I have good news! Today the ABBA Museum in Stockholm opened to the public. I think just about everyone loves them, whether you’re like a character in Muriel’s Wedding dressing up in some outlandish costume or one of those music snobs who tells everyone you only listen to the most obscure bands but then go home and secretly listen to ABBA, this is your lucky day. Hey, I don’t listen to them too often but when it comes to pop music, I’d rather listen to ABBA than any of the crap on the current Top 40 chart. And who doesn’t love a random museum like this one?!? GIMME GIMME GIMME…THE ABBA MUSEUM! (thanks for that one, swetebreeth) Anyway, there’s nothing more to say so I will leave you with these amazing pictures.
“So I say…thank you for the music, the songs I’m singing…thanks for all the joy they’re bringing…”
Awesomeness.
Oh yeah, poetry month…
Seeing as how I squandered National Poetry Month, failing to post a single personal favorite, I’m starting May on the right foot! For the full, delicious experience, read this lip-smacker by aloud.
MAY
Story of a Sinkhole in Two Images — (via @nancyloo)
Chicago!
I’ve become unhealthily obsessed with the whole sinkhole phenom. I mean, how terrible/exciting is it that the earth just randomly gapes its maw to swallow our shiny durable goods and supersized houses?
In other news, the backyard is a lake this morning. And it’s still raining.
John Cottrell,Thought bubble composition, paint and varnish on board, 21st century
Tove Jansson: The Artist Whose Writing You Need To Know
How did we miss this nice endorsement of Tove Jansson from inkt|art, a journal of women in comics? (A journal that lists Nicole Hollander as “grande dame” in its masthead!)
I only just finished reading Jansson’s The Summer Book a few hours ago. It’s a slip of a novel about not a whole lot, and its humor occasionally flirts with slapstick (one of those cultural translation things?). But it also has these plain and terse, yet marvelously observed, descriptions of nature and human nature. Viz.
Gathering is peculiar, because you see nothing but what you’re looking for. If you’re picking raspberries, you see only what’s red, and if you’re looking for bones you see only the white.
and
An island can be dreadful for someone from outside. Everything is complete, and everyone has his obstinate, sure and self-sufficient place. Within their shores, everything functions according to rituals that are as hard as rock from repetition, and at the same time they amble through their days as whimsically and casually as if the world ended at the horizon.
and
Every night, the cat went into the woods, and every morning it killed its prey and carried it into the house to be admired, and every morning the bird was thrown into the sea.
I mean, what could you add to those 30 or so words about the cat/bird/human triangle that wouldn’t be superfluous? This is the only book of Jansson’s I’ve read, but I get the feeling that writers are best avoiding the subjects she’s already covered.
“ This was during the happiest time of his life, the early to mid 1980s when Mrs Thatcher had transformed the image of the City and turned the currency speculators into national heroes by describing them as ‘wealth creators,’ alchemists who could conjure unimaginable fortunes out of thin air. The fact that these fortunes went straight into their own pockets, or those of their employers, was quietly overlooked. The nation, for a brief, heady period, was in awe of them.
Jonathan Coe, What a Carve Up ! (aka The Winshaw Legacy in the U.S.)
Carve Up is fiction, but for my money, it’s the truest (and funniest) portrait of Thatcherism—as the brutal, selfish, immoral ideology it is. And doesn’t the above (published in 1994) make you think, just a little bit, of the machinations that triggered the global economic collapse of 2008? Margaret Thatcher’s far from dead.
Sarah Braman, These days, 2012, installation
Goodreads’ and Amazon’s marriage made in hell
I’ve been an Amazon customer for so long I remember when they included free t-shirts and coffee mugs with my book orders (that was when Amazon only sold books) and it was actually not shameful to use the branded freebies because hey, Amazon was cool!
Oh, bygone days before the dot-com bubble burst. It’s taken me a long time to shake those formative impressions even though the evidence against Amazon has been overwhelming for some time. It’s like having a really close childhood friend—one who’s sweet and fun and completely trustworthy—grow up to become a serial killer. You squint and you can still kind of see the child in the monster, but you sure as hell want the monster locked up anyway.
I signed on to Goodreads a little over a year ago, partly because Amazon has become totally useless for finding new stuff to read. Between the paid placements, the inept recs (like Pride and Prejudice? Try Emma!) and the gutting of its editorial content, Amazon has become the online version of a mall Waldenbooks, acceptable only if you’re looking for the most obvious bestseller and don’t happen to be stopping by Walmart that day. (Except, of course, that Amazon’s business is booming and Waldenbooks went down with Borders’ ship in 2011.)
So I’ve enjoyed Goodreads—its easy interface, the ability to track my book challenges and the fact that the site’s helped me find so many obscure and interesting books to add to my long list, just through casual browsing. These are the kinds of books I would never stumble across on Amazon circa 2013—or any retail site for that matter. It’s the lack of commerce that makes Goodreads valuable, its non-hierarchical co-op vibe, its nonpartisan policy of linking to a variety of booksellers and libraries (!). (Sure, authors lurk on the site, but they seem to understand that Goodreads is a community of readers and mostly leave the hard sell at home.)
Amazon’s purchase of this neutral zone, this kind of online public park, is disappointing. The deal will probably turn out even worse for readers, authors, publishers than any of us even imagine.
Jenny Kemp, Concentricity 3, 2012, gouache on paper
I am a bumblebee hairstylist
skeleton drummer
im honestly pretty disappointed
granddad dj
perfect
grandad best friend? I have clearly already achieved this
millionaire hater B)
amateur doctor! hollywood upstairs medical college, here i come!
This isn’t news, but I’m a rude hater.
Bumblebee fan. Which is totally weird because if I were to make a major career change (as in going back to school major), horticulture would be a serious contender. And if you care about plants and gardening, you have to be a fan of bees!
“Hammer Down” by Magnolia Electric Co. from Sojourner Box Set
—
I think the stars are just the neon lights / Shining through the dance floor / Of heaven on a Saturday night / And I saw the light, I saw the light.
Heartbreaking. All of it.
Gearing up for the growing season! Even if eight inches of fresh snow seems to want to thwart my plans.
Jane Friedman: The Problem With Online Freelance Journalism by Felix Salmon
The fact is that freelancing only really works in a medium where there’s a lot of clear distribution of labor: where writers write, and editors edit, and art directors art direct, and so on. Most websites don’t work like that, and are therefore difficult places to incorporate freelance content. The result is that it’s pretty much impossible to make a decent living on freelance digital-journalism income alone: I certainly don’t know of anybody who manages it.
Some really good points. I’ve worked as a freelancer and now work as an editor/writer employee (incidentally, for the same parent co. as Salmon, though not as a journalist), and this squares with my experience on both sides of the fence.
Michele Drouin, La lumiere jaillit du puit, 2008, acrylic on canvas
Treasure Frey, untitled, 2010, mixed media on paper
