WORK
“Clown Baby’s Loneliness”
Clown Baby has no troupe of toddler clowns to call his own—such a company awaits him in the future. Still, there is much to practice. See how he sets up his stuffed animals: the top-hatted Teddy Bear prepped to dance, a frowning lion ready for smile lessons. When friends come over, he tries desperately to make them laugh; if this fails, he calls them all together, pointing with spitty fingers, to see how many of them he can fit in a pram.
—Gerry LaFemina
—from The Book of Clown Baby
WORD(S)
scurf /skərf/. noun. Scaly dry flakes of skin. Any encrustation or flaky, scaly deposit on a surface. The “foul” remains when something adhesive is removed. Rarely: a contemptible person. Also: a sea trout. Probably derived from Old English sceorfan (to gnaw) and scearfian (to cut into shreds).
“Guy offered up his delicate and increasingly emotional nostrils to a familiar experience: the scurfy smell of old money.” (Martin Amis)
“Here I sit, naked under my prison garb, wads of pallid flesh trussed and bagged like badly packaged meat. I get up and walk around on my hind legs, a belted animal, shedding an invisible snow of scurf everywhere I move.” (John Banville)
“I have no heart to be left behind, not even
if Zeus himself would swear to scrape away
the scurf of age and make me young again…”
(Homer, translated by Robert Fagles)“They were young men, subalterns, well set-up, their metal ashine and their black unmaculated by hairs, scurf or food-droppings.” (Anthony Burgess)
“In the distance before him a fire burned on the prairie, a solitary flame frayed by the wind that freshened and faded and shed scattered sparks down the storm like hot scurf blown from some unreckonable forge howling in the waste.” (Cormac McCarthy)
WEB
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I mentioned Jana Dambragio’s Letter Locking site before. Now I’ve discovered her Letter Locking YouTube channel and it’s chock full o’ goodness including how to fold and lock letters in all kinds of ways (including one used by John Donne), but also how to create and use invisible ink, message eggs and more.
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“It’s not just your imagination. Horror films are much more scary than they were in the past. Here’s how they do it.” → Neurothriller
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Alyson Provax - Time Wasting Experiment [Thanks, Reader M.]
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A fantastic article about Beverly “Guitar” Watkins…76 years old and going strong. As the article says, she’s probably the best blues guitarist you’ve never heard of. Don’t believe me? Listen to Watkins play “Back in Business” or “Right String, Wrong Yo-Yo”…or jam at the Avignon Blues Festival.
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Today in 1929, with the signing of the Lateran Accords by Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, the Secretary of State under Pope Pius XI, and Benito Mussolini, Vatican City—covering an area of just .17 square miles (.44 square kilometers) with well under 1000 citizens—officially becomes the world’s smallest independent state. This is small…you can walk around the entire city under 45 minutes. Central Park in New York City is eight times larger. Vatican City has its own postal system and stamps, radio and unique Euro design. St. Peter’s Basilica, inside Vatican City, can hold 60,000 people; the Vatican City museums’ nine miles of exhibits receive an average of 25,000 visitors every day. Because crime statistics don’t take the tourist population into account, Vatican City is home to the highest crime rate in the world, more than 1.5 per person. Interesting viewing: National Geographic’s ►Inside the Vatican.
WATCH/WITNESS
![History of Japan [click to view]](https://buttondown-attachments.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/8bc5461d-e279-499a-9030-4c0264b255fb.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJEXF6S6TCOKT7N3Q&Signature=PJhBgUMc%2BLem5VGLkOqyBhouCzc%3D&Expires=1707569198)
After seeing it recommended approximately 1,623 times, I finally gave in and watched ►Bill Wurtz’s “History of Japan” video. And you know what? It’s fun! Warning, some NSFW language.
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
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Reader G.: “The Pale King scares me. I’m afraid of it as a novel. I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed. I’m afraid of how I’ll feel having finished the last new sentence of David Foster Wallace I’ll ever encounter.”
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Reader C.: “Every other book of contemporary poetry fills me with fear, for poetry and for myself.”
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