The alternatives are not placid servitude on the one hand and revolt against servitude on the other. There is a third way, chosen by thousands and millions of people every day. It is the way of quietism, of willed obscurity, of inner emigration.
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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.
I was translating (just starting to translate, I was on the first page) into English a translation into Croatian of Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage. It seemed like it was going to be a magnum opus...
posted morning of January 10th, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Dreams
Documentarians Sean and Lisa Ohlenkamp went undercover to see what happens after closing time at Toronto's Type Books -- what they discovered may surprise you.
Thanks for the link, Lauren!
(Incidentally: some fantastic book and bookstore photos are to be had at Colossal Art and Design, where I found the Ohlenkamps' video.)
posted evening of January 9th, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Animation
via Bifurcaria bifurcata: Argentine sculptor Amalia Pica speaks with the Dalston Literary Review about a series of sculptures inspired by Juan GarcÃa Madero's reference to catachresis in the final section of Savage Detectives.
Catachresis #8 (head of the nail, teeth of the comb, eye of the needle, head of the screw)
The gray dust of evil spells and the cobwebs of enchantment thickly cloaked the old electric arc furnace, and the jars of exotic rhodium and sinister cadmium and stalwart bismuth, and the hand-printed labels browned by the vapors from a glass-stoppered bottle of aqua regia, and the quad-ruled notebook in which the latest entry in Alfred's hand dated from a time, fifteen years ago, before the betrayals had begun.
So I am thinking (as 2012 rolls itself out before me like a glittering carpet...) that the READIN reading theme of 2012 might just be rereading. Somehow the Savage Detectives reread of the last few months seems to have primed me for getting new insight from books I am already familiar with... Rereading The Crying of Lot 49 last week set the course; and today it looks like I am starting to reread The Corrections (a book, it must be said, which owes a whole lot to TCoL49 if my memory of it is any guide).
Here is me reading The Corrections. Thanks for the photo, Sylvia!
posted morning of January 8th, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Tsundoku
More news from your Republican party (and thanks for the link, Henry): At Salon, Tracy Clark-Flory speaks with some analysts of sex and of politics about the stridently anti-sex rhetoric coming our way from such as Rick Santorum and Rick Perry, at a time when America's Puritan sexual ethic is perhaps less in the ascendant than in the past couple of decades. One can only hope this is the year the panderers to reactionary "Christianity" will be hoist for their own petard. (As one has been hoping every election year since 1988 or therabouts.)
Also: Perry's lunatic belligerence makes for a nice juxtaposition with the crazy anti-sex talk. ...And on a more coherent note, Robert Reich talks straight about where Republican values are taking our country.
posted morning of January 8th, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Politics
I compiled a video playlist of most of these songs on YouTube -- particularly recommend checking out the almost hallucinatory quality of the two The Byrds versions and the really striking fan video for the Rave-Ups' version. And the Venus 3 number, while it strays a bit from the theme of the playlist, fits in quite nicely and fits into a broader playlist theme of "Songs I would wish to cover". (Plus some bonus tracks added, if you listen to the end...)
Skritch Skritch Draw Draw: Noah Berlatsky has an article in Comixology about the sound effects in Tiny Titans -- "the analog to those clunky text boxes which would tell you that Spider-Man raced across the city, except that the text boxes have been streamlined and incorporated into the picture."
Amelia Klem of the Wisconsin Historical Society profiles Anna Mae Gibbons (1893-1985), who under the stage name of Artoria performed in the Greatest Show on Earth as one of the best-known tattooed ladies of her generation. Thanks for the link, Nancy!
I was translating (just starting to translate, I was on the first page) into English a translation into Croatian of Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage. It seemed like it was going to be a magnum opus...
