In Case Of Actual Death

I got tagged three years ago to do a thing and never noticed until now. I figure better late, right?...

Fri, 09 May 2008 22:10:00 -0400

I got tagged three years ago to do a thing and never noticed until now. I figure better late, right?

Total number of books I’ve owned:
I don’t know. I don’t like counting things or owning things. But not very many. I got tired of lugging books around everytime we moved, and I am avid library-user.

The last book I bought:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home

The last book I read:
As in finished:
The Watchmen
As in still reading:
David Barringer’s American Home Life

Five books that mean something to me:
The Book of Nightmares by Galway Kinnell
Chokeville by Josh Allen
The Spell Book of Listen Taylor by Jaclyn Moriarty
The Kabuki series by David Mack (technically more than one book)
I don’t know, I can’t think of another one. I like a lot of books a lot.

Tag five people and request they fill this out on their blogs:
Josh, because he didn’t do it three years ago either, Lindsey, Briana, Sarah, Meghan, Chris, Matthew, Pierce, Roxanne. Like I said, I don’t count things.

You people have three years to complete this request, and that is it.

English Russia » An Abandoned Tank Base

Fri, 09 May 2008 12:36:00 -0400

English Russia » An Abandoned Tank Base

travors: “It insists upon itself”

Thu, 08 May 2008 17:39:00 -0400

travors:

“It insists upon itself”

meghanagain: Yesterday Andrea and I had lunch in the park and decided that everything would be...

Thu, 08 May 2008 13:07:42 -0400

meghanagain:

Yesterday Andrea and I had lunch in the park and decided that everything would be better if people just did their research. Pick up a book once in awhile. I wish these cherry blossoms would stop falling in my hummus. All that.

I understand that you may prefer the above in haiku form. Many people do.

yesterday, lunch in the park
fie on lazy work
too bad about my hummus

The falling cherry blossoms
Their wings rest upon our food
Come back to life!

Chaiten volcano More here and here and here.

Thu, 08 May 2008 11:59:36 -0400

Chaiten volcano

More here and here and here.

Top X, 5/7/08

Wed, 07 May 2008 14:18:00 -0400

It’s kind of hard to see moments of grace lately. I try to catch up on Twitter and I see the number 22,000 stamped across each post. It’s a hard number for me to visualize: I keep trying to find a more personal way to conceptualize it. No luck so far. I want to sit with the number 22,000 and turn it around in my mind, look at it from different angles.

Anyways.

In the one creative writing class I ever took, the teacher shared a poem he had written about a spider that crawled across the piece of paper he was writing on, and his coin-flip decision to let the spider live. The poem turned on the phrase because life does manage to inhabit, and I’m not 100% sure what he meant, but the phrase stuck in my head, 13 years now, and I think about it whenever I start to wonder why we bother.

1. My two-year-old was very excited to go to his new classroom this morning.

2. Candy. A kind of chocolate I’ve never had before. Australian licorice.

3. David Barringer, who sent me the tools I need to put out more books.

4. “Look at Miss Ohio” by Gillian Welch

5. “suppose” by ee cummings

6. Situations that could definitely be worse.

7. My five-year-old’s constant stream of questions about Super Mario Brothers 3. A bell of mindfulness.

8. R.

"Part of the joy of the mix (both making and receiving) was getting/hearing something that made you..."

Tue, 06 May 2008 10:12:38 -0400

“Part of the joy of the mix (both making and receiving) was getting/hearing something that made you say “where did THAT come from?!” And of course, the mixtape merely offered you the track name. There wasn’t really any context, so a really obscure track could have an air of mystery about it that really added to the fun, and prompted attempts at one-upmanship. The same is true of forwarding links to your friends — you just send the youtube link, not usually where you got it from. And this keeps that sense of mystery, that great feeling of “where did they find THAT?!” But once you start blogging, it seems that the protocol is to reference where you got your article links, your weird remixes, your youtube links. The mystery is gone, you can see the wizard of Oz behind the curtain, it becomes clear that the main asset a blogger has is simply time.”

- putting the j in jjosh » Blog Archive » mixsion statement

Josh Granger*, comparing blogging to the ancient (lost?) art of mixtapes. Great post, pulling together many disparate strings. He’s less jaded about it than I am, but I agree with his conclusion: create more. It’s muuuuch harder and more frustrating than link blogging, but I’d rather have 1 person link to something of mine that they liked then 100 linking to something that I just happened to notice.

* I’ve been Googling Josh Granger for 12 years now, all “Why the hell doesn’t this guy have a blog.” So Amen to him finally turning up.

Photo

Mon, 05 May 2008 22:07:00 -0400

How To Play Slug Pumpkin

Fri, 02 May 2008 22:54:22 -0400

Slug Pumpkin is a pretty chill new game which I recently invented. What you do is log into your Gmail at an hour such as 11:30 pm on a Friday night, or maybe 1:30 am on a Saturday. Basically any time when anyone who is NOT A COMPLETE LOSER would be nowhere near a computer. At that time you log into Gmail, see which of your contacts is online, and then post their names on your blog, thereby outing those people as *uses fingers to make shape of “L” against forehead.* Pretty fun.

You may think it is a Catch-22 that the person playing this game is logging in to Gmail at a time when he or she is expected to be partying, at some A-list invite-only event where there are probably celebrities. But most likely the person just stopped home real quick between gala events to change from their tuxedo into their tight sweater and vinyl pants.

Anyways those are the rules, have fun playing Slug Pumpkin.

PS The game is called Slug Pumpkin because I have such a busy social schedule that I did not even have time to think of a good title. It was just the first thing that popped into my head while I was discussing this idea with attractive Broadway star Kristen Chenoweth.

Fri, 02 May 2008 13:48:00 -0400

k. Who do you think is writing soupy sales on twitter?

Thu, 01 May 2008 23:27:13 -0400

k. Who do you think is writing soupy sales on twitter?
j. I dunno, but it's gotta be Somebody -- it's too mega-sharp. The Larry King one, too (assuming it's not the same person).
j. Man who doesn't love a good Internet Mystery.

distorte: If you had 24 hours to live, a room with four walls, a chair and no door, and your choice...

Thu, 01 May 2008 17:38:21 -0400

distorte:

If you had 24 hours to live, a room with four walls, a chair and no door, and your choice of book with which to spend those last 24 hours, what would that book be?

Easy, Galway Kinnell’s Book of Nightmares. Ask a hard one, you ponce.

Related: think about how many people Facebook is prompting to be friends with you. They’re all...

Thu, 01 May 2008 13:56:01 -0400

Related: think about how many people Facebook is prompting to be friends with you. They’re all clicking the X and thinking either “Who?” or “Ugh, fuck that person.”

People Facebook Thinks I Should Be Friends With

Thu, 01 May 2008 11:21:00 -0400

The girl a guy I knew in college recently dumped
The wife of a coworker from a job I had 10 years ago
Jason Fried
Jessica Coen
An old roommate’s younger brother
The younger brother of someone I went to high school with
Someone who worked at the same college radio station as me
Andrew Huff
Andy Baio
Someone who I think just reblogged something I posted on my tumblr the other day
17 completely random strangers whose names all scare me

via The Plug: Food Issue

Thu, 01 May 2008 11:08:00 -0400

via The Plug: Food Issue

Van Halen - “Summer Nights” from Live Without A Net...

Thu, 01 May 2008 10:42:28 -0400

Van Halen - “Summer Nights” from Live Without A Net (New Haven, 1986)

Look at these guys. Happier times.

Basically the entire calendar year 1987 was devoted to me sitting in front of the TV, watching Van Halen’s Live Without A Net over and over and over again. Don’t worry, no regrets.

One thing that always struck me oddly about the performance: Sammy introduces the final song (a cover Led Zep’s “Rock & Roll”, sadly not on YouTube) as “a song by some old friends of ours.” I remember being 13 and thinking: “What? Van Halen is friends with Led Zeppelin?” I still question the validity of that statement.

Anyways, check out Eddie’s moves at 2:52.

Handsome Boy Modeling School I know you better / than you think...

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:46:48 -0400

Handsome Boy Modeling School

I know you better / than you think I do. / Don’t worry dear / this is why I fell in love with you.

Photo

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:00:08 -0400

Kahimi Karie — I Am A Kitten

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:31:56 -0400

Kahimi Karie — I Am A Kitten

Rocking, with bewildered children (via Supercraig and J)

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:44:08 -0400

Rocking, with bewildered children (via Supercraig and J)