Somehow, Cleveland has survived, with her gray banner unfurled -- the banner of Archangelsk and Detroit, of Kharkov and Liverpool -- the banner of men and women who would settle the most ignominious parts of the earth, and there, with the hubris born neither of faith nor ideology but biology and longing, bring into the world their whimpering replacements.
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Pretty Pictures
Images I have found striking over the years.
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Time to gather your arse up off the floor,
(have a bana-na)
Brush your teeth and go toddling off to war.
Wave your hand to sleepy land,
Kiss those dreams away,
Tell Miss Grable you're not able,
Not till V-E Day, oh,
Ev'rything'll be grand in Civvie Street
(have a bana-na)
Bubbly wine and girls wiv lips so sweet --
But there's still the German or two to fight,
So show us a smile that's shiny bright,
And then, as we may have suggested once before --
Gather yer blooming arse up off the floor!
The good people at the London Banana Project have been uploading photos of urban banana peels to their site. And I say it's a fine thing; I like to think Pirate would agree with me. (Thanks for the link, Christine!)
Update: Dave Barber is clear-eyed in the face of lurking danger. "At minimum, the locations of the banana peels should be plotted on a coordinate map to see if they fit a Poisson distribution."
All they have in common is both being accessed from Crooked Timber this evening. The first is an Argentinian art video by BluBlu* that Kieran Healy posted without comment -- living graffiti!:
And the second is of a band recommended by xboy in comments to this post: Dr. Michael White's New Orleans jazz band plays some sweet sounding traditional jazz. Check out the "Christopher Columbus"** reference in the trombone solo. Right up my alley.
* Be sure to visit their web site if you enjoy this video -- there is lots more great stuff there including more videos of similar installations.
** And hey, I found a recording online of Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band doing "Christopher Columbus" -- the first version I ever heard, from a band close to my heart. It is the first couple of minutes of this podcast from Mike Pell.
Ragebunny has discovered a new photostream on Flicker; one which purports to be maintained by [presumably some person working at] The Library of Congress*. It is a fantastic thing: tons of archival photos, right now from the 1910's and the 30's-40's, and I'm assuming more decades will be uploaded soon.
Also on LJ today, Gertrude Crumlift Sturdley links to a NY Times article about smutty archival recordings. Good stuff!
* Confirmed: Here is the LoC's FAQ regarding the Flicker project.
Two very cinematic items in the news today -- the search for the Rev. Adelir Antonio di Carli, who tried to cross the Pacific strapped to helium balloons in an effort to raise money for a spiritual rest-stop for Brazilian truckers, continues. (Every element of that sentence adds another tint to the rainbow of absurdity -- I am thinking David Lynch could have a lot of fun with this one. Or -- Fellini!) And, the dismissal of charges against James O'Hare and David Daloia, who wheeled their possibly-already-dead friend Virgilio "Fox" Cintron to the Pay-O-Matic at 9th Ave. and 52nd to cash his Social Security check -- John Waters material, or maybe the Coen Brothers in their Big Lebowski mode.
(Also in today's paper, this story about a pretty amazing-sounding teacher and his high-school geography class.)
posted morning of April 23rd, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about The Movies
Listening in the car to Robyn Hitchcock's April '96 concert in Bilbao, and Sylvia says "I want to hear the one about the street." Cool -- I fast-forwarded to "De Chirico Street". Listened for a minute and then Sylvia says, "There's too much stuff happening on that street."
posted evening of March 8th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Gig Notes
Further to the Codex Seraphinianus: Luigi Serafini also wrote a second book, the Pulcinellopedia (Piccola), concerning the Punch doll of "Punch and Judy". I have only been able to find a few scattered images, mostly on this page (the same blogger also has a beautiful Codex page) -- sure looks intriguing.
I heard about this book just a little while ago from a friend who was trying to figure out how much a copy costs now; pretty expensive it turns out. But, turns out also to be available on the internets for free. Just looking through it now for the first time -- it is entrancing to look at the letters and understand them as meaningful. Also some hilarious art like the rocket circumambulation.
In a funny way it seems like reading that Dr. Seuss "On Beyond Zebra" book of invented characters, but taken to a whole 'nother level in terms of internal consistency and rigorous meaninglessness. -- Maybe comparable to what a baby experiences looking at a book, maybe a baby at the cusp of realizing that the book holds the story which is being read to him but not yet having the key to understanding it.
Apparently the egg-trees are crawling out of their holes in order to split in half that they might bear the fœtal tree developing inside them. I'm not sure why some of the little ones are splitting; maybe they are a separate species or variety.
posted evening of February first, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Readings
I was just looking at the jacket of While Thatcher Mauled Britain and noticed a cartoon of Hitchcock's. A little bit hilarious in the context of these past few days.
Caroline Winter's column on the majuscule first-person pronoun (which appears only in English) is about 30% interesting, 70% silly; uncommonly good for the Times "On Language" column. I'm mainly linking because it contains the lovely word "majuscule".
The 
I like it.
Two very cinematic items in the news today -- the 
&
.
!) 
WFMU's Hear It Wow 