Work

“Clothing the Dead”

What is a locust?
Its head, a grain of corn;
Its neck, the hinge of a knife;
Its horns, a bit of thread;
Its chest is smooth and burnished;
Its body is like a knife handle;
Its hock, a saw; its spittle, ink;
Its underwings clothing for the dead.
On the ground—it is laying eggs;
In flight—it is like the clouds.
Approaching the ground, it is rain
Glittering in the sun;
Lighting on a plant, it becomes
A pair of scissors;
Walking, it becomes
A razor.
Desolation walks with it.

—Traditional Malagasy poem
—from Voices from Twentieth Century Africa: Griots and Town Criers

Word

epilimnion. Noun. The upper, warm layer of a stratified lake. Also: epilimnetic, epiliminial.

“The result of this warming is that, in summer, a warm upper layer of less dense water, the epilimnion, comes to lie over a cold deeper water mass, the hypolimnion.”

Web

• Watch every lightning strike in North America (or Europe, South America, etc.) in real time. Related: the NOVA ScienceNOW episode on lightning.

• See six pages of Nabokov’s original Lolita screenplay with his handwritten notes.

• Known as the “savage surrealist,” Roland Topor’s illustrations and cartoons were by turns absurd, funny and brutal. I’ve posted a few images from his “lighter” collection Les Masochistes for your viewing pleasure. For more, and heavier, check out this memorial site.

• It’s Jeff Beck’s birthday today. Watch his cover of Stevie Wonder’s “’Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers”.

As always, I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you: clippings@katexic.com