In the Labyrinth

Past Lives Can Be Scary and Entertaining.

How can I resist passing this along on the internet? A huge fan of Game of Thrones, it was pretty astonishing to see this bit of exceptional casting of Joffrey Baratheon as a Caligula-look-a-like. Or perhaps it was Caligula channeling his way up from the underworld through the young Jack Gleeson.

More on Buzzfeed.

What Is Your Library Saying? Part II

Awhile back, I posted about the "Sorted Book Project" -- where visual artist Nina Katchadourian used the titles printed on the spines of books to create clever literary moments with the unexpected arrangements of those titles. So I asked friends who visit me here and on facebook to consider sending in pictures of what their libraries are saying. Here's a wonderful trio from my friend Karen Obermiller.

 

 

 

 

 

 

More are coming -- including some from my shelves (really I have these hilarious little piles of books all over my living room.) Please feel free to email me or facebook message me your own photos if you are inspired to join into the play.

The Nympho Librarian

"Checking Out" is a rollicking and burlesque article at the Paris Review by Avi Steinberg on the history of librarians and porn. It was a French librarian who first coined the term "pornography" in the early 19th century. This article is too much fun to miss -- complete with coupling the stacks, steamy covers like the one above, shockingly obscene book titles (all which have the word Librarian in them) and reflections on why we seem to like the idea of eye-glassed wearing, hair in a bun librarians suddenly, with a few adjustments, turning into sex kittens. While funny, and very informative -- don't read the article if you are easily offended.

I found this article so amusing in part because of my own experience with library sex -- well not mine exactly -- but having the misfortune to stumble across it on occasion when I was a librarian for the Wisconsin Interlibrary Loan on the campus of the University of Wisconsin--Madison. Students rarely had the kind of privacy in grubby apartments filled with roommates that was afforded by the stacks of the Memorial Library in the center of campus (and coincidentally not from the bars!). And in those days a graduate study carrell -- deep in the stacks with a door that closed and locked was practically a hotel room. So the library became for many a garden of delights -- less for reading and more about doing the things you only read about.

In one famous case, a man was being sought in the stacks for about two weeks by campus police for the crime of "shrimping," which was knocking women to the ground, pulling off their shoes and socks, and sucking on their naked toes. Really. I had a girlfriend who carefully polished her toes in anticipation of meeting him. Really.

The librarian through this strange erotic and pornographic fiction becomes a peculiar iconic figure, a triad of feminine powers -- a mystical oracle (with her ready reference answers to life's questions), a Vestal Virgin (with her mask of glasses, severe clothing, and pinned hair), and Aphrodite (gathering men into the labyrinthine stacks, and educating them in the fine arts of love....or something close to that.)

Reading The Web: Nicknames, Tattoos, And A Guest That Arrives In Parts

Here's a trio of really interesting articles on the web that I have been reading and enjoying. Strangely, they all seem connected by thoughts on the body as a form of expression.

Of Men and Nicknames by Brett and Kate McKay: A fascinating look at the tradition among close groups of men of giving each other nicknames and the types of names given. "An unspoken rule about all these mocking monikers us guys had for each other was that only guys in the “gang,” could call each other by their respective nicknames....while this very distinctly male ritual might seem sort of silly and superficial, the practice of nicknaming has been studied by anthropologists and sociologists, and can in fact offer some fascinating insights into manliness and the bonds between men."

Sir George Douglas's "The Strange Visitor" by Sadie Stein: A wonderful look at variants of a Scottish poem based on folklore where a woman, spinning, suddenly wishes for company. "...The plot is always the same: a woman, sitting at her spinning wheel, wishes for company. A series of mismatched, disembodied parts come in—knees, shoulders, neck, hands—and the figure gives a series of gnomic answers to her questions. “What have you come for?” she asks at last. “FOR YOU!” the reader shouts, leaving any listening children in a state of blissful petrification."

A Secret History of Women and Tattoo by Maria Lokke: A reflection on Margot Mifflin's Bodies of Subversion, A Secret History of Women and Tattoo," a cultural history with photographs of tattooed women and tattoo artists in the United States beginning around 1850s. Lokke's review at the New Yorker online contains 9 of these remarkable photos. "Anyone riding the Brooklyn L train these days can see that tattoo culture is thriving, especially among women. In fact, 2012 was the first year in which more women than men were tattooed in the U.S (twenty-three per cent of women, compared with nineteen per cent of men)."

 

Art: Still from Lotte Reniger's Animated Films.

At Sea in the Bathtub

I ordered this because in our new house I actually have a bathtub and wall where these amazing tentacles can go. It's like filling the house with dreamy landscapes -- now if I could only find a way to bring my computer into the tub with me. I may have to go old school and write my novels in a note book while adding hot water every fifteen minutes or so.

And speaking of the bath, read this gorgeous and sensual poem, "The Loneliness of Men Bathing," by Mary Campbell in The Paris Review. Here is a bit to whet your appetite (yeah...pun intended.)

"No one bothers to imagine men in baths.
None of us sitting home alone
On a dull, rainy evening
Thinks of the nude male body
Half-floating, eyes closed, in scented water
Littered with petals, loosening himself
Into the liquid grace of muscular abandon,
One arm perhaps draped over the bath’s edge
Beckoning unconsciously, the left hand
Drawing a long, slow line along
The silkened, opened, underwater skin
Of an upper thigh until it reaches
Tactile complications at the loins
And just gets lost..."

Read more>>>

Listening to the Whale: Reading Melville With The World

I simply must recommend" Moby Dick Big Read," an astonishingly ambitious (and incredibly successful effort) by artist Angela Cockayne and writer Philip Hoare in conjunction with Plymouth University to post a daily audio chapter of Herman Melville's classic Moby Dick -- read by different celebrities from film, stage, politics, authors, -- really just a huge line up of interesting folks who signed on to the projects. The opening chapter "Loomings" with its electrifying opening line, "Call me Ishmael," is read by the no less electrifying Tilda Swinton. This entire project is basically 135 chapters in 135 days.

I can't tell you how good, good, good it is! I read Moby Dick in high school and loved it -- even the seemingly out of place chapters on whaling-- which my more mature ears as I listen to the daily readings now understands as deeply connected to the entire narrative. The text comes alive with each daily reading and I have become addicted to listening to it -- wondering each day who is next to read -- and it fascinating too how Cokayne and Hoare seemed to have found the right person, the right voice to read each chapter.

Go here to read more about the Moby Dick, The Big Project . Go here to start listening, and do yourself a favor -- load it onto your smart phone and listen while driving, plug in to your laptop at the coffee shop in the morning, or last thing before falling asleep (think of the salt-washed dreams!) and enjoy one of the most under-read yet richly deserving of classics. And of course there is a facebook where you can post comments and gather more up to date information.

Art: Clara Drummond -- another wonderful part of this project is the addition of art for each chapter.

Googies Coffee Shop

I love this menu for Googies Coffee Shop -- one of those funny, energetic designs of pop culture from the 1950s. I wish they still looked like this! Of course it started in California -- and in the decade of my birth. Alan Hess author of Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture describes the movement like this:

“Googie started after WWII as a definable style and it caught on fire in the culture and lasted for a good 25 years or so...I really feel that Googie made the future accessible to everyone...One of the key things about Googie architecture was that it wasn’t custom houses for wealthy people — it was for coffee shops, gas stations, car washes, banks… the average buildings of everyday life that people of that period used and lived in. And it brought that spirit of the modern age to their daily lives.”

Go here to read more about Googies architecture of the 50's and many other fanciful ideas from our past imagining our future selves from Matt Novack at the Smithsonian's Paleofuture blog.

Frida at My Fingertips

I know, I probably have a bit of a screw loose, but I want these, even though I would probably have to stop chewing my nails in order to get them long enough to show more than Frida's famous eyebrows! I love the whole idea of art at my fingertips. The Cha Cha Covers etsy shop has a variety of other Frida images, Day of The Dead Skulls, and Virgin of Guadalupe nail stickers. But I was thinking if I could get Frida, could I also one day get Rackham fairies? Burne Jones Sleeping Beauty? Tenggren Arabian Nights? What illustrator -- artist would you love to have on your fingers?

(Thanks to Taiko for finding these in the first place!)

Peter Pumpkin Eater Has Competition

Flavorwire has a hilarious set of photographs of buildings created to look like fruit. Total awesomeness. Who wouldn't want to wait for a bus in a shelter shaped like a melon above? Or a restaurant in the shape pf a pineapple? A strawberry? And my favorite...the spires of fruit in Gaudí’s La Sagrada Família – Barcelona, Spain (Click on the images for a larger version.)

Gaudi's famous church

The Pacifist Warrior: West Side Luigi And No Kill Gaming

Recently I was asked to be the guest editor for The Wily Writers -- an online journal that publishes new stories based on different themes every month. The theme I have selected is Warriors. Now...before you conjure up the usual images of swords and crossbows, breastplates and helmets -- let me add that I wanted to broaden the concept to include all kinds of warriors -- including Spiritual Warriors who look for peace when there is war. So I was fascinated to read "No Kill Gaming," in the WSJ about a gamer "West Side Luigi" who specifically engages in violent video games but as a pacifist. His character "Felix the Peaceful Monk" has been known to succeed in the games not by hacking his opponents to death, but by more subtle techniques that involve calming, diffusing, and healing. Clearly, we live in a world that needs both kinds of warriors and we should celebrate them both.

Best part too may be that the concept of the Peaceful Warrior is catching on: "Videogames have long been assailed for their violent themes and gruesome imagery. But a small slice of players has embraced a new strategy: not killing. They are imparting real-world morals on their virtual-world characters and completing entire games on a "pacifist run"—the term for beating a blood-and-guts adventure without drawing any blood."

Amazing...to win the games by subduing violence with peace.