anything could happen

thisbelongsinamuseum: I have good news! Today the ABBA Museum...

Wed, 08 May 2013 12:06:58 -0500

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…”

(Image Source 1 & 2)

Awesomeness.

Oh yeah, poetry month...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:58:24 -0500

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 Karen Volkman aloud.

MAY

In May’s gaud gown and ruby reckoning

the old saw wind repeats a colder thing.

Says, you are the bluest body I ever seen.

Says, dance that skeletal startle the way I might.

Radius, ulna, a catalogue of flex.

What do you think you’re grabbing

with those gray hands? What do you think

you’re hunting, cat-mouth creeling

in the mouseless dawn? Pink as meat

in the butcher’s tender grip, white as

the opal of a thigh you smut the lie on.

In May’s red ruse and smattered ravishings

you one, you two, you three your cruder schemes,

you blanch black lurk and blood the pallid bone

and hum scald need where the body says I am

and the rose sighs Touch me, I am dying

in the pleatpetal purring of mouthweathered May.

- Karen Volkman (via Poetry Foundation)

windycity: Story of a Sinkhole in Two Images — (via...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:02:21 -0500

windycity:

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...

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 21:05:15 -0500

John Cottrell,Thought bubble composition, paint and varnish on board, 21st century

Tove Jansson: The Artist Whose Writing You Need To Know

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:26:39 -0500

Tove Jansson: The Artist Whose Writing You Need To Know:

nyrbclassics:

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..."

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 15:43:00 -0500

“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

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 12:07:25 -0500

Sarah Braman, These days, 2012, installation

Goodreads' and Amazon's marriage made in hell

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 23:06:00 -0500

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

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 17:41:31 -0500

Jenny Kemp, Concentricity 3, 2012, gouache on paper

ajohnny: nickminichino: oldtobegin: aerialcircus: wandatinask...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:45:35 -0500

ajohnny:

nickminichino:

oldtobegin:

aerialcircus:

wandatinasky:

burgerrr:

markovmodel:

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!

vastandgrand: “Hammer Down” by Magnolia Electric Co....

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:50:00 -0500

vastandgrand:

“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...

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:51:00 -0600

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

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:29:43 -0600

Jane Friedman: The Problem With Online Freelance Journalism by Felix Salmon:

janefriedman:

From Felix Salmon at Reuters:

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...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 17:35:09 -0600

Michele Drouin, La lumiere jaillit du puit, 2008, acrylic on canvas

Treasure Frey, untitled, 2010, mixed media on paper

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 01:40:00 -0600

Treasure Frey, untitled, 2010, mixed media on paper

Yunhee Min, Attraction #17, 2010, acrylic on canvas

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 12:10:39 -0600

Yunhee Min, Attraction #17, 2010, acrylic on canvas

"We know our economy is stronger when our wives, mothers, and daughters can live their lives free..."

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:56:00 -0600

“We know our economy is stronger when our wives, mothers, and daughters can live their lives free from discrimination in the workplace, and free from the fear of domestic violence. Today, the Senate passed the Violence Against Women Act that Joe Biden originally wrote almost 20 years ago. I urge the House to do the same. And I ask this Congress to declare that women should earn a living equal to their efforts, and finally pass the Paycheck Fairness Act this year.”

- — Barack Obama in tonight’s State of the Union. (via cheatsheet)

Uh, I like to think I have rights that don’t derive from being someone’s wife, mother or daughter… This is the kind of thing I expect to come from a Republican’s mouth.

newyorker: Our celebration in honor of the 200th anniversary of...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:13:31 -0600

newyorker:

Our celebration in honor of the 200th anniversary of “Pride and Prejudice” continues with a piece by Joshua Rothman on Charlotte Lucas’s curious marriage: http://nyr.kr/UGWSd7

An extraordinarily good essay. I wish more contemporary, nonacademic literary criticism was this thoughtful and relevant and precise.

Hey people posting art without crediting and/or linking to the artist

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 23:19:51 -0600

Stop it! It’s bullshit. Does this look like Pinterest?

(same applies to reblogs…)

theeconomist: Daily chart: what works on Kickstarter. 44% of...

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 19:44:42 -0600

theeconomist:

Daily chart: what works on Kickstarter. 44% of Kickstarter projects launched last year managed to raise the money they requested. Games raised the most cash, but dance projects were most likely to reach their funding targets.