"Statuesque" - Short Film Written and Directed by Neil Gaiman

Reminds me of a sweet, wholesome version of "Troll Bridge."

"We Can Get Them For You Wholesale" Neil Gaiman Comic Adaptation

One of my favorite short stories.  I had no idea it was interpreted as a comic.  17 years ago! Shame on me...

http://www.kenmeyerjr.com/comics/story_wholesale1.htm

Social Commentary set to "Animal Farm" by Clutch

Video created by www.corporatedemon.com

It's John Lennon's Birthday

Buffalo Bill's by E.E. Cumming

Link to the poem followed by analysis:

http://boppin.com/cummings.html

...The subject of this portrait is not, as commentators have assumed, Buffalo Bill. Neither is the poem merely a modern expression of the convention of sic transit gloria mundi, of which the appropriate tone would be sadness. The speaker praises the dead celebrity but also disparages him. The reason for the disparagement cannot be, as one reader has suggested, disapproval of Cody's "blend of hero and charlatan" or reduction of "heroic deeds to circus stunts." The speaker clearly admires the showmanship. Instead, he disparages Buffalo Bill merely to exceed him in worth or stature. The poem is a self-portrait of an admiring but also disdainful speaker, unaware of a logical flaw in his reasoning and the profound irony of his situation.

The speaker admires Buffalo Bill's skill in shooting and his good looks. He also admires the horse Buffalo Bill rode, which had symbolic affinity with its rider since it was male (a "stallion") and "silver," like silver-haired Bill Cody in old age. The speaker's admiration is preceded, however, by irony and followed by sarcasm. The word "defunct" instead of "dead" implies callous or humorous indifference to or even approval of Buffalo Bill's death, and the question "how do you like your blueeyed boy" sarcastically belittles Buffalo Bill and conveys the speaker's sense of superiority over him. Furthermore, the possession by "Mister Death" of a blue-eyed boy has pederastic connotations. The celebrity Buffalo Bill was skillful, superior, and, in the last years of his life, the most famous man in the world. But now he is dead and, the speaker assumes, it is better to be alive than dead. So death, which cancelled Buffalo Bill's skill and erased his good looks, gives the speaker an advantage over him....

...Logically, the self-elevation of the speaker is nonsense, since the dead (nonexistent) differ categorically from the living.... The gloating self-evaluation of the speaker has no reasonable foundation. It is also and more obviously ridiculous because he fails to take into account his own mortality. The poem contains the theme of the passing of worldly glory, but its principal meaning is that pride is blind and goeth before a fall....

From Thomas Dilworth, "Cummings' 'Buffalo Bill's.'" Explicator 53 (1995): 174, 175.

Harrison Bergeron and 12:01 PM

My folks always had to be different. Instead of Atari, we had an Odyssey. No Swatches; we had Coca-Cola watches. Finally, we had Showtime instead of HBO. The latter actually wasn't that bad. I think the original programming on Showtime was superior in 80s and early 90s. Below are a couple examples. Unfortunately, these movies cannot be found on DVD:



Harrison Bergeron is one of my favorite short stories, and shamefully, the only Vonnegut I've ever read.



12:01 PM was a production featured as a "Showtime 30 Minute Movie," a series of short films. It's dark and tragic, nothing like "Groundhog Day" or that trash film starring Jonathan Silverman. I believe this is full feature.

Greg Palast: Investigative Journalist

You have to include Greg Palast if you truly want a well rounded perspective on current events. His reports are the content of my nightmares. As I read, I always hope he's as wrong as his polar opposite, Limbaugh, but..

http://www.gregpalast.com/

IN THE SUBURBS by Louis Simpson

There’s no way out.
You were born to waste your life.

You were born to this middleclass life
As others before you
Were born to walk in procession
To the temple, singing.

Great Site For News from Outer Space

http://spaceflightnow.com/

Actual Cthulu Doodle by @neilgaiman

Actual Cthulu doodle on Claudia Gonson's fridge by @neil... on Twitpic

Links on Writing

I am always looking on the web for tips and tricks. Below you will find a series of links I have found interesting:

This link is an interesting piece on story revision by Joe Hill.

http://joehillfiction.com/?p=1909

Here is a link to some sample scripts by Warren Ellis.

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=10319


This link has all kinds of stuff, but I haven't really checked it out yet.

http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2009/02/05/top-100-creative-writing-blogs/

The best recommendation is to pay $40 a year and join the site below. It provides workshops, forums, tips, and assignments from Chuck Palahniuk. I know of no other author that is as involved in assisting burgeoning writers. It's well worth the price of admission.

http://chuckpalahniuk.net/

(This link is also in my side bar.)

Zoroaster / Deck Specs

I hung out with Dan the drummer from Zoroaster last night.



I'd met him a few times over the years, but I really got to talk to him for a while last night. Turns out, in addition to melting faces, he is a partner in a sunglasses company called Deck Specs. These are manufactured from recycled skateboard decks by a master carpenter on North Avenue near Atlantic Station. It's a great idea, and a great concept; even if I, personally, can't pull off wearing the shades. At $60 bucks a pop, they're reasonably priced. Look for them at spots around Atlanta and skate shops in the Southeast. Below is the only photo I could find on the web:

Cradle Me Sky

http://www.cradlemesky.com/

An original 'toon from the people at redrocket.com Posted here for later consumption.

Red Rocket: Original Art From An Atlanta Area Artist

http://www.redrocketfarm.com/

I've wanted to decorate the boys' room with this guy's paintings since meeting him at one of the Atlanta fall festivals a few years ago. When you see him set up, he'll do customized drawings for only about $10. He creates great characters in a unique style. The paintings are quite affordable considering, but I can't really justify dropping $500 to decorate a bedroom. I really would like to commission him to do a mural in their room. Dream big, right?

He's always around at N. Georgia art festivals. Check him out and buy some stuff.

RECIDIVISM

I did not even know I knew this word existed until I woke with it in my head Monday morning. I had to look it up to find its meaning. Isn't that strange. A word... I often wake with songs in my head. I time my sleep, so I wake up during a dream cycle. (A trick I leaned when reading about how to have lucid dreams.) So I often remember what I was dreaming. But to recall a word; a specific, uncommon word; a previously unknown word.

Recidivism: the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have either experienced negative consequences of that behavior, or have been treated or trained to extinguish that behavior.

Such a great word. My children practice the philosophy of recidivism. (Always use a new word in a sentence, right.) Why did I wake with it in my head?

WILD INTERNATIONAL - One Day As A Lion

Geographic Concentration of Inspiration

In the last ten or so years there have been two geographic areas that have been sources of musical and literary influence:

England: Radiohead, Clinic, The Beta Band, Warren Ellis, Neil Gaiman, Garth Ennis
Oregon: Modest Mouse, The Shins, Chuck Palahniuk

I find it odd that the music and words I look to for inspiration are located in these two geographic concentrations. If I were to extend Oregon to include the Northwest, you can add Nirvana, Pavement, Built to Spill and Tom Robbins (though I grew tired of his work after 4 or 5 books.) I'm not sure if it's the dreary melancholy of the weather these two share. It could be the paranoid secularism of England. It could be the transgressive and progressive nature of the Pacific Northwest. In any case, I am drawn to these sources time and time again.

IN THE SHADOW OF NO TOWERS by Art Spiegelman

http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/graphicnovels/towersHomeless.html

"For Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were both highly personal and intensely political. In the Shadow of No Towers, his first new book of comics since the groundbreaking Maus, is a masterful and moving account of the events and aftermath of that tragic day.

Spiegelman and his family bore witness to the attacks in their lower Manhattan neighborhood: his teenage daughter had started school directly below the towers days earlier, and they had lived in the area for years. But the horrors they survived that morning were only the beginning for Spiegelman, as his anguish was quickly displaced by fury at the U.S. government, which shamelessly co-opted the events for its own preconceived agenda.

He responded in the way he knows best. In an oversized, two-page-spread format that echoes the scale of the earliest newspaper comics (which Spiegelman says brought him solace after the attacks), he relates his experience of the national tragedy in drawings and text that convey—with his singular artistry and his characteristic provocation, outrage, and wit—the unfathomable enormity of the event itself, the obvious and insidious effects it had on his life, and the extraordinary, often hidden changes that have been enacted in the name of post-9/11 national security and that have begun to undermine the very foundation of American democracy."

(Thanks, Jeremy.)

I often wonder...

BOOMBOX - The Lonely Island feat. Julian Casablancas

Another one of my favorite things on the internet. I never get tired of this song...