Writers' Bedrooms?

Some of these are kind of predictable, Emily Dickinson's New England bedroom, e.g. Truman Capote's looks a bit austere until you realize it's just his room in his beach house. Anyway, I thought they were fun, even if we should be reading instead. Pictured is Henry David Thoreau's bedroom at Walden. It's also his living room and work room.

Hijacking your reward circuits

Since 1992, as the technological miracles and wonders have propagated and the political economy has transformed, the world has become radically and profoundly new. (And then there’s the miraculous drop in violent crime in the United States, by half.) Here is what’s odd: during these same 20 years, the appearance of the world (computers, TVs, telephones, and music players aside) has changed hardly at all, less than it did during any 20-year period for at least a century. The past is a foreign country, but the recent past—the 00s, the 90s, even a lot of the 80s—looks almost identical to the present. This is the First Great Paradox of Contemporary Cultural History.

Article in Vanity Fair.

Technology is changing, but fashion, weirdly, is not, and don't forget the drop in violent crime as former bad guys are riveted to their seats playing video games.

Maybe it's Internet Compulsion Disorder. Article in The Atlantic.

The right swipe on the touch screen in Angry Birds delivers an instant hit. The constant updating on Facebook pages with interesting tidbits from friends generates the warm feelings that come from close engagement with the "in" crowd. MeetMoi.com will link you up with "singles within a few miles from you who can meet you tonight" -- no need to go through eHarmony's tedious process of communicating with someone before a face-to-face meeting.

Yes, everything is getting faster and more addictive, and now even old-fashioned online dating sites are too slow! It's funny to think people are meeting in the same kinds of clothes, tho. Anything new since fleece? Should we all go back to wool sweaters? Tie dye? Big shoulder pads? Reading and writing books instead of quick online articles and blogs? Web surfing is fun, all those quick, little satisfying facts, such as that fashion has not changed very much lately.

Arsenic and Jane Austen

Interesting theory that the novelist was either murdered with arsenic or, more likely, poisoned accidentally. Arsenic was prescribed for various ailments at the time.

It's a debilitating poison that does not kill that quickly. I remember meeting someone whose spouse tried to kill him that way, but his doctor figured it out in time. Unfortunately, it ruined his health, anyway. Amazing that it was once prescribed as a medicine.

Thumbthing Special: Paperback Reader Must-Have

Thumbthing.

Office Worker Must-Haves

Nondairy creamer land mines.

Also, if you go to the Dilbert store, you can read through all the comics and pick which one you absolutely must have on a coffee mug. I have about five contenders to decide among.

Plus, it's a great way to procrastinate.

What weapon has man invented that even approaches in cruelty some of the commoner diseases?

George Orwell essay, How the Poor Die.

And it is a great thing to die in your own bed, though it is better still to die in your boots.

That could seem contradictory -- Orwell saying in this essay that it is better to die a violent death than a natural one of suffering -- it doesn't ameliorate war's cruelty that it allows people to "die in their boots."

What's in a name: Koogle

The kosher search engine: Koogle.

The silliness of the name made me think it was worth a post. I miss Froogle, which is now the boring Google shopping.

photo from wholefoodsmarket.com

A Sad Story in Here Somewhere?

Chocolate Chip Cookie for One. I'm surprised it doesn't come with a single-cookie-making machine.

Well, it saves a trip to the convenience store in the middle of the night, although you can make the whole batch in the same amount of time, as one reviewer notes. I just like the idea. It's the cookie version of a paperback that fits in your Levis pocket.

People did used to carry books around more often, right? And cookies? Now it's all phones and Blackberries, personal music devices and GPS things. I'd rather get lost with a book and a cookie, myself.

We don't serve your type.

Somehow, I don't think the torture memos (see previous post) were written in Comic Sans. But, apparently, everything else is and some people have a problem with that.

Pincher Moscowitz

Did Woody Allen read The Two Deaths of Christopher [aka Pincher] Martin? Did Bernie Madoff? At the NY Times. What is the karmic difference between a lobster on a rock and a lobster in a restaurant tank? Read and learn.

Nonproductive Creativity vs. Productive Mediocrity

Perhaps Leonardo's greatest discovery was not the perfectibility of man but its opposite: He found that even the most profound thought combined with the most ferocious application cannot accomplish something absolutely true and beautiful. We cannot touch the face of God. But we can come close, and his work, imperfect as it may be, is one of the major demonstrations of heroic procrastination in Western history: the acceptance of our imperfection — and the refusal to accept anything less than striving for perfection anyway.

Leonardo is just one example of an individual whose meaning has been constructed, in part, to combat the vice of procrastination; namely, the natural desire to pursue what one finds most interesting and enjoyable rather than what one finds boring and repellent, simply because one's life must be at the service of some compelling interest — some established institutional practice — that is never clearly explained, lest it be challenged and rejected.

Interesting look at nonproductive genius, of which the author says there is much in academia, compared to forced production. At The Chronicle.

I know that we often feel the push to capitalize on our talents, to make money just to pay the bills, and people complain about the quality of the resulting product -- mediocre TV, sensational journalism, poorly written genre books, scandalous, attention-getting art. We mostly agree that money isn't the whole point. The point is to share genius, inspired energy, with others. One hopes to also make a living at it, but completing work is not just about money. Leonardo worked on commission, btw, and still didn't complete that much. It was his recognized genius that kept him afloat financially, to the chagrin of other artists who did complete work, Michelangelo, e.g. Genius alone doesn't pay as well as it may once have, so we don't have the option of postponing completion of work if we want to make a career of it. We have to make judgments -- when is something finished? When can it no longer be made better? When is it time to move on anyway? We show ourselves, our level of talent and genius, in what we choose to share, what we label "finished." Maybe Leonardo was never satisfied with his own genius, or maybe he didn't feel the urge to share. Today, creative people must resist the pressure to put half-realized work out there to try to make a buck. In my opinion. I might feel differently if my writing paid for an expensive lifestyle. It's easy to get attached to that.

Put Down the Hammer

Amateur talent offers acerbic and increasingly hilarious commentary on faulty products.

Here, a letter to Virgin Airways' Richard Branson about the food on the Mumbai to Heathrow flight. I put this one first because the author was offered a job in Virgin's food services.

Here, a discourse on the (non)virtues of the Chrysler Neon.

Here, a bank, maxi-pad philosophy, police response times.

My Five Cents

Can I just say that the Starbucks $.05 promo -- that's right, five cents -- that's what they're donating to AIDS charities for each "hand-crafted" beverage (read: the more expensive ones) you buy within a limited time period -- can I just add that this does NOT impress me in the least? Hey, take plain brewed and send $2 to the charity instead, or, better, drink coffee at home and send $3. Or tell Starbuck's to bite the bullet and send more.

Jeez. Can they even spare a dime?

I guess this is kind of in the bookstore category for me because I only ever go to Starbuck's when I visit the local Barnes & Noble.

Why I Love Email III

Retirement Plan Investment Tip:

If you had purchased $1000.00 of AIG stock one year ago, it would now be worth $56.91.

With Washington Mutual, you would have $120.36 left of the original $1000.

With 'Fannie Mae'(FNM), you would have $11.34 left.

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Lehman Bros one year ago it would now be almost worthless; less than $0.86.

If you had purchased RH Donelley, you would have $45.69 left.

But, if you purchased $1000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling refund you would have $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. This is called the 401-Keg Plan.

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*GROAN* I like this, though. At least someone isn't lamenting and popping Paxils. It's hard to get into a conversation that isn't about either the stock market, the election, the cost of the upcoming winter or what prescription drugs are making it all go away. The election is starting to look a little brighter, at least.

A View from the Yard

This morning, I heard one of the three neighborhood fawns crying for its mother. There are two twin fawns and one singleton, and two does. They all hang around together, but the does sometimes leave the fawns. Anyway, one of the does answered with the funny clicking sound they make, and the fawn went to it, but apparently It Wasn't Mom, because the fawn shrank away and trotted off, still crying. The doe followed it, the way you follow your friend's crying kid...

Have I said how annoying the deer usually are? Eating all the flowers and spreading ticks. It was nice to have a different experience of them.

My Favorite Comfy Chair

The bibliochaise from nobody & co.
Although it would look comfier if the books on the top row were all the same height.

From the Abebooks blog.

The Clinton-Kerouac Connection

This is really too good to pass up.

Senator Clinton is related to Jack Kerouac. Also to Madonna, Celine Dion, Alanis Morissette, and...Angelina Jolie.

Barack Obama is related to Dick Cheney, George Bush, Gerald R. Ford, Winston Churchill and...Brad Pitt.

Via the NY Times. From Notablekin.org.

Tattooed Writers

From the AbeBooks blog.

Friends of mine are tattoo aficionados. For me, it's too much like committing to wearing the same shirt or necklace for the next twenty years (until the tattoo fades and is redone). Good article, though.

Let's Play Sartre

10 points for a black beret, five points for a leather jacket and two points for a lighted Gauloises or a demitasse. Existential stubble, plus a beret, is 20 points. At the Guardian.

Also, what do Parisians read in the subway?

Zen is about reality...like it or not

The fine art of letter writing seems to be lost on the Bush Administration. Bothering elderly citizens who exercise their freedom of speech is not exactly what we were hoping for but I guess we should expect it. Yahoo news.
Should we expect this too? PETA workers helping animals by killing them? What's ethical about that? Granted, these workers were acting on their own, killing animals randomly regardless of age or health, but I'd argue this kind of thing arises from a "kill with discretion" policy such as PETA advocates. Too subject to abuse to be justifiable. Read the article.

I'm indebted to Nan Shin ("Diary of A Zen Nun") for pointing out that when we do not like to look at things like this, and choose instead to look the other way, we wind up living somewhere next to our real life, rather than in it. (I apologize for the paraphrase.)

And finally: Tell us something we don't know. Daydreaming is brain's default setting.