probably not… Nab, you're just like me!…more quotes…I'm researching insects for my novel…nchicha.com coming attractions: a food-concerned website…Why is today's picture giving me the finger?…more thoughts on the Smiths.
Scott Radke's Marionettes. The doll on the left sort of looks like me.
According to [George Christos 's] theory, the underlying cause of SIDS is related to babies dreaming they are back in the womb where they did not have to breathe because their mothers supplied them with oxygen through the blood.While dreaming they don't have to breathe, they really do stop breathing - and die. [more>]
Itchy robot recently linked to an amazing site: the Fellowship Baptist Creation Science Fair's write-up. Among the science fair winners:
"My Uncle Is A Man Named Steve (Not A Monkey)"
Cassidy Turnbull (grade 5) presented her uncle, Steve. She also showed photographs of monkeys and invited fairgoers to note the differences between her uncle and the monkeys. She tried to feed her uncle bananas, but he declined to eat them. Cassidy has conclusively shown that her uncle is no monkey."Life Doesn't Come From Non-Life"
Patricia Lewis (grade 8) did an experiment to see if life can evolve from non-life. Patricia placed all the non-living ingredients of life - carbon (a charcoal briquet), purified water, and assorted minerals (a multi-vitamin) - into a sealed glass jar. The jar was left undisturbed, being exposed only to sunlight, for three weeks. (Patricia also prayed to God not to do anything miraculous during the course of the experiment, so as not to disqualify the findings.) No life evolved. This shows that life cannot come from non-life through natural processes."Women Were Designed For Homemaking"
Jonathan Goode (grade 7) applied findings from many fields of science to support his conclusion that God designed women for homemaking: physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences shows that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker.
daily my-life-flashes-before-my-eyes-every-moment-of-the-day-Fimoculous links to Baudrillard's thoughts on The Matrix. (Harder than reading the French is reading the Babelfish translation into English.)
-"How easy is it to group people into 'races' based on appearance? What about using individual traits? Does everybody classify the same way? Try your hand at 'sorting' individuals and see if it matches how people think of themselves. " (via the presurfer)
-Joyce's naughty letters to Nora (via reality carnival)
-real robots on the web (via B.A.'s weblog)
-famous diamonds (via girl hacker)
-photographs of slime mold (via reenhead)
-Doris Mitsch's Darkness Series (via amberglow)
-Gothic Lolita. I think I found my new Fall wardrobe. (via Geisha Asobi)
I'm still haunted by the BBC-sponsored quiz I took over a month ago. The questions asked how well I sensed others' emotions and I tried to answer truthfully: I can't ever, definitively, say I know what others' emotions are, though I'm constantly assuming them. My quiz results: based on my inability to know others' emotions, I have autism. I don't. I retook the quiz, de-intellectualized my idea of "knowing," and became a healthy, social person.
This morning, I'm thinking about that quiz again because another quiz, an excerpted version of the Myers-Briggs test I loved as a kid, recently became an internet hit. But almost every question assumes something incorrect. Question no.1: Do you like writers who (a) say what they mean (b) use metaphors and symbolism?
I think authors use metaphors and symbolism to say what they mean. I think every author "says what he means," despite his style. So, to answer the question, I have to break the question down to a simpler question -- question no. 1 becomes, Is your thinking style (a) straightforward and analytical or (b) circumvent and imaginative? The process of interpreting what question is really being asked, and answering it, is the process of self-identification. Skip the quiz then, and go straight to the results you best identify with.
(Despite all that, I took the quiz. I used to be an INTJ, and now score as an INTP. "Precise about their descriptions, INTPs will often correct others (or be sorely tempted to) if the shade of meaning is a bit off." My exact results: E:1, I: 9, S: 2, N: 8, T: 6, F: 5, J: 5, P: 6.)
How many times have I watched my dogs lick their own private parts and thought-- yes, what they really need is more flexibility.
As a crowd of onlookers grew, the women stretched their dogs -- all of them on the small side -- to the left and the right and lifted them in their arms like furry weights. From time to time, they paused to pull the wandering dogs back to their mats and shush their barks.
"Give him a little love," yoga instructor Suzi Teitelman, 31, told her students. "Come forward, give him a kiss," Teitelman instructed as she leaned over her own spaniel, 2-year-old Coaly.
The class, sponsored by national fitness chain Crunch, grew out of Coaly climbing on her owner's yoga mat at home, Teitelman said. "Yoga came from the animals. It's natural instinct," she said. [more>]
This is the direction all chick-lit should be heading in. From a review of Cuban Heels:
Cuban Heels is shamelessly packaged as chick-lit (cheeky title, pretty young woman on cover, pastel colours with a dash of pink), and the blurb makes it sound all rather light and amusing. So there I was, feet up and a glass of wine in hand, prepared to whiz through a gratifyingly easy read. Two pages in and I was thinking, "What a treat, she can write as well" (and believe me, she can really write). Twenty pages more and I realised I'd been conned by the frivolous wrapping and was now racing through the darkest, unhappiest book I have ever held in my hands. Not even the happy ending - as transparently glued-on as Hans Andersen's trips to heaven for matchgirls and mermaids - could make the book anything other than genuinely disturbing.
anthropomorphic taxidermies
link via Geisha asobi
-almost-fried chicken and fried squirrel
-Square up your Squirrel (and Turned On Squirrels)
-Top 11 Animal Attack Movies and Night of The Lepus ("Giant mutant rabbits terrorize the Southwest.")
-Today, Quasimeta has animal links.
see more evil animal links ---->
The Celebrity Atheist List, according to cheesedip.com, "hasn't been updated since last summer," but "includes celebrity atheists dead and alive, as well as agnostics and ambiguous skeptics." For each celebrity, the site quotes and links to a relevant interview. For example:
From HotPress in an article titled "Björk on the Wild Side", dated 1994:Q: Who does Björk pray to?
Björk: "I've got my own religion, " she concludes, giving her nose a final scatch, poke and lug before heading off for a soundcheck.
Worse than having a boyfriend who's a better writer than you, is having an ex-boyfriend who is: Envy, Franzen's ex's memoir.
Among Fiendish Is The Word's many good links this week: bloodletting images, feral children, and well-known authors' signatures. Not yet available: the signatures of bloodletting ferals.
Highlights from man's history and future, according to a 1970s Scientology handbook:
link via die puny humans
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a tractor-trailer in possession of dangerous cargo must be in want of a tipping over. Josh's dirty peaches links to the rule's most current non-exception:
CLAYCOMO, Mo. -- Crews said about 25 million honeybees were inadvertently released after a tractor-trailer wrecked on an area highway over the weekend. Monday evening, about 12 million bees remained on the loose, KMBC's Bev Chapman reported.
daily working-finally-yes-the 2003 USA Memory Championship
-the craziest thought competition
-what inflatable love dolls really look like
-coudal partners' summer reading list
-'After "The Bell Jar," Life Went On'
Ben Tolman's self portrait on mushrooms
But after a few minutes, a couple cigarettes and several deep breaths, he sat in the basement of a storefront tattoo parlor, closed his eyes and let a friend split his tongue down the middle with a scalpel. The latest trend among teens and 20-somethings who indulge in so-called extreme body modification, forking one's tongue like a serpent's "is an art form," said T.J. McGillis, who offers the service for a $250 charge. [more>]
For those of us who can't get him on the phone, or have a nocturnal schedule that makes calling back impolite, Josh Gang now has a weblog, Dirty Peaches is/are delicious. Mr. Gang enjoys the writing of David Sedaris, Flannery O'Connor, and dead French theorists. I enjoy the writing of Flannery O'Connor and Mr. Gang.
 | critic's Hulk comparison | paper |
 | a computer-generated Gumby on steroids | The New York Times |
 | "…I heard the computer-generated title character described as 'Shrek on steroids,' and I only wish he were so lifelike." | slate |
 | evokes a seething Harryhausen gargantua, or Kong himself | The Village Voice |
 | "Toss a plastic toy figure across your yard, and you'll have a good approximation of what this film's $140 million-plus budget bought its producers." | San Jose Mercury News |
 | King Kong on nuclear bananas/a bionic beach ball | The Washington Post |
 | no more believable than the animated Br'er Rabbit walking alongside Uncle Remus in Disney's 1946 "Song of the South" | Los Angeles Times |
 | right between the creepy snowman from "Jack Frost" and that strange camel-kangaroo hybrid from last summer who claimed to be Scooby-Doo/ a hairy and very angry avocado | Sun Publications (Chicago, IL) |
Six different ways has the t.A.T.u cover of "How Soon in Now" that I mentioned several days ago.
Whichbook.net: adjust sliders (examples: happy/sad, safe/disturbing) to get a list of suggested readings and book summaries.
Maybe you can't afford designer clothes, but you can try them on.
Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent of test subjects exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills. That Snyder was able to induce these remarkable feats in a controlled, repeatable experiment is more than just a great party trick; it's a breakthrough that may lead to a revolution in the way we understand the limits of our own intelligence -- and the functioning of the human brain in general. [more>]
PARENTS, WE OFFER YOUR CHILD THE FOLLOWING:
1.604.696.1328
"THEIR ads are all over the subway - 'Skin Cola: Because Beautiful Clear Skin Begins from Within.'" But what is Skin Cola?
daily slam-a slide show on the history of the lap dance
-and the slide show mentions Cake, "a group of feminist party promoters [that] advocate the lap-dance-as-party-game among their earnest Ivy League crowd."
-Man Keeps Wife Locked in House
-NPR covers a language removal service. Reminds me of Ben Marcus's Notable American Women
-MP3s of every song that's played on Gilmore Girls
Word: Did you hear t.A.T.u.'s version of "How Soon Is Now?"
Morrissey: Yes, it was magnificent. Absolutely. Again, I don't know much about them.
Word: They are teenage Russian lesbians.
Morrissey: Well, aren't we all?
-interview in Word magazine , as quoted by absolutely vile
daily feckless-Sputnik: whole life catalog, organized by verb (via new things)
-sand sculptures by Scott Radke (via indigoblog)
-art by Masaru Shichinohe (via solipsistic)
-more giant microbes
-The Bell Witch (via plep)
-sexiest movie scenes ever? (via six different ways)
-Steve Almond has a tour diary
-I always recommend Dublog.
Hi Nathalie !... Looking for something related with my work I was visiting your site, and I like it very much!... I'm a latin american artist living in Paris and my most recent work are related with food that I imagine and invented. I invite you to see my site and my work. Best regards !Carlos Poveda
www.carlospoveda.com
Bernard-Henri Lévy, a French Algerian Jew, studied under Althusser and "became the most famous member of a group called the nouveaux philosophes who turned against Marxism."
He is rarely referred to by his full name, and is known instead as a brand: BHL. He is like an unfathomably French combination of Melvyn Bragg, J.K. Rowling and David Beckham. If Bernard-Henri Lévy didn't exist, you couldn't possibly invent him. [more>]
Barbies You Won't See In A Store
link via the presurfer
related link: the visible barbie project, a send up of the visible human project.
link via the eyes have it
"Custom paperback editions of classic novels starring YOU! We offer the largest selection of customized books where YOU and your friends and family enter the story. . . Currently we offer several Sherlock Holmes titles, Romeo and Juliet, Alice in Wonderland, and The Jungle Book, with more on the way."
daily why-am-i-not-working-Last words of fictional characters (via incoming signals)
-"WhoWhatWhen is a database of people and events from 1000 A.D. to the present. Create graphic timelines of periods in history and of the lives of individuals."
-Woody Allen: French Kissing in the USA
-"Microsoft said Friday that it is halting development of future Macintosh versions of its Internet Explorer browser, citing competition from Apple Computer's Safari browser." (via ascii rock)
-a summary of Slate's summary judgment: on Dumb and Dumberer, "'So excruciatingly awful, the word "dumb" could sue for slander.'"; on Hail to the Thief, "'Did I get the wrong CD in the mail?' wonders Newsweek's Devin Gordon, who thought Radiohead was returning to its more accessible roots."
From a review of the Morrissey documentary, The Importance of Being Morrissey:
Rowling, for example, admitted that 'The Smiths were the only group whose falling-apart really affected me personally - very sad' (though she likes bacon too much to become vegetarian), while another rabid female fan burbled that 'when Morrissey reaches over the mic to touch you, you no longer feel lonely, you feel celebrated in the love of the one common sovereign, which is Morrissey'.The man himself has been without a major record deal for years and, though still writing and touring, has decamped to pursue an unlikely life of sun-drenched exile in LA, hanging with next-door neighbour Nancy Sinatra, walking his pretty dog, ignoring the telephone, attending to his iconic coiffure and (still) listening to The New York Dolls.
It was, though, a jolt to see him driving his big Jaguar and living in haute-bourgeois style in a house that Clark Gable built for Carole Lombard. When he does make it back to England these days he has an entourage and a chauffeur and stays in hotels with rooms called 'The Churchill Suite'.
TRAFFIC SIGNS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
big heads are funny.
misshapen heads are funnier.
thinking outside the triangle:
the signification of "male" is not universal:
neither is common sensical graphical design:
daily awake:asleep::36:3-Top Ten Pictures of Thom Yorke Looking Pretentious. Fuck, I think he looks cute. And the last pic in the countdown (no.1): really, really cute. What's wrong with me that I love pretension?
-Much lonelier than wanting love from a cat is wanting love from a cat robot. (via geisha)
-TV is our mirror, literally.
-The Ten Lowest Moments in Advertising. Read no. 2.
-USA Today comes up with a good headline: 'Everything is so 5 minutes ago'
-Amazon World, a blog, tracks "some of the more interesting [Amazon] user reviews." A review of The Bell Jar: "Basically, this chick. . .is a player-hater."
uncanny dolls.
link via solipsistic
"A ferrofluid is a gryphon in the world of materials: part liquid, part magnet."
see short quicktime movie of ferrofluid changing from magnet into liquid
(thanks to boyfriendly Sam for the links)
daily my-feet-will-be-the-end-of-me-Hindu Hells: select your vice and see what happens (via B.A.'s weblog)
-online museum of ouija boards (via idle type)
-A mondegreen is the mishearing (usually accidental) of a phrase, such that it acquires a new meaning. (via kottke)
-Japan's chilling Internet suicide pacts
-quantum suicide, a thought-experiment (via S*T*A*R*E)
-From The Solipsistic Gazette: Chinese Opera and Julie Heffernan paintings. In an ideal world, 1. I'd actually write a novel, and 2. Heffernan would design its cover.
daily smooth-but-bumpy-sailing-Think your downstair neighbors are bad? Surely they could be worse (scroll down to reason no. 3).
-"B-Listers are amusing and forgettable, the perfect stars for our short attention spans."
-John Updike and other authors rate Hillary's memoir
-"Attention advertisers: it is now possible to place promotional and advertising messages directly onto eggs!" (via adrants)
-Damien Hirst quits drink and drugs
-40 Mistakes Men Make While Having Sex With Women contains some of the worst advice ever. But parts of it are just funny. Mistake no. 29: ATTEMPTING ANAL SEX AND PRETENDING IT WAS AN ACCIDENT. (link via coyote)
-vintage neck braces (via quiddity)
Lockhart Steele links to superfuturecity and shares its map of my temp neighborhood (I'm at Ludlow, between Stanton and Rivington):
Kinda cool, though you could know all this from doing a ten-minute walk. (I'm up because I'm rolling off a 36-hr sugar high, courtesy of Economy Candy-- dead center on the map).
some recent links from the new-to-me Reality Carnival:
-Past Life Regression Software. For only $14.95, I'm sorely tempted.
-an article starts, "There is a good chance that an odd cluster of hereditary neurological diseases among the Ashkenazi Jews is a side-effect of strong selection for increased intelligence. "
-Occult-y interpretations of brain wave frequencies
-the blog's author calls me beautiful. oh man, that's really nice, thanks, merci.
Victorian Suitability Rules:
Those with bright red hair and a florid complexion have an excitable temperment and should marry those with jet-black hair or a brunette.
The very fined hair, soft and delicate should not marry those like themselves.
The quick-motioned, rapid speaking person should marry the calm and deliberate type.
The warmly impulsive should unite with the stoical.
Those who don't fit into specific categories (not short nor tall, not brunette nor blond) who are more of an average type, may marry those who are similar in form to themselves.
-excerpted from The Language of Love, "a look at the code of etiquette that defined 19th-century courtships" (link via fiendish is the word)
I tried to buy a copy of the New Yorker's debut fiction issue at a subway magazine stand, but the guy behind the stand kept pointing to New York magazine. "New York?" "-Er," I said. "New York?" "-Er."
Anyway, the issue features the short story of a good friend of mine, Daniel Alarcon. The NYer's website also has a front-page interview with him; unfortunately, the link brings you to the wrong page. Here's the right page. I swoon. Oh, Daniel. You fucking, fucking, rock.
strange animal facts, excerpted:
-Certain Chinese and American alligators can survive the winter by freezing their heads in ice, leaving their nose out to breath for months on end.
-Honeybees have hair on their eyes.
-The study of ants is called Myrmecology.
-The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.
-Dolphins sleep with one half of the brain at a time, and one eye closed.
-Cat whiskers are found on the face and on the back of the forelegs as well.
-When two dogs approach each other, the dog which wags its tail very slowly is in charge.
-The leech has 32 brains.
-A purring cat doesn't always mean a contented cat. Cats will also purr if they are in pain.
-The smallest dog in history was a tiny Yorkie from Blackburn, England. At two years of age and fully grown he was only 2.5 inches tall by 3.75 inches long and weighed only 4 ounces.
-About 600 species of plants are carnivorous. Most eat insects but also on the menu are frogs, birds and even small monkeys.
-Goat's eyes have rectangular pupils.
-More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.
-Mayflies live for a year or more as larvae; but as adults they live for only a few hours.
-Mexico is the world's pig tapeworm capital with estimates that about 4 percent of all Mexicans have the adult tapeworm in their intestine.
-It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of its mouth. Then the frog uses its forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.
-Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike.
-The poisonous copperhead snake smells like fresh cut cucumbers.
-Aphids are born pregnant without the benefit of sex. Aphids can give birth 10 days after being born themselves.
-Swans are the only birds with penises.
-A duck's quack doesn't echo anywhere, and no one knows why.
-Sharks apparently are the only animals that never get sick. As far as is known, they are immune to every known disease including cancer.
-The heart of a blue whale is the size of a small car.
-a simple guide to the A-list bloggers. Given that I read none of their blogs, I can't decide whether I should read the guide for edification, or be as uninterested in the guide as I am in the blogs. (link via burnt toast)
-fungus of the month. This month, Pisolithus tinctorius, the "dog turd" fungus. (via idle type)
-a new New Yorker story, by David Sedaris
-Ask the DJ is a sophisticated mix engine which analyses the music's rhythm to perform DJ-like transitions between tracks.
-more after lunch, really.
daily it's-been-days-a collection of New Scientist articles on human nature
-"my life as a phone psychic"
-multiple choice fiction
-how to get good 'n drunk in Iowa City (just go outside)
and, from here on out, pet-obsessions:
-weatherpix, severe weather photography
-a NYC links page that I'd bookmark instead of link, but I'm not on my own computer.
-random human sexuality diagrams, charts, and illustrations
-picture gallery of members of the Handlebar [Mustache] Club
-surreal food photographs
Updates:
The problem, dear readers, is that, in four weeks, I've moved three times and been sick twice. The cup's more than half empty. See:
.
daily mo mo mo-fashion designer pronunciations (via gawker)
-sex on drugs (via 6differentways)
-the eighties tarot (via 6differentways)
-be telekinetic (via the presurfer)
-moh latehr
When I conduct my "Write Better, Write Now!" seminars all across the country, the first thing I do is ask my audience, "What is the one thing every novel needs?" The eager and uninitiated throw out answers like: "a catchy opening," "an engaging plot," or "robots," which are all true enough, but alas, are incorrect. [more>]
I'm still collecting humanoid food imagery. Send me links.
Similar in format to ABC's "The Bachelor," "Boy Meets Boy" features an eligible man looking for love in a pool of 15 potential mates. But in a twist worthy of the bogus baron on Fox's "Joe Millionaire," some of the suitors are actually heterosexual men who were paid by the program to pretend to be gay -- unbeknownst to the eligible bachelor.link via mefi
Adam King, much beloved middle and high school classmate, is starring in Real World: Paris. MTV asks him, "When you started Real World, what was your romantic status?" Adam: "I was casually seeing my ex from high school, but broke things off about a week before I left."
For the life of me, I can't remember who was Adam's ex. Beverly alumna, do you know?
