Weekend Reading

"Some people have made seduction a way of life. Incapable of resisting opportunities, they give priority to the nascent state; they are collectors of beginnings." - On Seduction

When Hans Christian Anderson parties with Charles Dickens, he parties RIGHT: "He gathered nosegays in the woods, cut figures from paper, invited Dickens’ son Charley to shave him, and explored London in cabs while hiding his valuables in his boots. He found that Dickens had an excellent supply of dinner whiskey and could offer a large tumbler of gin and sherry afterward. He watched Dickens perform in The Frozen Deep, burst into tears at the death scene, drank champagne with the cast, and returned to see it again a week later."

Image: The Evolution of the Modern Bookshelf.

"When Paul Rosenblatt answers the phone, he says “Bananas!” - on the banana distribution industry

From the same blog: mapping the city through smellscapes. I'd love to do this for Chicago, parts of which, especially in summer, reek of chocolate, melting hard candy and bread. Sometimes, walking home, I feel sorry for people in other cities, for whom a waft of saturated cocoa-laden air doesn't mean 'welcome home' in quite the same way.

petarded

What was the last word you learned? And I don't mean those flash-in-the-pan Internet portmanteaux that fizzle as soon as they're sparked. Mine is petard.

A list of foods named after people. 

As we speak, Cabrini Green is getting torn down.  Project Cabrini Green is an art installation that illuminates the empty building with staccato flashes of light, haunting the apartments and reminding passers-by of the lives lived between those concrete walls:


I've been holding out on you: April is National Poetry Month. Here's where I get my daily fix.

Pick one, but choose wisely: 10 Short 'How To' Guides for the Modern Internet Persona.

Lil Wayne is, apparently, only one stretch of skin away from achieving his dream of a full-body tattoo wetsuit. Guess which stretch.

Smokey Robinson, on Being Sampled: "Sample all of mine. (Laughter) Please. I beg of you, sample all of mine, man, because – really, because first of all, what better form of flattery is that, for a young artist who wasn’t even born when that song was written to hear that song and say, “Hey, man, I love this song so much I’m going to include it in one of my songs,” you know what I mean?" More.

lay.over

Image: Saul Steinberg

halfway between mardi gras and home, my flight got canceled. i write this from the giantest, fluffiest bed in memphis, tennessee, where i've already gorged on unlimited wi-fi and peed in their pool. twice. breakfast this morning is cold pizza because apparently nobody does continental breakfast anymore? also availed myself of a few piping hot showers, wherein i managed to scrub most of the grime of last week off my skin. t-shirt still smells like wet cigarette, though, and sweat and leftover glitter. you're welcome, future seat partner.

most of mardi gras was spent dancing to/marching with/screaming at the what cheer? brigade from providence, ri. similar to this, actually, but with 100% less sage francis.

what I missed on the internet while i was gone: the making of Pharcyde's 'Drop' (you know: that Spike Jonze joint with all the backwards?). Here we learn a) there are cool jobs for linguists (DUH.NO.DUH), b) there are cool jobs for linguists in hip hop, and c) goddammit Pharcyde what happened to our love? Seriously, was it something I said? I want you back! I'll do whatever it takes.

Biggie's last interview with the Source magazine, re-run.

You know how most articles about 'what teh innarnets is doing to our brainz' either focus on how it's ruining us or how it's turning us into uber-menschen? And how both takes are overly-facile, limited readings of a pretty complex, incompletely-understood process? This guy gets it closer to right. I especially enjoyed thinking about how our transition to online memory storage is similar to what happened when we first started inscribing things in books.

The Roots' Picnic drool-worthy lineup. June 4. Who's with me?

Currently digging Aleon Craft, dude doing future-hop out of Georgia. Sounds like he's circling the planet in a spaceship from Saturn, transmitting bizarre beats and made-you-blink lyrics directly to your brain.

"We think of artistic processes as male sexual processes. You ejaculate on the canvas (Jackson Pollack to Dash Snow). You write a book and then you bind and print it, the end. And then if you want to write another book the whole process starts over again from the beginning. But what if art is a female sexual process? If there is no refractory period? What if orgasm just leads to more orgasm? More spending? More paintings, more poems, more posts on a website? Every day there is five dollars and a sunset." ---Please start reading This Recording. You won't regret it.

.....aaaaannnd if you're in Chicago this Sunday, check out my friend Becket's show. i'll be there. so will becket. 'nuff said.

every time I promise myself I'll stop posting rap content to this blog is another time I straight-up lie to myself

Lil Wayne predicts Super Bowl, pays $1.13 million in back taxes.

"It was all a dream, I used to read Word Up! magazine..." And 54 other great opening lines in hip hop.

Philly rapper Meek Mill signs to Rick Ross' Maybach Music.

What happens to women in hip hop.

Dude complains how making mixtapes is hard (self-indulgent but true!), then lists his top 50 rap songs of All Time (only thing that could make this better is a download link).

To Do:
1) Watch  Prince/Cee-Lo duet from Madison Square Garden the other night.
2) Cry a little cuz you weren't there.
3) Repeat.

write yrself clean

"The self is nothing without what it looks at. On its own, it’s inert. Kick it. Poke it. It seems dead. But point it at something else — Doritos, lawn darts, abandoned mines in Upper Michigan, a cappella groups, Dungeons & Dragons — and it perks up. Thus a focus on our obsessions, however nerdy, creepy, lovely, allows the self to emerge and live and blink a little in the bright light. In other words, the best way to write about ourselves is to write about something specific in the world. We don’t write about ourselves. We write ourselves."  -- New York Times

ZING: Joan Didion takes Woody Allen to task for Manhattan, Annie Hall and Interiors.

Why Chicago's awesome for comics.

'Salinger began walking, then running, alongside, still asking us to change our minds. He hit the cab—with his fist, I supposed—and the driver braked. Joe said, “Drive on!"'- When a night with J.D. Salinger goes wrong.

Image: Sculptures by South African artist Mary Sibande.

"I must say words as long as there are words, I must say them until they find me, until they say me - heavy burden, heavy sin; I must go on; maybe it's been done already; maybe they've already said me; maybe they've already borne me to the threshold of my story, right to the door opening onto my story; I'd be surprised if it opened."  - Molloy

all the tabs open in my browser

musical giants in the studio.

a list of winter solstice celebrations, current and ancient (see, esp: Lenaia).

belated: best viewing times for the 2010 lunar eclipse. pretty fuckin boss here on the west coast, though it mostly looked like the moon had gotten all rusty.

dogs gods.

Image: Beijing Olympic swim pavilion now world's future-est water park.

wish i'd seen this in time for my wish list.

fuck chris brown.

I

Bookmarked: "Drawing, for many people, is that phantom skill they remember having in elementary school, when they drew with great relish and abandon." - from Line by Line, the New York Times' new how-to drawing blog.

Tibetan butter tea, the most elusive tea of all.


Image:  Make a comic book from a single sheet of paper.

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.” - Sylvia Plath

The Apiary Corp. published a literary magazine! If you're in Philadelphia next weekend, stop by Light + Honey, our multi-arts magazine release party.

'So much depends on the second bottle.' -  Pithy, practical tips on ordering wine.

Attention proponents of extraterrestrial colonization - Charles Darwin's early experiments in terra-forming a success!

Image: Japanese shell divers.

Insect eggs up close.

The next time someone asks you for change, give them your credit card instead.

"Take the American reissue of my fourth novel Game Control – a wicked, nasty novel about a plot to kill two billion people overnight... Yet what cover do I first get sent? A winsome young lass in a floppy hat, gazing soulfully to the horizon in a windblown field." How women writers get sold short.

Occupation envy: My Kushy New Job embeds reporter in Amsterdam coffee shop where he discovers that selling weed is actually just as shitty as every other service industry job.

Miniature pencil carvings.

A brief history of the origins of writing.

Fun fact: the German family that owns Trader Joe's also owns Aldi's. The backstory on your favorite gourmet grocer, with  bonus appearance by Barry Schwartz touting the paradox of choice (again).

Image: pictures of people reading

"Because of the program's failure to focus on high-level offenders, critics say it's causing fewer immigrants to share information with police that can help solve cases or prevent future crimes." Why cracking down on illegal immigrants may actually be worse for public safety.

Man hitchhikes across America, creates short video about it. (Spoiler alert: He doesn't get axe murdered even once.)

Never thought I would say it: this home birth video is absolutely beautiful.

"We believe we are hurt when we don’t receive love. But that is not what hurts us. Our pain comes when we do not give love. We were born to love. You might say that we are divinely created love machines. We function most powerfully when we are giving love. The world has led us to believe that our wellbeing is dependent on other people loving us. But this is the kind of upside down thinking that has caused so many of our problems. The truth is our well being is dependent on our giving love. It is not about what comes back; it is about what goes out!" — Alan Cohen

Image: obsessions make my life worse and my work better.

A Collection a Day.

How jokes are like philosophy: "Part of the delight, part of what you laugh at in a joke is your own acumen. You know, a part of what’s delightful is that you get it, you know? And so when somebody tells you a joke and you have that split second when you finally get it, it brings out a response of delight in you, because you’re just so delighted with yourself that you got it. Well, that's part of the appeal of philosophy too." 

If only every ukulele cover of The Beatles were this incredible...then maybe I'd listen to more ukulele covers...

A Truly Badass Saint Writes a Poem that Applies to Your Life:

"On The Sabbath" by Thomas Aquinas

On the Sabbath try and make no noise that
goes beyond your
house.

Cries of passion between lovers
are exempt.

Image: The Ballerina Project

High Summer

Texas mandates reading groups instead of prison sentences for criminals.

What kind of worker are you?

Three chilling paragraphs explain life for women in Burundi.

A list of the best magazine articles ever written, as chosen by other essayists. An embarrassing paucity of women writers represented, but there are still a bunch of gems in there.

"Art, when really understood, is the province of every human being. It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing." - Robert Henri (The Art Spirit, 1923)

30 Nights at the Museum

Attention all writers, armchair scientists and social media mavens! The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago wants to pay you $10,000 to live in their museum for a month and write/blog/tweet about it. Seriously - they're going to pay you to become a minor science celebrity. The only catch? You can't leave the building for thirty days. Oh yeah, and no conjugal visits either. More information + the application here.


The guy playing Michael Jackson in this video used to be my boss.

Sure, you knew Simone de Beauvoir was a brilliant philosopher and social theorist. But did you also know she got her start as an advice columnist?

On The Great Gatsby: “It grieves me deeply that we Americans should take as our classic a book that is no more than a lengthy description of the doings of fops.” One-star Amazon.com reviews of Time’s 100 best novels.

"From Paris to the blue waves of the Mediterranean, from Marseille to Bordeaux, passing along the roseate and dreaming roads sleeping under the sun, across the calm of the fields of the Vendée, following the Loire, which flows on still and silent, our men are going to race madly, unflaggingly." – Henri Desgrange, founder of the Tour de France

Oh shit

Today I found a roundup-lette I collected a few months ago. Why did I save these golden nuggets? Why weren't they posted? Honestly, sometimes my brain is a strange and alien place.

The streets of San Francisco, flat.

This happened to me on Monday [ed. - which Monday? where? I can remember getting worked up about this and ranting at various dinner parties for a while afterward but the initial event has totally slipped my mind]. It always shakes me when someone, invariably a skeezy older man, often homeless, insists that I smile because it'll make me 'so much prettier'. Each time I feel like an asshole for hating those dudes. This article makes it pretty clear that I'm not alone, and that my instinctive revulsion at them has some pretty solid legs.

A friend of mine recently got some of those e-cigarettes. It's only a matter of time until his lungs turn into cyborgs.

Speaking of cyborgs, this one's for you, Lindsey: Battlestar Gal-egg-stica [ed.- that dedication still holds, by the way].

This guy hates a lot of things, and he hates them hilariously.

If all I said about this clip was that it's a woman playing 'Turkey in the Straw' on mountain dulcimer, you probably wouldn't watch it. That, however, would be your first mistake. I don't know what your second mistake would be. That one's up to you.

Ladylove

Electric Daisy Carnival-hopeful Nigel dances to Daft Punk while rainbows come shooting out of his crotch. I've watched this video three times already today.

Ladies who play high school sports get better grades, hold more promising careers and stay healthier longer. Huh. So you're saying that if I'd stuck with tennis I might not be working for the Census right now and panting after I climb just three flights of stairs? Well, shit.

Another blow to my overall well-being: all that time I spent reading Cormac McCarthy.

 
Gotta change it up, you guys. Doris Lessing knows what I'm talking about -- "There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag-and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty — and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you."

Image: The Woman Herself.

Oh hai

Hello blog o' mine. I've been rereading your posts and realizing what a good thing you got going here.


Some things that caught my eye this afternoon:


A letter from the best mom in the world defending her gay son against a small town full of homophobes.


Images you wish were Photoshopped: the sinkhole that just opened up in Guatemala. Also filed under: what the f*#k????


Who, me? I'm a criminal.


This baby hedgehog is no bigger than a two-pence piece. Whatever that is.


"I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package,” she said. ”I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it." - Joan Didion

update

Just when we'd built up some steam here at Smoking Z, I had to go and break schedule. I'm not angry at myself so much as disappointed. And posting's only going to get more erratic for the foreseeable future. I got a job with the Census (yesssssss) and have learned that, besides confidentiality and data stewardship, one of their main tenants of belief is apparently limited Internet access. My office employs more than 30 people but I only counted 9 computers when I came for training last Friday. Don't worry. I have a plan. I'll keep compulsively saving links and articles for your perusing pleasure and will try to disgorge them at least once a week. Smoking Zora: now available in concentrate!

On Monday the health care reform bill had me super jazzed. The anti-choice executive order attached to it? Not so much.

Also impressed by Google finally taking a stand against government censorship in China.

Didn't know anything about Margaret Moth, the CNN camerawoman who died recently, but she sure does sound like a bad-ass lady.


What I wouldn't give to be a lector for a living. Typesetter could be cool too: a list of now-obsolete jobs.

"What one rarely sees is a reconfiguration of liberal premises to put women’s rights, interests, needs, and priorities at the center. Indeed, the rise of conservative Christianity has caused far too many liberals to dream that benign neglect of women’s rights (reproductive rights especially), gay rights, and church/state separation would make possible some grand economic-progressive alliance for a new New Deal." How liberalism has failed women.

Here's a neat trick: tell this guy the last five books you read and he'll suggest your next.

Thirteen ways of looking at Liz Lemon.

This guy reviewing The Carter claims he used to hang out with Lil Wayne and, like all of us, is saddened by what he sees in Wayne's future.


Image: Part of a collection celebrating World Water Day, March 22.

l8rz

New Shel Silverstein poetry collection coming in 2011!

Watchdog website tracks design plagiarism. And here you thought we wouldn't notice.

Cuddliest graffiti in the world: urban knitting.

This article not only reaffirms my love for gently-used reading material, it also makes me feel like a champ for having been to so many of the bookstores mentioned.

Yep, badass.

Image: If Teddy had ever let us cuddle him like this maybe we wouldn't have given him back. Real talk.

3/18, 1:32pm

Currently listening/watching: Hot Chip - I Feel Better

A prohibition-era TV show starring Donny from the Big Lebowski as a mob boss? Yes please.

Famous writers' day jobs.

'He was the first novelist to make me say, "Hot dog! Some writer, I'll say."' John O'Hara remembers F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Image: March of the penguins

Telephone

I haven't brought myself to watch the new Gaga/Beyonce 'Telephone' video because 10 minutes is more time than I want to spend catching up on pop music. This cover by Pomplamoose, however, is a short, sweet, and totally charming alternative.

Prepare yourself for tomorrow's occasionally-sloppy holiday by downloading one of these elegant wallpapers.

Excited for SXSW 2010? Yeah, me too. Only I can't afford to actually go. Until then, I'll be listening to this free festival mixtape instead. Currently loving: that Freelance Whales song.

Image: About to go all batshit on the US Census qualifying test!