Thanks to the Clamorites who drew my attention to the incomplete, “canorous”-free Robert Service quotation in the last issue. Here is the complete version:

“Silence had raised a startled head and poised there, listening. Then, with crack of pick and boom of blast, man had hurled her back. Further and further had he driven her. With his advancing horde, mad in their lust for the loot of the valley, he had banished her. His engines had frightened her with their canorous roar.” (Robert W. Service)

WORK

Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose from the floor, up out of the tattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, the dead machines which hadn’t worked in all the time Isidore had lived here. From the useless pole lamp in the living room it oozed out, meshing with the empty and wordless descent of itself from the fly-specked ceiling. It managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range of vision, as if it—the silence—meant to supplant all things tangible. Hence it assailed not only his ears but his eyes; as he stood by the inert TV set he experienced the silence as visible and, in its own way, alive. Alive! He had often felt its austere approach before; when it came, it burst in without subtlety, evidently unable to wait. The silence of the world could not rein back its greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won.

He wondered, then, if the others who had remained on Earth experienced the void this way. Or was it peculiar to his peculiar biological identity, a freak generated by his inept sensory apparatus? Interesting question, Isidore thought. But whom could he compare notes with? He lived alone in this deteriorating, blind building of a thousand uninhabited apartments, which like all its counterparts, fell, day by day, into greater entropic ruin. Eventually everything within the building would merge, would be faceless and identical, mere pudding-like kipple piled to the ceiling of each apartment. And, after that, the uncared-for building itself would settle into shapelessness, buried under the ubiquity of the dust. By then, naturally, he himself would be dead, another interesting event to anticipate as he stood here in his stricken living room alone with the lungless, all-penetrating, masterful world-silence.

—Philip K. Dick
—from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

WORD(S)

obmutescent /ob-myew-TESS-ənt/. adjective. Willfully silent. Obstinately mute. From Latin obmutescere (grow mute), from ob- (to, toward) + mutescere (to become mute).

“The Finns’ obmutescence seemed especially to go hand in hand with that other most famous Finnish characteristic, their drinking.” (Michael Booth)

“Crimond, who broods over it all like an obmutescent winged avenger, scaring the living daylights out of his friends, is really successful only when off stage…” (Stephen Fry)

“Jud was a monologist by nature, whom Destiny, with customary blundering, had set in a profession wherein he was bereaved, for the greater portion of his time, of an audience. ¶ Therefore, I was manna in the desert of Jud’s obmutescence.” (O. Henry)

WEB

1. Soundscape ecology—and silence and solitude—in Denali National Park (near my old home) → Whisper of the Wild ※ See also, near my new home, the Quietest Square Inch in the U.S.

2. The Science of Silence: How Solitude Enriches Creative Work

3. “Silence, for me, is neither an absence of sound, nor is it uniform. The silences of the river are different from the silences of a desert. Yet both are vast, and they are full of surprises.” → On a Walk Through Busy India, a Nature Photographer Discovers a Craving for Silence ※ Part of the ongoing Out of Eden Walk, Paul Salopek’s 21,000-mile walk tracing the paths of the first humans to migrate out of Africa in the Stone Age, “a decade-long experiment in slow journalism.”

4. “As I browsed subjects ranging from agriculture to medical mathematics, I noticed a sign hanging overhead: ‘Realm of Knowledge and Silence.’” → How an abandoned lab could show us the future.

5. One of the better running jokes in Get Smart was the Cone of Silence, which ► appeared in the first episode but featured even before that in the demo reels used to sell the show to the network. The joke got new life in the 2008 film farce starring Steve Carell and then the even shorter-lived farce Scott Pruitt: EPA Director and his top-secret phone booth.

6. “You and the voice in your head – whatever you want to call it – are pretty much all you have in the end. You have to hang on to it, and listen out for it.” → The Power of Shutting Up and Sitting in Silence

7. “Cultivate quiet spaces or go mad.” – some of the examples, such as MetaFilter, show how various the ideas of “quiet” can be. → Finding silence online is difficult, but the pursuit is worthwhile. ※ Pairs well with The Disconnect, the online magazine you have to unplug from the internet to read.

8. “she set to make of nothing most” – I keep going back to some of Olena Kalytiak Davis’ poems because I’m not always sure what is going on, but beautiful. → “SONNET (silenced)” by Olena Kalytiak Davis

9. Silence for the eyes: Jason Oddy Photographs The Deafening Silence Of Empty Political Spaces ※ Lorado Taft’s sculpture “Eternal Silence” (aka the “Statue of Death”) ※ Jason Oddy Photographs The Deafening Silence Of Empty Political Spaces

10. Today in 1928, the “Shakespeare of science fiction” Philip K. Dick—and his twin sister Jane Charlotte, who would die just six weeks later—is born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Among the 44 novels he would write before dying at only 53 are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, adapted for the film Blade Runner, the Hugo award winning The Man in the High Castle, and my favorite, the as-always-mind-bending A Scanner Darkly. Dick was a troubled, often addicted, survivor of multiple suicide attempts who was mostly unknown to readers outside the science fiction world at the time of his death…but whose work has had significant influence on not just science fiction, but speculative and modern fiction of all kinds, not to mention Hollywood.

WATCH/WITNESS

After considering his request for 16 years, the Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps—which doesn’t allow visitors—decided to allow Philip Gröning to shoot a film documenting their lives. After nearly three years of editing, ► Into Great Silence is the (naturally-lit, with no commentary or sound effects) result. ※ See also, a documentary invoking many other kinds of silence: ► Samuel Beckett: Silence to Silence documentary.

WHAT‽

► Puddles (and Tongo Hiti) cover Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence”. ※ I’ll just leave this here too: ► All The Small Things (Blink 182 Sad Clown Cover) - Postmodern Jukebox ft. Puddles Pity Party.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “I am so loving the recent Clippings. Without fail I come away with a sense of wonder at this crazy world. Such treasures, such oddities, such disturbances you share with us… thank you!”

• Reader M.: “thanks for these weekly gatherings .. always something invites a click .. today little potato and yasmin williams ..”

• Another Reader B.: “Excellent Trumbo quote. Reminds me of the antiwar passages in near-contemporary All Quiet on the Western Front. ¶ I’m ambivalent about the Ann Arbor street scene. So beautiful, yet - books sprawled out upon a filthy street? Where they can be injured? Also, a few yards from that very spot I helped move an entire bookstore across the same street. ¶ China: I cannot get Americans to pay any attention to China, most days. Drives me nuts.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

Because the guys who say life isn’t worth living without some principle so important you’re willing to die for it they are all nuts. And the guys who say you’ll see there’ll come a time you can’t escape you’re going to have to fight and die because it’ll mean your very life why they are also nuts. They are talking like fools. They are saying that two and two make nothing. They are saying that a man will have to die in order to protect his life. If you agree to fight you agree to die. Now if you die to protect your life you aren’t alive anyhow so how is there any sense in a thing like that? A man doesn’t say I will starve myself to death to keep from starving. He doesn’t say I will spend all my money in order to save my money. He doesn’t say I will burn my house down in order to keep it from burning. Why then should he be willing to die for the privilege of living? There ought to be at least as much common sense about living and dying as there is about going to the grocery store and buying a loaf of bread.

—Dalton Trumbo
—from Johnny Got His Gun

WORD(S)

canorous /cə-NOR-us/. adjective. Musical, melodious, richly resonant, tuneful. From canor (melody), from canere (to sing). From PIE root kan- (to sing) from which are derived accent, canto, chant and incentive, among other words. See also: euphonious, harmonious.

“The groom was in the utmost alarm, both on his own account and on mine: but, in spite of this, so irresistibly had the sense of the ludicrous, in this unhappy contretems, taken possession of his fancy, that he sang out a long, loud, and canorous peal of laughter, that might have wakened the Seven Sleepers.” (Thomas De Quincey)

“Motions of waking trouble winter air,
I wonder, and his face as it were forms
Solemn, canorous, under the howled alarms,—
The eyes shadowed and shut.”
(John Berryman)

“Silence had raised a startled head and poised there, listening. Then, with crack of pick and boom of blast, man had hurled her back. Further and further had he driven her. With his advancing horde, mad in their lust for the loot of the valley, he had banished her.” (Robert W. Service)

“Though canorous spells from the musical bells
Of the city’s fifty towers
Shouted the news of his lunatic cruise
In the early morning hours…”
(J. R. R. Tolkien)

WEB

1. There is something amazing and comforting and classically awe-inspiring about listening to ► the sound of the wind on Mars. || Pairs well with: The Search for Alien Life Begins in Earth’s Oldest Desert.

2. Announcing the Winner of the 2018 Bad Sex Writing in Fiction award || See also (if you can bear it), the shortlist.

3. Ironically, significantly less robotic writing can be found in this roundup of the 2018 Interactive Fiction Competition entries. Also known as IFComp, the competition is “an annual celebration of new, text-driven digital games and stories from independent creators.” || See also: the full list of 2018 entries.

4. The US Library of Congress’ Crowd initiative invites everyone to help transcribe and tag items from their vast collection. How can you pass up a chance to discover fascinating writing and make a contribution to historical knowledge? Campaigns right now include Civil War Reminiscences and Letters to Lincoln. Thanks, Reader C.

5. Is speciesism, aka anti-animal language, really a thing? || See also: a new PSA from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Philosophers

6. What if there was a war on a religious minority with more than one million detainees, constant surveillance and espionage, and a complete abrogation of human rights…and no one seemed to care? → China’s Uighurs told to share beds, meals with party members & Spying On The Uyghurs: A First-Person Account From A Han Chinese Student & China’s brutal crackdown on the Uighur Muslim minority, explained & China admits to locking up Uyghurs, but defends Xinjiang crackdown

7. “In their latest installment of Literature vs Traffic, Spanish design collective luzinterruptus transformed a major street in Ann Arbor, Michigan, into a glowing river of 11,000 books.”

8. Two fantastic (in very different ways) longform pieces about technology and humanity and connection at its best → The Friendship That Made Google Huge and worst → Four Days Trapped at Sea With Crypto’s Nouveau Riche.

9. The eyes have it, paper and books edition → Daria Aksenova’s narrative shadowboxes and “illusionary paper” series & Elizabeth Sagan’s book-lov(ing)(er) photos & for the DIY-ers How to make a book page wreath, and more book art ideas.

10. Today in 1905, screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo is born in Montrose, Colorado, USA. Trumbo’s 1939 novel Johnny Got His Gun won one of the first National Book Awards…and so inspired the band Metallica that they not only wrote their well-known song “One” as homage, but bought the rights to the film so they could use segments from it in their iconic ► music video. But it was as a screenwriter that Trumbo would find his greatest fame, success and eventually—as a blacklisted member of the Hollywood Ten—heartache, writing films such as The Brave One (which won an Academy Award he couldn’t claim because he couldn’t be credited), Roman Holiday (same), Spartacus, Exodus, Papillon and the aforementioned Johnny Got His Gun.

WATCH/WITNESS

“In this stunning 360° video, former U.S. inmate Rickey Jackson, who was wrongfully imprisoned for 40 years (including being on death row and in solitary), ► tells the story of his rebirth.” || See also: After 39 Years of Wrongful Imprisonment, Ricky Jackson Is Finally Free.

WHAT‽

It’s a spoken word poem. It’s performance art. It’s why we have the interwebs. It’s the ► Official “Tainted Love” Dance Tutorial.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader A.: “Don’t think some of us didn’t notice you’ve started slipping an interrobang into the title of the WHAT section!” – You noticed‽

• Reader S.: “I applaud your bravery in linking to a Quillette article. That said, it’s hard for me not to see the magazine’s proponents as the children of CP Snow, doubling down once more against Hume. That’s to reduce all of this far too much, but in the rush to kill off theism’s delusions we seem to be accepting Scientism far too easily. My own life remains a constant struggle to balance my reason and my passion, yet balance we must. ¶ also thanks for the article on ‘reading problematic writers/DFW’ as it led me to Mary Karr’s poem ‘Suicide’s Note: An Annual.’”

• Reader B.: “I was sure you were pulling my leg with the pronunciation of contretemps [/KON-trə-ton/]! I guess if I accept that the final ‘n’ is really that gargly, back-of-the-throat, almost-silent, thing the French seem to have a thing for, I can accept how wrong I’ve been pronouncing this word for the last 30 years.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

I can look back and see that I’ve spent much of my life in a cloud of things that have tended to push “being kind” to the periphery. Things like: Anxiety. Fear. Insecurity. Ambition. The mistaken belief that enough accomplishment will rid me of all that anxiety, fear, insecurity, and ambition. The belief that if I can only accrue enough—enough accomplishment, money, fame—my neuroses will disappear. I’ve been in this fog certainly since, at least, my own graduation day. Over the years I’ve felt: Kindness, sure—but first let me finish this semester, this degree, this book; let me succeed at this job, and afford this house, and raise these kids, and then, finally, when all is accomplished, I’ll get started on the kindness. Except it never all gets accomplished. It’s a cycle that can go on … well, forever.

—George Saunders
—from Congratulations, by the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness

WORD(S)

contretemps /KON-trə-ton/. noun. An awkward, embarrassing, difficult situation or disagreement. A minor disagreement. A clash. Originally a French fencing term contre-temps (an unfortunate accident, a mistimed motion), from Latin contra (against) + tempus (time).

“…so irresistibly had the sense of the ludicrous in this unhappy contretemps taken possession of his fancy, that he sang out a long, loud, and canorous peal of laughter…” (Thomas De Quincey)

“Except for a minor contretemps when Agnes caught the dog Gambol in the kitchen, trying to steal a capon, and chased him out into the hall, calling him names and brandishing a broom, the dinner was all it should be…” (Fiona Buckley)

“O Claribel, Claribel. No memory of her can elude for long our first contretemps. That is too bookish a word. Our wreck.” (Guy Davenport)

“Our little contretemps and my little rising tide have gone off together in a stout, chilly breeze. Good spirits are notoriously more fragile than bad.” (Richard Ford)

“It was as great a contretemps as she had feared. The priests showed the coldness natural in undertakers who had been summoned to a house where there was nobody even ill…” (Rebecca West)

WEB

1. Yaas! → America can thank Black Twitter for all those new words

2. Do You Even Bake, Bro? (subtitle: How the Silicon Valley set fell in love with sourdough and decided to disrupt the 6,000-year-old craft of making bread, one crumbshot at a time) is a fascinating article both on its face and because of its deep, neo-romantic assumptions about enjoyment and authenticity (and sometimes gender).

3. Centuries of Sound is “an attempt to produce an audio mix for every year of recorded sound. Starting with 1860, a mix is posted every month until we catch up with the present day. The scope is moreorless everything, music of course, but also speech and other sounds…”

4. Paper engineer and artist Matthew Shlian is back in Colossal with fabulous new paper sculptures || Previously: 2016 paper sculpture gallery & Geometric Paper Sculptures || See also: Paper Animation Film Fest 2018.

5. RIP Ricky Jay, the best close-up (and old-school, scholarly) magician ever. You can’t go wrong with this 1993 profile: Secrets of the Magus.

6. “Counterintuitively, the social justice stance on human evolution closely resembles that of the Catholic Church. The Catholic view of evolution generally accepts biological evolution for all organisms, yet holds that the human soul (however defined) had been specially created and thus has no evolutionary precursor. Similarly, the social justice view has no problem with evolutionary explanations for shaping the bodies and minds of all organisms both between and within a species regarding sex, yet insists that humans are special in that evolution has played no role in shaping observed sex-linked behavioral differences. Why the biological forces that shape all of life should be uniquely suspended for humans is unclear. What is clear is that both the Catholic Church and well-intentioned social justice activists are guilty of gerrymandering evolutionary biology to make humans special, and keep the universal acid at bay.” → The New Evolution Deniers (and the comments) perfectly illustrate the maddening paradox of Quillette.

7. I’ve said many times that Ear Hustle is one of the best podcasts/audio shows out there. It’s still true, so you should go listen. But the most current news is: co-host Earlonne Woods just had his sentence commuted!

8. “It seems to me, as just a layman and an amateur, that the internet is almost the perfect distillation of the American capitalist ethos, a flood of seductive choices.” → A new (to most of us) David Foster Wallace interview || See also: Maria Bustillos on coming to terms with the art, life and legacy of “damaged or criminal” artists like Wallace.

9. Meet Birds Aren’t Real, QAnon disinformation parody as performance art (I’m waiting for the Bards Aren’t Real parody of the Shakespeare deniers) || Previously, The Wizard of Q considered QAnon as a kind of sprawling new form of the novel.

10. Today in 1942, Enrico Fermi creates the first nuclear chain reaction, turning an abandoned squash court underneath the University of Chicago football stadium into “Chicago Pile–1 (CP–1),” a primitive nuclear reactor that generated a half-watt of power. The success of CP–1 lead directly to the production of enough plutonium to produce the atomic bombs that would end World War II and usher in the nuclear age and the ensuing Cold War.

WATCH/WITNESS

Staying musical this week, thanks to Reader J. Yasmin Williams is a guitar prodigy in the style of Michael Hedges and Billy McLaughlin. In addition to ► GuitKa (guitar + kalimba) as seen above, Williams also ► brings in a cello bow with beautiful results. Listen also: ► “Restless Heart”…WOW.

WHAT‽

► Little Potato is a documentary about “A Russian Mail-Order Bride and a Jaw-Dropping Twist.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader J.: “Hey Katexic, great catch on this one - Quillette, Scary Pockets, PMJukebox, MKwan, etc. while you’re at it, how about Yasmin Williams?” – Done!

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

My thanks to readers from A. to W. who pointed out my typo… Disney’s Steamboat Willie debuted on November 18, 1928, not 1828!

WORK

Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.

—Rachel Carson
—from The Sense of Wonder (1956)

WORD(S)

gamine /ga-MEEN/. noun or adjective. A playfully mischievous, pert, usually petite, girl. A female street urchin. A boyish looking young woman; an elfish tomboy. A borrowing from French gamin (a boy who lives on the streets), originally meaning just a young boy or a glassmaker’s assistant. Earlier origin unknown.

“…her arms outstretched, face beaming, overwhelmed with joy and music: Coming in late to vespers, her color high, strange grasses in her gamine, slightly flyaway hair.” (David Rakoff)

“…in a perfect inversion, the young lady at the table sprang out of that exact position, and Howard registered in his peripheral vision a gamine type with spidery-lashed wet eyes, and arms of sinew and bone like a ballet dancer’s.” (Zadie Smith)

“Her skin had the patina of an outdoorswoman. She had recently cut her bright blond hair, a practical gesture that lent her a gamine look.” (Anita Shreve)

“This had nothing to do with Graham Greene. It had to do with the removal of his friend’s overcoat, revealing: a woman of a certain age but still fiercely gamine, in purple angora sweater and skintight shiny black trousers.” (Martin Amis)

WEB

1. Most of Africa is north of the equator…and it extends to the same latitude as Norfolk, VA. Barcelona is in line with Portland, OR. Paris is further north than Montreal. → Why your mental map of the world is (probably) wrong

2. Why Is Japan Still So Attached to Paper? || Pairs well with The Complete Guide to Japanese Washi Paper

3. On Quillette, The Voice of the ‘Intellectual Dark Web’

4. ► Why Beautiful Things Make us Happy

5. “You realize that you need not obey the impulses of this moment – which, it seems safe to say, tend not to produce a tranquil mind.” → To survive our high-speed society, cultivate ‘temporal bandwidth’

6. Magic Printed (and Renaissance era typography)

7. “New methods are allowing a group of scientists to reëxamine the world’s libraries and archives, in search of the hidden lives of authors.” → Do Proteins Hold the Key to the Past?

8. I’ve been reduced to this: learning of mesmerizing performers like Chris Rodrigues and Abby the Spoon Lady through a fascinating Washington Post story, despite their 100k+ YouTube subscribers and a ► video of their performance of “Angels in Heaven” that is about to break 11 million views.

9. Very different feasts for the eyes: Eron’s haunting wall paintings & Christopher Payne’s General Pencil photos.

10. Commencing today, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, through December 10th, International Human Rights Day, is 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence, an “international campaign to challenge violence against women and girls.” More than 3,700 organizations from more than 160 countries are participating.

WATCH/WITNESS

A conversation last night reminded me that I am unrepentant about (most of) my 80s rock listening…then and now. Michelle Kwan’s cover of “Sweet Child o’Mine” on a guzheng nails not just the iconic song, but one of the era’s best solos. Also: a worthy cover by bluegrass musicians Thunder and Rain & Postmodern Jukebox doin’ it New Orleans style & Scary Pockets makin’ it funky & a wistful version by Taken by Trees.

WHAT!?

In Lynch’s own words, “Ant Head” is a “short video featuring my friends the ants along with cheese, etc. and one-and-a-half tracks from the ‘Thought Gang’ album.” (Thanks, Reader B.)

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: I am aghast, sir, as your use of squamous without a single Lovecraftian example. ¶ I correct your error thusly:

Above the waist it was semi-anthropomorphic; though its chest, where the dog’s rending paws still rested watchfully, had the leathery, reticulated hide of a crocodile or alligator. The back was piebald with yellow and black, and dimly suggested the squamous covering of certain snakes. Below the waist, though, it was the worst; for here all human resemblance left off and sheer phantasy began.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

My Uncle Terwilliger on the Art of Eating Popovers

—Theodor (Dr. Seuss) Geisel’s Lake Forrest College Commencement Speech, June 4, 1977 … in its entirety

My uncle ordered popovers
from the restaurant’s bill of fare.
And, when they were served,
he regarded them with a penetrating stare.

Then he spoke great Words of Wisdom
as he sat there on that chair:
“To eat these things,” said my uncle,
"you must exercise great care.

You may swallow down what’s solid
BUT
you must spit out the air!"

And as you partake of the world’s bill of fare,
that’s darned good advice to follow.
Do a lot of spitting out the hot air.
And be careful what you swallow.

WORD(S)

squamous /SKWAY-məs/ & squamulose /SKWAY-myə-ləs/. adjective. Covered with scales; scaly. Composed of scales or a resemblance of scales. In anatomy, the thin scaly part of the temporal bone. In medicine, a suture with thin overlapping parts resembling scales. From Latin squama (scale); possibly related to squalus (filthy, foul), from which squalid and squalor are derived.

“There was Littleface, whose actual features occupied a tiny square in the centre of a squamous, bloated head.” (Robert Stone)

“…to make a sordid story as squamous as possible, the network head bought, for his schedule, a handful of shows produced by the ex-actor…” (Harlan Ellison)

“She had a sneaky, sly, shy, squamous personality.” (Ursula K. Le Guin)

“It was a raptor perch, well used. Buzzard or eagle or both. There were big black and white turds, and dozens of excreted bird and animal bones. It had a miniature forest of lichens, foliose and squamulose.” (Robert Macfarlane)

“…he took hold of that same Rowdy Dick by pantleg and armpit and swung him, oh wrathful lambs, against the abutment where the poem was inscribed, swung him as a battering ram might be swung, and cracked Rowdy Dick’s skull from left parietal to the squamous area of the occipital, rendering him bloody, insensible, leaking, and instantly dead.” (William Kennedy)

WEB

1. The basic story of today’s WORK is curious…but the deeper story behind it—and Geisel’s painful Hollywood experience—gets real interesting.

2. I’ve been following the Threatin hoax…here is a meander for the Clamor: Threatin: band creates fake fanbase for tour attended by no one → A fake band goes on tour: Threatin provides a perfect tale for our times → Did Threatin’s Ridiculous European Tour Stunt Actually Work? → The Story of Threatin, a Most Puzzling Hoax Even for 2018.

3. “…it didn’t matter in the slightest if participants showed any artistic ability. After just 40 seconds of low-quality sketching, subjects not only remembered significantly more, they also recalled more detail and context about the words and ideas they were studying. In short, they learned more, faster.” → Drawing Is the Fastest, Most Effective Way to Learn, According to New Research

4. (We are hanging by) a thread. → The Dystopia is Already Here || Pairs well, in my mind anyway, with Guess who’s championing Homer? Radical online conservatives.

5. I’m not sure what to make of Rebecca Mead’s article “How Podcasts Became a Seductive—and Sometimes Slippery—Mode of Storytelling”…is it news that podcasts aren’t, well, news? That storytelling and narrative are part of nonfiction? That manipulation of the audience is part of the art and craft of story?

6. When Michelle Alexander speaks, I listen. “Recent criminal justice reforms contain the seeds of a frightening system of ‘e-carceration.’” → The Newest Jim Crow

7. This is a technology going in the right direction for lovers of paper and digital… → IllumiPaper: Illuminated Interactive Paper

8. Look! → Siena International Photo Awards (SIPA) & Soviet Russia in full color [Thanks, Reader B.!] & 1913-1915: Views of Tokyo, Japan

9. Listen! → The Biblio File features “twenty-forty minute interviews with accomplished authors, publishers, biblio people, conducted by an excitable bibliophile.” The archives go back to 2006. A few episodes to get you started: Richard Minsky on his Book Art and Scholarship & Hugh McGuire on an alternative future for book publishing & Alberto Manguel on his favourite libraries and bookstores

10. Today in 1828, Walt Disney’s ► Steamboat Willie (starring Mickey Mouse), premieres in New York. In addition to being the first Disney cartoon with synchronized sound, it was also the first cartoon that could boast a fully post-produced soundtrack. More links: Steamboat Willie on Wikipedia & Why Mickey Mouse’s 1998 copyright extension probably won’t happen again.

WATCH/WITNESS

“There are 800,000 unmarked graves in Glasnevin Cemetery. This is the story of one.” → ► The Bookbinder’s Daughter

WHAT‽

Roman Fedortsov’s fantastic (and sometimes terrifying) photos of deep sea creatures on Instagram and on Twitter.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader C.: “Your ‘see also’ left out the best synonyms for farrago: gallimaufry and salmagundi! And mélange! And olla podrida!”

• Reader K.: “I just don’t understand how World War I gets so little attention now, even on a momentous date like the 100th anniversary of the armistice. Sigh. Anyway, Letters of Note published Wilfrid Owen’s powerful and sadly final letter from just four days before the end of the nearly forgotten war.”

• Reader S.: "Your readers might enjoy seeing the The First Book Printed in Antarctica. It ended up selling for almost 100K.

• Reader A.: "When I saw the image of a subway entry seemingly in the middle of nowhere I thought it must be some sort of joke. However, I soon uncovered a different world. One involving rapid development: ¶ The speed at which all this is happening in China makes me wonder why we speak about ten year plans in Melbourne, Australia. ¶ In part this scenario of a station in a field reminds me of the discussion of the development of infrastructure before people in Stockholm:

In contrast, places like Vällingby, a Swedish suburb outside Stockholm built in the 1950s, were sited around a new Metro station. Building rail infrastructure through built-up areas is extremely expensive, but building it through farmland, before new neighborhoods are built, is comparatively cheap."

To which I say: —Considering it that way, I wonder that there aren’t (or maybe there are and I just am not finding them) more examples like the Chongqing Metro stop. It makes for fascinating photos, kind of the opposite of ruin porn…

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

Thanks to Reader B. for multiple World War I related links in this issue.

WORK

The unreal is the illogical. And this age seems to have a capacity for surpassing even the acme of illogicality, of anti-logicality: it is as if the monstrous reality of the war had blotted out the reality of the world. Fantasy has become logical reality, but reality evolves the most a-logical phantasmagoria. An age that is softer and more cowardly than any preceding age suffocates in waves of blood and poison-gas; nations of bank clerks and profiteers hurl themselves upon barbed wire; a well-organized humanitarianism avails to hinder nothing, but calls itself the Red Cross and prepares artificial limbs for the victims; towns starve and coin money out of their own hunger; spectacled school-teachers lead storm-troops; city dwellers live in caves; factory hands and other civilians crawl out on reconnoitring duty, and in the end, once they are back in safety, apply their artificial limbs once more to the making of profits. Amid a blurring of all forms, in a twilight of apathetic uncertainty brooding over a ghostly world, man like a lost child gropes his way by the help of a small frail thread of logic through a dream landscape that he calls reality and that is nothing but a nightmare to him.

The melodramatic revulsion which characterizes this age as insane, the melodramatic enthusiasm which calls it great, are both justified by the swollen incomprehensibility and illogicality of the events that apparently makeup its reality. Apparently! For insane or great are terms that can never be applied to an age, but only to an individual destiny. Our individual destinies, however, are as normal as they ever were. Our common destiny is the sum of our single lives, and each of these single lives is developing quite normally, in accordance, as it were, with its private logicality. We feel the totality to be insane, but for each single life we can easily discover logical guiding motives. Are we, then, insane because we have not gone mad?

—Hermann Broch (translated by Willa and Edwin Muir)
—from The Sleepwalkers

WORD(S)

farrago /fə-RAW-goh/. noun. A medley, a confused mess, a mixture, a miscellany. From Latin farrago (mixed fodder for cattle, also generally a mixture), from far (grain). See also: hodgepodge, hotchpotch, mélange, potpourri.

“What strange farrago of impossibilities have these holy dealers in occult divinity jumbled together?” (Thomas Holcroft)

“…what would his book be? Nothing,—he would add, throwing his pen away with a vengeance,—nothing but a farrago of the clack of nurses, and of the nonsense of the old women (of both sexes) throughout the kingdom.” (Laurence Sterne)

“Mrs Tramore stared, as if at a language she had never heard, a farrago, a galimatias.” (Henry James)

“Somewhere in the world, every night, some company romped its way through Queen Mab’s Island, that farrago of nonsense history and rumbustious English whimsy…” (Penelope Lively)

WEB

1. Via Reader O. comes news that the Art Institute of Chicago has put more than 50,000 hi-res images online and into the public domain (“using CC0 licenses for copyright nerds in The Clamor”).

2. In the latest “they’re coming for you” news, the ‘world’s first’ A.I. news anchor has gone live in China.

3. The eternal readers’ debate about readability and literary value continues in Sam Leith’s “Pretentious, impenetrable, hard work … better?” I say: yes, and we need unpretentious, penetrable books too. And all kinds in between.

4. “Once a television comfort for preschoolers, ‘Look for the helpers’ has become a consolation meme for tragedy.” I wanted to write off Ian Bogost’s article as typical backlash (no one is taking Mr. Rogers away from me) but…I couldn’t. → The Fetishization of Mr. Rogers’s ‘Look for the Helpers’

5. A “snapshot of our time,” a “global selfie,” whatever you want to call it, the Memory of Mankind (MOM) project is a fascinating project creating a million-year time capsule. Learn more about the project and its founder.

6. In celebration of my birthday (or something) on October 23, Starbucks opened up its first ASL store. So cool.

7. Disease sniffing dogs could soon be an important part of the fight against malaria and more.

8. Not that long ago, something like the GIPHY Animated Gif Film Fest would have existed only as Zoolander level parody. Confession: I spent too much time enjoying the results of the Fest’s prompt: “Can you compel an audience with an engaging story in under 18 seconds?”

9. A fascinating story of (in)human endurance, human (in)sanity, a Camel-smoking contrarian, and Courtney Dauwalter winning and losing a kind of race I can’t even begin to understand. → Ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter Takes On The World’s Most Sadistic Endurance Race

10. Today at the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918, an armistice is signed between the Allies and Germany at Compiègne, France, ending World War I. Described at the time as “the war to end all wars,” an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilians would die as a direct result of the violence and up to 100 million deaths are attributed indirectly through various genocides and the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. Though the generals on the Western Front knew the armistice was coming, the fighting continued, with more than 11,000 casualties that morning: the last British soldier killed in action had survived four years in the trenches only to die 90 minutes before the Armistice took effect; the last American would die just one minute before hostilities ceased. Despite the scale and the sheer brutality of the combat, World War I is (amongst Americans, at least) arguably a forgotten war. See also: War Is Done! The sights and sounds of the final hours of World War I & In Photos Unpublished for 100 Years, the Joy of War’s End on Armistice Day & World War 1: Harrowing pictures show France still scarred by First World War trenches & Thomas Hardy’s poem “There Was a Great Calm” & listen to the Moment the Guns Fell Silent Ending World War I.

WATCH/WITNESS

“…deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of the other person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart. And if you remember that you are helping heim or her to suffer less, then even if they say things full of wrong perception, full of bitterness, you are still capable of continuing to listen with compassion.” → Thich Nhat Hanh on Compassionate Listening.

WHAT‽

Abandoned? Post-apocalyptic? Or not…the Chongqing Metro Station in the Middle of Nowhere.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader S.: “Dude, Vulfpeck!!! I have been telling people about them for the last little while after stumbling on them in YouTube. Not normally a band I would like (I usually hate ”music school bands“) but the bass player, Joe Dart, is truly immense. You might like this one too – he’s somehow related to the band, but I haven’t quite puzzled through the genealogy yet.”

• Reader W.: “I think I see what you meant connecting the furor over Instagram poets with the article about shallow connectivity. It seems that what passes for poetry in the Instagram world is too much like what passes for intimacy in a world mediated through social platforms like Facebook and Twitter.”

• Reader G.: “your WORK resonates with me exactly.”

• Reader M.: “So many things to love in this edition! Corybantic—such an evocative word, and the Huxley quote is right on. And then there’s candy too. NY Times magazine just explored candy from many countries, including the Japanese versions of Kit Kat, and I have to say from experience that the Finnish salty, black licorice called Salmiakki is a definite obsession with the Finns. And tiny books! I have two favorites that I have had for years: Thoreau’s Walden and a book of Georgia O’Keefe prints.”

• Reader B.: “Much applause from this Katexic corybant!”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

She marked her place with a yarrow stem and closed the book and set it in her lap. She wondered if literature might lose some of its interest when she reached an age or state of mind where her life was set on such a sure course that the things she read might stop seeming so powerfully like alternate directions for her being.

—Charles Frazier
—from Cold Mountain (1997)

WORD(S)

corybantic /KOR-ə-BAN-tik/. adjective. Wildly excited; frenzied. Derived from Corybant, a priest of Cybele, Greek (and Phrygia’s only known) Goddess of fertility and nature, whose worship included loud music and riotous dancing. Celebrants, then and now, literally and figuratively, are sometimes called corybants or corybantes.

“That most popular and influential of all recent inventions, the radio, is nothing but a conduit through which pre-fabricated din can flow into our homes. And this din goes far deeper, of course, than the ear-drums. It penetrates the mind, filling it with a babel of distractions—news items, mutually irrelevant bits of information, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, continually repeated doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but merely create a craving for daily or even hourly emotional enemas.” (Aldous Huxley)

“They filled the cavernous depths of the dining room from end to end, behaving as though they were extras in one of those continental films his wife pretended to love, eating with such abandon, gesturing so exuberantly, rising from the tables to dance with such corybantic fervour that he felt half dead.” (Beryl Bainbridge)

“I was able to discern a hefty blonde, no doubt Annie herself, clad in a yellow track-suit, leaping up and down and shouting commands in time to the music. The corybants she commanded were mainly young, but among them I spotted a breathless Ballard, pale and eager, leaping as best he could, clad in a bright purple track-suit and elaborately constructed plimsolls…” (John Mortimer)

“But in that moment of solitude prosaic, earthbound Mr. Pinfold had been one with hashish-eaters and Corybantes and Californian gurus, high on the back-stairs of mysticism. His mood on the road to Cairo was barely less ecstatic.” (Evelyn Waugh)

WEB

1. Interesting that the two most important sources in this article give largely contradictory advice. But I guess we who journal do so for all kinds of reasons…depending on the person, the day, the mood… → What’s All This About Journaling?

2. Continuing down the candy trail. → In Japan, the Kit Kat Isn’t Just a Chocolate. It’s an Obsession.

3. Faithful Reader B. shared this story with the click-baity (for a certain set that includes me) title How Instagram Saved Poetry. I thought about it and was equally intrigued and troubled. It reminded me of another recent article on the Instagram poetry phenomenon, Instagram Poetry Is A Huckster’s Paradise. I thought about that and was sad, but I wasn’t sure what I was sad about. Stephen Marche’s The Crisis of Intimacy in the Age of Digital Connectivity started to put it all together for me, and it’s about a lot more than poetry, writing or even art.

4. “Day and night he wrote visas. He issued as many visas in a day as would normally be issued in a month. His wife, Yukiko, massaged his hands at night, aching from the constant effort. When Japan finally closed down the embassy in September 1940, he took the stationery with him and continued to write visas that had no legal standing but worked because of the seal of the government and his name.” → The Japanese Man Who Saved 6,000 Jews With His Handwriting

5. On the little-known novel Hunter, by the author of The Turner Diaries, and its role in extremist actions. Written in 1995 but even more relevant today. → After the Massacre

6. Great news, word nerds! → Green’s (Amazing) Dictionary of Slang will soon be free.

7. Tiny Books Fit in One Hand. Will They Change the Way We Read?

8. For your eyeballs: Simon Schubert’s “Paperwork” creased paper art & Joe Reginella’s Memorial Statues Mark[ing] Fictional Disasters in NYC & 2018 Astronomy Photographer of the Year winners

9. For your earholes: the oldest surviving Duke Ellington radio broadcast, known only to a small handful of connoisseurs and never made available to the public (includes the story of the recording and solid musical notes and links) & ► The Hot 8 Brass Band covers Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”

10. Today in 2008, Barack Obama becomes the first person of African-American (or bi-racial) descent to be elected President of the United States.

WATCH/WITNESS

Spotify dropped ► “Animal Spirits” into my Discover Weekly list this week (ironically, it turns out) and it brought me some (vaguely Jackson 5 style) joy. Tune in and turn it up. Some other Vulfpeck favorites: ► “Dean Town” (that bass player crushes it!) & ► “Cory Wong” with its clever “script-over” style. They are just so fun to watch and listen to.

WHAT‽

“Let’s ► explore how cinematographers and directors create shapes inside the frame to add visual storytelling to their films.” Includes examples from Sleeping Beauty, Psycho, Fargo, The Graduate and dozens more.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Rupi Kaur and the Instapoets previously in Katexic: Meet Rupi Kaur, Queen of the ‘Instapoets’ & Why Rupi Kaur and Her Peers Are the Most Popular Poets in the World & On Instafame & Reading Rupi Kaur

• Reader M.: “Add this one to your sex robot files: World’s first sex robot resort lets customers pay to take bots’ ‘virginity’”

• Reader E.: “Everyone is dancing with, or recoiling from, the General Dynamics robots. But this little pogo-stick-style-hopping (monopedal) example is just as mesmerizing in its own way.”

• Reader A.: “Interested in the mention of Pride and Prejudice in the books started, but not finished. I remember avoiding Austen for much of my Bachelor of Arts, until I came to my senses and took a class with John Wiltshire which involved reading all her novels. ¶ I feel that their is a bit of myth and (mis)judgement around Austen’s work. One of the best things I did, although I would rather reread Mansfield Park or Emma than Pride and Prejudice. ¶ On another text, I started reading Game of Thrones. Then I watched the show and gave up going back.”

• Reader G.: “I was a little surprised by the list of books people were giving up on. I consider Nathaniel Hawthorne’s books to be the ones I remember giving up on. But I enjoyed most of the Game of Thrones series, although having it also be a TV show means that I watched some and read some and have yet to complete either version all the way through, it is a very time consuming series and pushed my boundaries of how much violence I could stomach. ¶ But Pride and Prejudice is delightful as all her books are. ¶ I also loved all of Orwell’s books and found them easy reads. ¶ I remember starting the Lord of the Rings trilogy several times in high school before I finally got through it all the way. ¶ Overall I found the list surprising based on my own experience.”

• Reader B.: “1. ‘wondering if catarrh can ever be cathartic’ - man, I do love Ashbery. ¶ 2. Interesting how the top two failed reading books each represent a jump from other media. ¶ 3. For Q, I agree that it’s good storytelling (hey, the author should read a book on this…), but I’m still struck by the weird echo with this one.”

And then they added another Katexic story, for which I am so grateful!

The old man rested on the balcony. Gazing over the zinc balustrade he beheld a vast sky gently studded with delicate clouds. A breeze passes over the pine and birch woods lining the horizon. Below them the ancient lake, dotted with swimmers and boats, glimmered in the afternoon light.

He grimaced and sighed. His few remaining strands of hair trembled across his chilly scalp. The melancholy was unshakeable. Every shred of energy and beauty beyond the balcony just pinned his gloom more tightly to his awareness. He clenched both fists with desolate fury, then let them sag in glum futility. He closed his eyes.

The sun gradually declined to the horizon, cloud by cloud. The old man heard the breeze pick up into a wind that chilled his weary frame. Eyes still closed, he could just make out the sounds of people retreating from the waters below. He imagined the sky darkening in the meticulous fashion it always displayed this time of year, ruthlessly. Again he sighed, expecting the immediate triumph of night.

Behind him a doorknob jolted, then a door crashed open against drywall. “Mr. Jacoby!” came a cry from within.

The old man twitched his hands on the chair, spastically half-spinning it around on the balcony’s time-worn marble. “Calhoun,” he snarled. “I told you never, ever to interrupt my afternoon meditation. You know this is a time sacred to my peace of mind - a tranquillity all too easily mangled by intrusion!”

Panting, the young man skidded on the dark room’s Moroccan rug. “I know, ah, sir. But this, this -”

“Yes?”

“…it’s from L.”

The old man froze in mid-rage. His eyes expanded, brows trembling. His left hand seemed to drift upwards on its own power, while his right clutched the chair’s leather handle. It couldn’t be, he assured himself. It couldn’t be L., of all things. Not since the disaster. Especially not since the unending pit on the lunar surface, the plague of catarrh dreams, the demolition of Trump Tower, and the discovery of the disturbingly human-like Antarctic songbird clan. This isn’t L.’s time, he assured himself, and certainly not the hour of K., and yet found a musical hum surfacing from his withered throat. I cannot permit such joy. It is too much for an age that does not - that can not - deserve it. Yet he turned his weathered, tear-worn face to Calhoun, who waited patiently in the dusk-darkened room.

“Where” - he coughed - “where is it?” And found himself humming audibly now.

“Right here, sir.” A trembling young arm extended itself from the murk towards the old man. Upon a red-gloved hand rested a shining envelope bearing but a single word on its crisp surface. “Katexic.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

If you enjoy Katexic Clippings, I sure would appreciate you sharing the love on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and anywhere else you’d be willing to! On with the show…

WORK

XVIII

Fires
Burn in my heart.
No smoke rises.
No one knows.

—Kenneth Rexroth
—from “The Love Poems of Marichiko”

WORD(S)

catarrh /kə-TAR/. noun. An inflammation of the nose or throat; the mucus formed from such an inflammation. From Greek katarrhein (to flow down), from kata- (down) + rhein (to flow). See also catarrhal, catarrhous, and the partially derived catarrhine, used to describe the narrow space between the nostrils of some primates and humans, from kata- + rhinos (nose).

“Don’t fall into the water,” the Siren warned. “It’s a catalyst that will give you catarrh, catatonia, and catalepsy.” (Piers Anthony)

“He sort of catarrh-mumbles his ditties in a disgruntled mushmouth sorta like Robbie Robertson on Quaaludes with Dylan barfing down the back of his neck.” (Lester Bangs)

“…people resistant to balding have the same nucleic acid in their skin tissue as catarrhine monkeys, which are also immune to balding.” (Stanislaw Lem)

“…he offers his hand jabwise; i.e., thrusting it oddly forward with the thumb turned out, and introduces himself in a catarrhally confidential little bass: Dobrolyubov.” (Vladimir Nabokov)

A few hotel ghosts wander stiffly, wondering if catarrh
can ever be cathartic, and if there’s any afterlife, and if so,
whether it’s near as the next room, or the closet even…
(John Ashbery)

WEB

1. A history of “tart cards.” → Dial ‘S’ for sex

2. I’ve only read a few of these, but I can confidently say Terrance Hayes’ book belongs. → TS Eliot prize announces ‘intensely political’ shortlist

3. I’m almost sold by this making of lemonade from the dwarf lemons that are QAnon. → The Wizard of Q

4. “Our results indicate that the routinization of Twitter into news production affects news judgment” → Do journalists pay too much attention to Twitter?

5. Remember that time Donny Osmond’s needs trumped the red hot Beastie Boys? → Excerpt: Beastie Boys Book by Michael Diamond, Adam Horovitz

6. I’m not surprised by the top three. Are you? → Exclusive: Data Reveals … The Books We Most Often Try To Read But Secretly Give Up On

7. Why do these tragic, brilliant pieces of long form journalism keep finding me? → A Generation in Japan Faces a Lonely Death

8. It’s all our fault. This is why we can’t have nice things. → The world’s biggest organism is facing its end

9. The winning photos in the 2018 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition include some stunning entries. See also, zooming back out a bit, Cantor Arts Center and Stanford Libraries collaborate to make Warhol photography archives publicly available.

10. Today in 1915, the human voice is heard across the Atlantic for the first time when B. B. Webb, a radio engineer in Arlington, West Virginia, says “Hello” in a signal received by an American Telephone and Telegraph Company antenna mounted on Paris’ Eiffel Tower. The first two-way transatlantic telephone call wouldn’t be established until 1927. The first text message—the Spanish Influenza of the voice-calling world— wouldn’t be sent until 1992.

WATCH/WITNESS

► The Life of Death is the story of "the day Death fell in love with Life."

WHAT‽

Coming soon to an open plan office stable near you, Panasonic’s Human Blinders—I mean, “Blinkers” are apparently not an April Fool’s Day joke.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader L.: “Thx for this! A word I actually didn’t know, describes me…😀”

• Reader J.: "I don’t say this enough - just brilliant. A moveable feast. ¶ Thank you, Mr. Lott. […] ¶ ps - Just before I received this katexic I had just finished reading Jane Doe Ponytail in today’s NYT. Wrenching, indeed.

• Reader B.: “xenonyms! ¶ Another awesome transmission from the other side of the nebula.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

[the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls]

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also,with the church’s protestant blessings
daughters,unscented shapeless spirited)
they believe in Christ and Longfellow,both dead,
are invariably interested in so many things—
at the present writing one still finds
delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?
perhaps.   While permanent faces coyly bandy
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D
….the Cambridge ladies do not care,above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless,the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy

—E. E. Cummings
—from Selected Poems

WORD(S)

fugacious /fyoo-GAY-shəs/. adjective. Inclined to flee. Fleeting, transient, evanescent. In botany, things that last for a short time, usually petals or leaves. From Latin fugere (flee).

"As I climbed the Cliffs, when I jarred the foliage, I perceived an exquisite perfume which I could not trace to its source. Ah, those fugacious universal fragrances of the meadows and woods! Odors rightly mingled! (Henry David Thoreau)

“At a bus stop bench she sat him down. ‘Whatever is happening between us is fugacious,’ she told him, knowing he would understand. It was Saturday, and fugacious had been Thursday’s word.” (Vendela Vida)

“The glowing ember in the furnace, a red sun dying before my eyes, turning fugacious, turning to gas, in my memory lives on, dies each night in its beauty.” (Bill Green)

“They seem to enjoy their new-born freedom, and flutter in the March wind like tethered butterflies. Their happy day, however, is soon over; their fugacious petals shrivel in three or four days. The leaves are rush-like, ribbed, and sheathed.” (John Wood)

“You are a senseless frivoler, a fugacious gid, an infamous hoddydoddy; you are a man with the hoe with the emptiness of ages in your face; you are a brother to the ox, with all the dundering niziness of a plain, ordinary buzzard added to your shallow-brained asininity.” (John Kendrick Bangs)

WEB

1. The pictures of this fascinating event make me unaccountably nervous. → The Strangest Desert Festival In the World Makes Everyone’s Mad Max Dreams Come True [Via Reader B.]

2. “The rise of the robots has been greatly exaggerated. Whose interests does that serve?” → The Automation Charade. Pairs with: The Robots Are Coming To Las Vegas.

3. The Good Place is one of my favorite television shows. Today I learned that creator Michael Schur (also co-creator of both Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine) directed the ► video of the Decemberists’ “Calamity Song”, which is based on a section of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest…which Schur owns the film rights to.

4. I’m a fan of reading in all its many modes and guises, but it’s worth nothing that neither paper or digital are perfect. → Neither Paper Nor Digital Does Active Reading Well

5. Are almost all scientists wrong about what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? → The Nastiest Feud in Science

6. “The question of who is alive and who is dead is not new, but the answer is one that has changed historically.” → Who is Dead?. See also: 25 Death Masks of the famous and infamous

7. Keith Houston delves into the long history of emoji and what led to them. → Emoji, part 1: in the beginning & Emoji, part 2: what went before

8. Two really fine pieces of long form journalism that held me rapt this week. → From Newcastle and New Zealand to the Killing Fields of Cambodia & The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail

9. A meander for your eyes (and occasionally your taste buds). → Lauren Ko’s Geometric Pies & Dinara Kasko’s Origami Cakes & Dragon Scale Bookbinding & Sylvie Facon’s Book Spine Dresses & Inside the psychiatric hospitals, churches and fields of China – in pictures

10. Today in 1894, poet, painter and essayist Edward Estlin “E. E.” Cummings is born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Known for his experimental language and typography, many of Cummings’ poems are traditional, even formal at heart (like today’s WORK, which is a sonnet). Previous linkage: Courtesy of the Poetry Foundation, listen to Cummings read three of his poems. They also have 85 of his poems online. Thanks to the LibraryThing community, you can browse the titles in Cummings’ own library.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Fauve is a raw, powerful 16-minute film that is the cinematic equivalent of a fine short story. Stark, beautiful and terrible.

WHAT‽

At the other end of the emotional spectrum, I could watch ► Attack of the Tumbleweed on a loop for hours.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “Podcasts are still thin enough on the ground that this has become a running joke in some podcasts. Tanis, for example, has many quick scenes where the narrator patiently tries to explain to interviewees what they are. ¶ pie de grue!”

• Reader T.: “Don’t think we didn’t see you slip that interrobang in this week’s newsletter!” – Who me‽

• Reader G.: “Maybe some of the winners of the 2018 Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus awards would convince some of your podcast-skeptic friends?”

• Reader S.: "Came across this bit in Babel on xenonyms and thought your readers might like it:

Hungarian, for instance, is a xenonym of Magyar, which is the Hungarian word for the Hungarian language. In the days of the British Empire, the British were notorious for using xenonyms in favour of native place names. Hence, Mumbai was changed to Bombay and Chennai to Madras. This latter example demonstrates how xenonyms can be used to subjugate a native language.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

The Gate

I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter this world

would be the space my brother’s body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man

but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I’d say, What?

And he’d say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I’d say, What?

And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.

—Marie Howe
—from What the Living Do

WORD(S)

pedigree /PED-i-gree/. noun. A line of descent, most often of a purebred animal, or the document describing it. A genealogical table. A derivation or background. From Old French pie de grue (literally “crane’s foot,” referring to the appearance of spreading lines in a genealogical chart).

“There is no tracing the connection of ancient nations, but by language; and therefore I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigree of nations.” (Samuel Johnson)

“At the time she had sneered at his Otherisms; she knew the grandees of her creed by name, had its hierarchies graven upon her heart. That particularly nasty strain of belief that was mysticism, to which she assumed he was referring when he spoke of the wasted lifetimes of the agnostic world, had nothing whatsoever to do with her own high-pedigree catechism; and appeared to her to consist mainly of the desire to explain phenomena such as spectral activity, telepathy and alien spacecraft.” (Rachel Cusk)

The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy.
(Emily Dickinson)

WEB

1. As a long-time Alaskan, I’m quite familiar with artifacts of Chinook Wawa: North America’s Nearly Forgotten Language…you might be too. See also: the usual (happy) concoction of enhancement, addition and nitpickery on the article over at Languagehat.

2. By now you’ve all heard about Banksy’s self-destructing/shredding art. I’m enjoying the clever spectacle (and assume the conspiracy was deep). Now, Banksy has released a video showing how he did it and the reaction as it happened. Pairs with: Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe.

3. There’s a lot to admire in Deborah Eisenberg’s short stories, so I was interested to learn more about her in this New York Times Magazine profile. I found myself alternately intrigued and enraged by her thinking and her off-putting, unrecognized privilege.

4. Continuing to feed my own addiction with typewriter-y links, the most recent rabbit hole opened up when I learned that Barbie typewriters had hidden cryptographic capabilities. Then I stumbled across this lavishly illustrated excerpt from Typewriters: Iconic Machines from the Golden Age of Mechanical Writing. See also: How Margaret Atwood Learned to Type && Somewhat related, this heavily-illustrated thread on “well-designed/beautiful keyboards.”

5. An interesting new (two-decades long!) project commencing → Massive trove of centuries-old undelivered mail seized by British warships going online. Thanks, Reader B.!

6. Austin Kleon is pretty much always great (life, art, writing…it all seems so straightforward when he explains it), but his recent entry about finding your way with maps—with many quirky examples—was exceptional. More for you: An Incomplete Atlas of Fantastic Maps

7. Did you know that Shockwaves from WWII bombing raids reached the edge of space‽

8. A feast for your eyes this week: John T. Unger’s life-size, hyper-detailed anatomical mosaics && Aleksey Kondratyev’s “Ice Fishers” photos && Shortlist | The Architectural Photography Awards 2018

9. I kind of can’t stop watching this ► deer accidentally re-creating the indelible—and not always in a good way—Phil Collins drum lick (and that tongue…I’m starting to think the deer knew just what it was doing).

10. Today in 1968, the Motion Picture Association of America institutes a new, parent-focused film rating system with descriptors G, M (later PG-13), R and X (later NC-17). The system, as problematic as it can be, was certainly better than the three-decades old system it replaced, the Hays Code, which was based on an evaluation of the morals of a film. Incidentally, the X rating only came to be associated with porn after it was adopted (and often augmented with a few more to make the mythical XX and XXX ratings) in the 70s by the porn industry as a kind of advertising; before then, various films had received the X rating, including A Clockwork Orange.

WATCH/WITNESS

Mesmerizing ► video of rock balancing artist Kokei Mikuni. I could watch this kind of thing for hours. See also: ► Michael Grab && Manu Topic.

WHAT!?

Tim Youd creates all kinds of art with typewriters. In performance, he retypes entire novels onto one double-layer sheet of paper with the same model typewriter used by the writer of the novel…in a location intimately connected to the novel. The resulting sheets become part of weirdly beautiful Dyptichs, the ribbons become part of his series of Ribbon Paintings, and some of the typewriters become sculptures. Related viewing: ► Youd talks about his creative process at SCAD.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader V.: “Looks like Houston might not be able to follow in Vancouver’s sex doll footsteps.”

• Reader D.: “FYI, a big batch of new words and senses of words in the OED just came out. And I’m a 30+ year old juvenile, immediately seeing ‘Bobbit’ in close proximity to ‘bone-on’!”

• Reader C.: “Probably not in response to your sharing The Eternal Life of the Instant Noodle, but the Nissin (‘Cup Noodles’ not ‘Cup o Noodles’!) company has opened a store with some noodle lovin’ merch.”

• Reader F.: “I also love podcasts and don’t understand why more of my friends don’t listen to them. Your more enlightened readers might want to add this to their pile of listening lists: The Eight Most Informative Podcast Episodes You’ll Ever Hear.”

• Reader A.: “I recently shared my podcast habits when Doug Belshaw shared his OPML file. The podcast that I think many overlook, but is worth a listen, is ABC Future Tense. It always has diverse topics incorporating a wide range of voices.”

• Reader C.: “Is The Podcast Club The New Book Club? No. I’m the only person in my circles who even knows what podcasts are.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

Thanks, Reader B. for alerting me to the WORK that gave me the WORD this week!

WORK

WORK

I suppose it is submerged memories that give to dreams their curious air of hyper-reality. But perhaps there is something else as well, something nebulous, gauze-like, through which everything one sees in a dream seems, paradoxically, much clearer. A pond becomes a lake, a breeze becomes a storm, a handful of dust is a desert, a grain of sulphur in the blood is a volcanic inferno. What manner of theatre is it, in which we are at once playwright, actor, stage manager, scene painter and audience?

---W. G. Sebald
---from Rings of Saturn (1998)

WORD(S)

exonym /EK-soh-nim/. noun. A place name or name given to a group of people by someone outside that place or group and not used by the place's inhabitants or the group themselves. For instance, Germany is an exonym for Deutschland. Often exonyms are pejorative, or come to be so---or are perceived so by the named group---such as the Romani preferring that name to (the originally Egyptian) exonym Gypsy. See also: xenonym and ethnonym.

Some commonly used exonyms (by English speakers): Moscow for Москва/Moskva, Turkey for Türkiye, India for Bharat, Prague for Praha, Lapp for Saami, and Mecca for Makkha.

WEB

1. Just your typical "inmate creates detailed golf course drawings, sends them to Golf Digest, who investigates and ultimately assists in getting his murder conviction vacated...after 27 years served" story.

2. I have to agree with Reader B., who shared this story about memory towns being built in strip malls to treat dementia and said, "What an idea..." && An earlier article about the intentions of the project.

3. Why do great white sharks migrate, en masse, from California to what appears to be an "empty, oceanic Sahara desert?" To dine at the White Shark Café, of course.

4. Relevant to me as I get ready to ghost the party that is my workplace next week → Is it the Irish Goodbye, the French Exit, or to Leave the "English Way"?

5. What if it turns out that Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong?

6. Discovery of Galileo's long-lost letter shows he edited his heretical ideas to fool the Inquisition

7. I don't have the book, but the faux-TV guide on the front page of NetGuide is good for some LOLs all by itself.

8. The Love Poems of Japan's Heian Court Were the Original Thirst Texts && A Modern History of Thirst && There's a Problem with the Term "Thirsty" That We Don't Talk About

9. This week in Weird Wikipedia: The Mariko-Aoki Phenomenon describes a very specific set of bookstore browsers. && Runner up: Jenny Haniver, the name sounds so nice...

10. Today in 1889, the Nintendo company is founded in Kyoto to produce Hanafuda cards (also known as Flower Cards). Along the way to becoming one of the largest video game companies in the world featuring Mario, Zelda and Pokémon on Game Boys and NES and Wii, the company dabbled in love hotels, taxi services, an instant rice company, and various other endeavors. The kanji phrase rendered as "Nintendo" has traditionally been translated as "leave luck to heaven" or "leave fate to heaven" but it might well (or also) mean "the temple of free hanafuda." Whatever the case, let's hope the company weathers the storm of recent comparisons involving Trump and the Mario mushrooms.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Porcelain Unicorn, Grand Prize winner of the Philips Parallel Lines 'Tell It Your Way' international competition.

WHAT!?

It's weirdly fascinating to listen to these ► imitations of languages by a non-English speaking comedian...

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader R.: "I've been going through all the newsletters I've filed away for later and I just have to say thanks for your consistently interesting and various links. I don't know how you find so many links that I'd have otherwise missed. And I, like others I bet, should've written in a long time ago!"

• Reader E.: "Listening to Young Adults and I found this absolutely freaking amazing ukulele version of The Cranberries' 'Zombie'. This maybe ten-year-old nails every bit of it!" -- Here's a "see also" link for you: 'Grace' by Lamb of God on the Hurdy Gurdy

• Reader V.: "The first two links of the week [Open Culture's list of free art and art books & the reports on trends in art attendance and reading] should be a mood elevator. Why don't I feel more optimistic?"

• Reader T.: "Dude! The Door of Perception is an endless amazing trippy rabbit-hole. Thanks (and thanks for nothing)!"

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press 'Reply' or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs  http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

For your earholes: I’ve updated the Katexic/KUAC page with more (3–7 minute) WORD audio segments, including pieces on penumbra, etymythology, omphalos, “beyond the pale” and fake/fake news.

WORK

Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.

—May Sarton
—from Journal of a Solitude (1973)

WORD(S)

aibohphobia /IY-boh-FOH-bee-yə/. noun. An irrational fear or distrust of palindromes. Etymological origin is obvious. Origin of the coinage is unclear, but the word is first found in Stan Kelly-Bootle’s Ambrose Bierce-inspired The Devil’s DP Dictionary and its successor The Computer Contradictionary. Bootle was known for his wordplay even while writing computer programming articles and textbooks…and his folk-singing career.

See also: ebohphobe and ailihphilia.

WEB

1. There’s nothing like standing in front of a piece of art, but how many will we ever have the chance to see in person? That’s why I appreciate Open Culture’s list of links to nearly two million pieces of art and more than 100,000 art books. All free, naturally.

2. The U.S. Trends in Arts Attendance and Literary Reading: 2002–2017 report is generally positive, but I am stoked by the significant increase in poetry readers. The page includes an interactive data tool and links to the raw data used to write the report.

3. New podcast! The Keepers – “stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, curators, collectors and historians. Keepers of the culture and the cultures and collections they keep.” && Old podcast (and one of my favorites) returns! – Ear Hustle – “stories of life inside prison, shared and produced by those living it.” || See also: Podstand, where you can “browse people’s podcast subscriptions, and share your own.”

4. A collaboration between Longreads and Oregon Public Broadcasting, Bundyville is a beautifully produced series about the infamous ranching family that combines longform articles and audio/podcasts.

5. Of his hard-to-describe but endlessly-browsable site The Door of Perception, Ben Roth writes: “[it] is an ever-growing compilation of things that talk to me on a deep level. Passing on that feeling of resonance is a way of caring. I wanna take you with me on a path towards the light of consciousness.” An incredible collection of sometimes trippy, often mind-bending, usually enlightening stuff.

6. “The US prison system is broken. It sucks up billions of dollars each year and destroys lives. Could a Thai princess and an accidental criminal justice reform activist in the Pacific Northwest have the answers?” → Stripped: The Search for Human Rights in US Women’s Prisons || See also: in The Conversation: quite a story of art behind bars—and survival—in an increasingly perverted penal system.

7. In the (often maddening) Blind Spots, “ favorite artists” listen to famous albums they’ve never heard before. It would be be better if the sides were a bit less lopsided as far as accomplishments (so far) go, but still mostly fun.

8. This week in radically different photography sites → Irenaeus Herok’s aerial shifting sands photos! && The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are open for your votes (previously: CWPA galleries).

9. Just for funsies → Smash Mouth’s “All Star” translated to Aramaic and back into English && Funny Pub Signs

10. Today in 1620, the Mayflower sets sail from Plymouth, England, bound for the New World. The 102 passengers (including nearly forty “Separatists” who called themselves “Saints”) were intending to establish a settlement in what would come to be Virginia but instead landed near what is now Provincetown Harbor, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Establishing a settlement named Plymouth, half the colonists would die of disease in the first year, but the colony survived thanks to help from most of the local Indian tribes. In thanks, the descendants of the settlers committed multiple acts of genocide against the Native Americans on their way to creating the country that would elect Donald J. Trump as its president.

WATCH/WITNESS

“► Pauvre Pierrot (aka Poor Pete) is an 1892 French short animated film directed by Émile Reynaud. It consists of 500 individually painted images and lasts about 15 minutes. ¶ It is one of the first animated films ever made…”

WHAT!?

I thought I knew everything about ► the history of the word “OK,” but I was mistaken. Thanks, Reader S. for the nudge.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader H.: “A few years ago a novel The Hummingbird by Stephen Kiernan came out. It was about Nobua Fujita and his initial bombing run and all the subsequent journeys to America.” – Thank you for the tip! I wouldn’t have realized Kiernan’s book involved Fujita based on the description!

• Reader M.: “‘Oh, so you think you can tell, Helvetica from Ariel’? I see what you did there and I’m not sure I like it.”

• Reader C.: “Yes-or-BS is simple and fun. I’m batting way less than .1000 after getting the JOANIE McJOANFACE story right.”

• Reader K.: “That puffer fish video was disturbing. Readers might also like to watch the crazy fast and swallowing whole frogfish in action.”

• Last week we had a comment/poem…today a comment/story! Reader B.:

The miners had been at work for weeks in this sector, drilling and digging through these new, previously untapped seems. The materials were pried loose and hauled back out through the fresh shafts, into the old pits, and out, presumably, onto the surface (the miners worked long shifts, and by the time they left their work, the surface was cleared, scoured of any signs of their output. They did not know who conducted this labor.)

Still they had only received trace reports of Katexic. Their most sensitive equipment, maintained with exquisite attention, indicated that a vein or even a seam must be within this section of the mountain. All of the indicators were present: the lines of gold in the spectrum, the vowel-heavy muttering sound whose source could never be discerned precisely, warm spots plainly felt every twelve meters, and the same, sad, one-handed figure in every miner’s dream.

Frustration did not gnaw them as they gnawed at the mountain’s mesozoic roots. The miners were stolid and steadfast in their Katexic pursuit. It was going to be there. It had to be there.

One afternoon (although time was meaningless in the shafts) their devices suddenly emitted flickering lights, even those unequipped with LEDs. Davies, the new man, fell to the ground, clutching his head. The sound of laughter erupted from the rock face they were addressing, a sound terrifying yet delighfu-

TRANSMISSION ENDS

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

Thanks to Reader Z. for today's WORD and the accompanying pictures!

WORK

What doesn’t slumber under the shells of us all? One just needs courage to uncover it and be oneself. Or at least to discuss it. There isn’t enough discussion in the world.

—Cesar Pavese (translated by R. W. Flint)
—from The Beach (La Spiaggia, 1941)

WORD(S)

parablepsis /PAIR-u-BLEP-sis/. noun. In which a scribe miscopies a text due to looking to one side, or away, or simply skipping lines in the original. Also, archaically-but-aptly, “false vision.” From the Greek paráleipsis (to neglect, omit or “look askance at”), from para- (beside, parallel to) + blepsis (sight). 

An example from the Saint John’s Bible Heritage Edition currently hosted at The College of St. Scholastica:

[view larger; view image of full page]

WEB

1. “Frederick Wiseman’s film, ► Ex Libris – The New York Public Library, goes behind the scenes of one of the greatest knowledge institutions in the world…”

2. ¿ YES or B.S. ? is a simple game where you attempt to decipher fact from fiction. Apparently a related podcast is coming soon.

3. We each have to chart our own linguistic paths. Teen Vogue’s “How to Use Gender-Neutral Words” is a curious mix of the old and new (linguist Debbie Cameron thought so too) regarding one of the more difficult terrains. I don’t agree with everything in the article, but among other things I do intend to start using nibling to refer to nieces and nephews because…cute! || Related: Talk the Talk’s episode on ► Kinship Terms, which get real complicated real fast.

4. Speaking of complex issues of language, discussion of “singular they” is all over: the OED Blog provides a brief history (only back to 1375), in the Boston Globe the always-fab Kory Stamper writes of its history and future and in Lexicon Valley John McWhorter observes that ► it’s time to embrace singular they (and that the whingeing about it is baseless).

5. Oh, so you think you can tell, Helvetica or Ariel?

6. Reader A. writes in, regarding the dangers of being a Victorian librarian: “I’d suggest that working in a library remains a dangerous profession too.” Subsequent email prompted them to share another amazing related link: was Napolean poisoned by his wallpaper? || See also: Some Books Can Kill.

7. Years ago I shared how a chance opportunity to see Da Vinci’s Codex Leicester was an epiphany for me. Now the Victoria and Albert Museum has put the first of five volumes (collectively known as Codex Forster) online. || Previously: the Codex Arundale.

8. In more recent, but still long overdue science news: Jocelyn Bell Burnell was robbed of the Nobel Prize; 30 years later she has won the $3,000,000 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. And she’s donating the winnings to the U.K.’s Institute of Physics.

9. This thread: i noticed there was a blank wall at mcdonald’s so i decided to make this fake poster of me and my friend. It’s now been 51 days since i hung it up.. Don’t miss some of the hilarious examples of other guerilla art in the comments.

10. Today in 1942, Japanese aviator Nobuo Fujita takes off in his submarine-based seaplane just off the coast of the Oregon/California border and flies over Brookings, Oregon on his way to dropping the first—and paired with his second attack a few weeks later, the only—enemy bombs ever to reach the continental United States. Intending to start massive fires and draw resources away from the Pacific theater, Fujita’s thermite bombs exploded but the flames fizzled due to extremely wet weather. Fujita would first visit Brookings 20 years later, where he attended peace ceremonies and presented the city with a 400-year-old samurai sword—a family heirloom—which he planned to use to commit ritual suicide if the people were still angry. Instead he was greeted generously and would visit multiple times, donating money for books for children and planting trees that are now part of a historic trail leading to a historical site where the bombs landed.

WATCH/WITNESS

I’ve mentioned Jana Dambrogio’s “letterlocking” site and video channel here before, but it’s worth re-visiting because both are packed with new information and videos on letter folds, real and fictional, from the beautiful “butterfly lock” used by Mary Queen of Scots to send her last letter—just six hours before her execution—to a secure method used by Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I’s spymaster to Dumbledore’s will as seen in the film Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Part 1.

WHAT!?

Part of the first Antarctic Biennale, “the Arriba! installation by Paul Rosero Contreras was conceived as a kind of tropical time capsule, taking us back 50 million years to when Antarctica itself had a temperate climate.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M.: “I enjoy your newsletter so much! ¶ I wanted to suggest this […] Interesting method of presenting data about gender in the top 100 AU picture books.” – Thank you! That is a fascinating presentation…of some sometimes sad facts.

• Reader T: “I may be developing an obsession with the ukulele player [in Young Adults].”

• Reader B: “Another sapid banquet from Katexic Kitchen. Thank you.”

• Reader G. with a comment/poem:

I don’t know why exactly
maybe because it sounded so true
but your “work” made me cry a little.
Because when all is said and done,
the hardest thing of all is just to keep going,
every day, day after day after day.
Especially when there is no courageous battle
to be fought, no occasion
in particular to rise to.
Nothing, but that ruthless,
endless grind, that drags
us down and kills us
in small pieces,
that disappear
unnoticed, unremarked into the abyss
of yesterdays.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

Courage doesn’t always roar.

Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, (whispering), “I will try again tomorrow.”

—Mary Anne Radmacher
—from a 1985 poem

WORD(S)

sapid /SA-pid/. adjective. Having a pleasant, decided/distinct taste (of food). Engaging and stimulating (of writing). The opposite of insipid. From Latin sapidus, from sapere (to taste). See also: saporous, ambrosial, delectable, scrumptious and gustie.

“Precious culinary overtones were interspersed between the crude treble and bass of sour and sweet, of sapid and vapid, and the still barbaric medieval gustatory nerves speedily found it impossible to dispense with these exotic flavourings.” (Stefan Zweig)

“I suppose that when the sapid and slippery morsel [the oyster]—which is gone like a flash of gustatory summer lightning—glides along the palate, few people imagine that they are swallowing a piece of machinery (and going machinery too) greatly more complicated than a watch.” (Thomas Huxley)

“He makes two leaves of fat to grow where but one grew before, lessens the sum of gastric pangs and dorsal chills. All this is something, certainly, but it generates no warm and elevated sentiments and does nothing in mitigation of the poor’s animosity to the rich. Organized charity is a sapid and savorless thing; its place among moral agencies is no higher than that of root beer.” (Ambrose Bierce)

WEB

1. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night—nor the Black Hand or the Society of the Banana—could stop a postal work from bringing the Mafia to justice.

2. I find it hard to read without a pen in hand and am fascinated by marginalia of all kinds. What a treat to see Oliver Sacks’ conversations with his books. See also, the New York Times article on the subject.

3. There are quite a few of these 25 Scariest Fast Food Dishes of All Time that I would totally eat.

4. Great segment on Twitch, the “unedited, real, reality TV.” More—and more interesting than—“just those crazy kids”. || Pairs with Ice Poseidon’s Lucrative, Stressful Life as a Live Streamer

5. I can (barely, arguably) command one language…hyperpolyglots, who speak eleven or more are practically alien, though hopefully some of the lessons can penetrate even my thick skull. (Sorry for another potentially paywalled New Yorker link…try a private/incognito window in your browser).

6. Regardless of different opinions about what the solutions might be, this Vox piece on mass shootings in America is extremely well presented…and terrifying.

7. Conserve the Sound is an “online museum for vanishing and endangered sounds. The sound of a dial telephone, a walkman, a analog typewriter, a pay phone, a 56k modem, a nuclear power plant or even a cell phone keypad are partially already gone or are about to disappear from our daily life. ¶ Accompanying the archive people are interviewed and give an insight in to the world of disappearing sounds.” || Pairs with Phantom Islands, a “sonic atlas” that “charts the sounds of a number of historical phantom islands.”

8. The phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is obviously nonsense…so where did it come from and why is it still used?

9. Wayne Levin’s photos of schools of fish!

10. Today in 1914, folk singer and composer Tom Glazer is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Glazer would write songs later performed by Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Frank Sinatra and many others, but he is best remembered for his popularizing (authorship of the lyrics is unclear) of the children’s song “► On Top of Spaghetti,” sung to the tune of the Appalachian folk song “On Top of Old Smoky.”

WATCH/WITNESS

Young Adults—three Russian musicians in a kitchen, outfitted with a trombone, a ukulele and a smooth voice—► cover “Can’t Stop” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and make me so happy. The trio has other great covers as well, such as ► Of Monster and Men’s “Little Talks” and the once-omnipresent ► “Pumped Up Kicks.” I might be developing an obsession with the trombone player. || Related find while burrowing into the rabbit hole of surprisingly good cover songs: ► Daniela Andrade covers the Gorillaz “Feel Good Inc.,” teaching listeners that a) even Damon Albarn songs like this have ravishing melodies, and b) we’ll never hear lyrics with the words “ass crack” in them sung more beautifully.

WHAT!?

“► The Crayon,” by eight-year-old playwright Hana Morshedi, performed by Stephanie Beatriz, Jack Black, Max Greenfield, Judy Greer, Keegan-Michael Key, Tom Lennon, Leslie Mann, Jason Mantzoukas, & Jason and Randy Sklar.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader K.: “re: WORD, spolia are building materials taken from existing structures by residents or pillagers and used to build new structures elsewhere. It’s why we’ll sometimes find an inscription in a language thousands of miles from home carved into in some ancient cornerstone.” – Awesome! The Wikipedia article has some great pictures and links (plus any article with a “See also: palimpsests” has to be good).

• Reader M.: “Turns out I’m following a trail of disillusionment with Steven Pinker’s work. This thread dismantling part of Better Angels is just one of many reasons why.” — Ouch. I am beginning to wonder if any of Pinker’s work is even fractionally as good as I thought it was.

• Reader B.: "Ah, another lovely shipment from the Katexic mines. ¶ Indexes: JG Ballard wrote a short story as an index, which is a lot of fun. Just called “The Index,” and it’s the index of a biography of a man who’s the 20th century’s great hero – who then vanishes…

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

The anthropologists are busy, indeed, and ready to transport us back into the savage forest where all human things, the Greek things, too, had their beginnings; but the seed never explains the flower.

—Edith Hamilton
—from The Greek Way (1930)

WORD(S)

spoliate. verb. To plunder, rob or deprive. Legally, altering a document and making it invalid. In wartime, the authorized seizure of neutral vessels. A less common form of despoil. From Latin spolium (spoil).

“…give me back my spoliated rights – restore me to my violated franchises – give me back my liberty, or – I pause upon the brink of the alternative to which I had hurried, and, receding from it, leave it to you to complete the sentence.” (Richard Lalor Sheil)

“…the wood seemed to Alan to have a tender bruised beauty, spring renewing it only for further spoliation, and he knew the authors were right when they wrote of what love does, of how it transforms and glorifies and takes the scales from the eye of the beholder.” (Ruth Rendell)

“In trickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, botheration, under false pretences of all sorts, there are influences that can never come to good.” (Charles Dickens)

WEB

1. The New York Public Library debuts InstaNovels, beginning with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The NYPL says the new form is “a reimagining of Instagram Stories to provide a new platform for iconic stories.”

2. A fascinating history of the index, from the scroll to the codex and from stichometric to alphabetic. → INDEX: A Brief History

3. Extraordinary…what are the odds of this kind of discovery? → Mum’s a Neanderthal, Dad’s a Denisovan: First discovery of an ancient-human hybrid

4. Can You Rewire Your Brain? Maybe. (It’s Tricky. Be Careful.)

5. Of course the art isn’t the point, but it’s still pretty amazing. → Re-creating the “Mona Lisa” using light-stimulation and bacteria

6. The racist language of space exploration

7. Ministry of Cinema says their mission is to “spread our love of cinema however we can.” And they do a fine job of it with their chock-full video channel.

8. Apparently, Being a Victorian Librarian Was Oh-So-Dangerous. Not least because Melvil Dewey was a serial sexual harasser.

9. Good Show Sir features only “the worst Sci-fi/Fantasy book covers.” Jump right into the gallery.

10. Today, and every Sunday nearest August 26, is International Go Topless Day. Founded in 2007 by Claude Vorilhon (AKA Rael, founder of the UFO religion Raelanism), Go Topless Day fights for a specific equality, that “women should have the same constitutional right or men should also be forced to wear something that hides their chests,” and encourages women to go topless and men to wear brassieres or bikinis. This year, Go Topless Day serendipitously falls exactly on Women’s Equality Day.

WATCH/WITNESS

It’s Okay That It’s Not Okay is Christina Tran’s powerful, ongoing “comic memoir about making the decision to take a sabbatical – and why it’s so hard to make time to slow down and feel the things we need to feel.” Updated weekly.

WHAT!?

► A puffer fish will eat all your nightmares

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader T.: “Re: And Vinyly—see also LifeGem and Holy Smoke.”

• Reader B.: “Another fine haul of words and links in the Katexic hold. Thank you!”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs  http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

If you see something (you like), say something (about Katexic Clippings)!

WORK

“The Purist”

I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist,
Trustees exclaimed, “He never bungles!”
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
“You mean,” he said, “a crocodile.”

—Ogden Nash
—from The Selected Verse of Ogden Nash (1945)

WORD(S)

etiolated /EE-dee-ə-lay-təd/. adjective. Whitened due to lack of sunlight. Figuratively, weakened and/or stunted and/or having a pale, sickly appearance. From French étioler (to become pale, to grow into stubble). From éteule (stubble). From Latin stipula (a stalk or straw).

“They ate and drank but were silent. The six candles in their branched entwined stems seemed to burn less brightly than on their first evening so that their features, half shadowed, were sharpened into caricatures of their daytime selves. Pale, etiolated hands reached out to the fruit bowl, to furred and flushed peaches, the curved shininess of bananas, apples burnished so that they looked as artificial as Ambrose’s candlelit skin.” (P. D. James)

“The one she hated most was Williams. He was a sort of defective, not bad enough to be so classed. He could read with fluency, and had plenty of cunning intelligence. But he could not keep still. And he had a kind of sickness very repulsive to a sensitive girl, something cunning and etiolated and degenerate.” (D. H. Lawrence)

“Stained and frayed, these three hung together without speaking, Woodward very tall, giving the impression of an etiolated newt, Whipp small, his glasses repaired with Sellotape, Woolmer-Mills for ever launching himself back and forth on the balls of his feet.” (William Trevor)

WEB

1. A powerful story providing one small entry point into an amazing and amazingly different world. → Raising a DeafBlind Baby

2. Turns out our tears are more artistic than even the most dramatic amongst us might have thought. → Rose Lynn Fisher’s microscopic photography, the Topography of Tears. || Earlier: Fisher’s stunning BEEyond series of microscopic photos of bees.

3. From micro- to macro-photography… → The Turn-of-the-Century Pigeons That Photographed Earth from Above

4. This might make me start not only believing that the “millennials” label means something, but also that I like them. Alas, it is but a dream. → How Millennials Killed Mayonnaise || See also: You Can Now Watch A Livestream Of This Mouldy Fatberg 24/7 || And while I’m just free-associating: Animal fat on ancient pottery reveals a nearly catastrophic period of human prehistory

5. A really well-written article about the trying dynamics of civility and dialogue in a small town characterized by both a liberal arts college and a philanthropic family with deep roots in the region…and the NRA. → How Civil Must America Be?

6. Via Reader B., who says, “my favorite part of this was the Russian AI.” → The Quantified Heart

7. Love this: students author a handbook for teachers (and it includes a lot more than just the fascinating “Philly Slang” section). → Jawn? Ocky? Philly kids school teachers with new handbook

8. Last week it was forensic linguistics…this week, food linguistics. → The Creepy Language Tricks Taco Bell Uses to Fool People Into Eating There

9. I try to stay away from links to Atlas Obscura, which all Clamorites should be reading anyway, but this was too interesting not to note. → Tattooing in the Civil War Was a Hedge Against Anonymous Death

10. MOAR TWITTERZ! → First, from Reader A., Deleted Wiki Titles (@DeletedWiki) posts “actual article titles that have been removed from Wikipedia for various reasons.” On screen right now: Oscillating penguin of ultimate seduction – Five clicks to jesus – Category: Farts in literature – I DONT NO HOW TO MAKE A WIKERPEDIA ATRICLE. || Second, a thread of “metaphorical invective” that made me literally LOL and has that old-school-twitter vibe or, in the words of Reader S., who shared the link, a “community feel.” || And finally, the sometimes fascinating examples of real-time text-to-image generation in this thread.

11. Today in 1902, Ogden Nash, perhaps the finest light verse poet ever (in the English language, anyway), is born in Rye, New York. Perhaps most famous for his 1931 poem “Candy / Is Dandy / But Liquor / Is Quicker” (updated in 1968 with the additional line “Pot is not”), Nash composed over 500 pieces, may of which used unexpected rhyme schemes, twists-of-words and turns-of-phrase that word nerds in the Clamor should appreciate. “Further Reflections on Parsley,” the first Ogden Nash poem I read, when I was not yet ten, I still remember completely: “Parsley / Is gharsely.” See also: ► Ogden Nash recites ‘Oh, Please Don’t Get Up!’ and ► Common Cold by Ogden Nash (read by Tom O’Bedlam).

WATCH/WITNESS

► What if English Were Phonetically Consistent? The result sounds kind of like Finnish to me. I’m amazed the narrator was able to pull this off. Also, Shakespearean language loses all of its verve when rendered “consistent” in this way.

WHAT!?

“With their basic package they will take your actual cremated ashes and press them into 30 discs, each with 24 total minutes of audio (12 minutes on each side). You have to supply the sound, so you can record something original like a message or have them use a favorite song, but the discs come with standard artwork and labels that include your name, date of birth, and date of death.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader T.: “In honor of this week’s theme, ‘Wow.’”

• Reader M.: “Kya bol raha hai?! (What are you saying?!) I’m a hindi and english speaking Indian, and I’ve never chatted with anyone using ‘ek number’. I wonder which part of India it comes from…”

• Reader A.: "Thank you for another great start to my Monday. ¶ A while back you shared The Disconnect. I really enjoyed it. They have a new issue out now. Inside, there is an interview about the gamification of social media that is well-thought-out and not alarmist. I recommend it. – Great article! Jurgenson writes, “However far we go back, we’ll find this same conversation. Because the world feeling inauthentic and post-truth and more technical than natural is the state of modernity. We just constantly call each new thing fake in a futile attempt to solve the modern problem of not grasping the real and the true.” Indeed.

• Reader B.: “Another glorious Katexic! ¶ Fore-edge painting [See 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]: the used bookshop I used to work in had a small collection of these. I loved presenting them. Such a hidden gem within the book. What a fine intrusion of painting. ¶ That Nation poem: I admire your diving into it, but I’ve only found it to be a rabbit hole. I keep running into limitations of time as well as ideologies.”

• Reader J.: “I passed along the Daily Mail forensics article to my niece who’s fascinated with blood splatter, etc. I also sent her this Irish Times article on the ‘Commision of Inquiry’ into the supposed complicity of Charles Stewart Parnell in the assassinations of Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke. I first heard of this in Finnegans Wake, but I’m not going to dig back through that to find the reference–there’s only so much time in one person’s world.” – Interesting! The omnipresent Wikipedia says of this connection in Finnegans Wake:

“…notable real-life Irish figures are alluded to throughout the text. For example, HCE is often identified with Charles Stewart Parnell, and Shem’s attack on his father in this way mirrors the attempt of forger Richard Pigott to incriminate Parnell in the Phoenix Park Murders of 1882 by means of false letters. But, given the flexibility of allusion in Finnegans Wake HCE assumes the character of Pigott as well, for just as HCE betrays himself to the cad, Pigott betrayed himself at the inquiry into admitting the forgery by his spelling of the word ‘hesitancy’ as ‘hesitency’; and this misspelling appears frequently in the Wake.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

Happy Palindrome Week!

WORK

…he began to read, to start with, the stories that dealt with magic, and then the others; and those he liked he read again and again. He could think of nothing else. He forgot the life about him. He had to be called two or three times before he would come to his dinner. Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.

—W. Somerset Maugham
—from Of Human Bondage

WORD(S)

sclerotic /SKLəR-aw-tik/. adjective. Of or related to the sclera (tough white outer layer) of the eye. Characterized by hardening and/or thickening of the cell walls. Figuratively: hard, unmoving, unchanging. From Greek sklēros (hard).

“Always this problem of re-entry. How the strands of duplicity tightened, like the veins on the surface of a sclerotic soul.” (Martin Amis)

“…with fine features and a Byzantine profile; deep sad eyes, set at a curious and touching angle to the line of the nose; the expression of a statue, all statues, eyes looking gently upward from the inclined head, revealing a sclerotic pattern of unhappiness and yearning regret, endlessly repeated…” (J.M.G. Le Clézio)

“The two women had dust smeared on the backs of their skirts; one of them wore a brooch with its stone missing. The short man looked like a squashed head on a sack of clothes. The tall one had magnanimous eyes, a sclerotic nose, and a liver-spotted white head.” (Mary Gaitskill)

WEB

1. A bit of a meander here, but bear with me. First, Steven Pinker says something about the “n-word” that sounds reasonable but is pretty stupid, backing himself up with something even more stupid (that people somehow take seriously). Corey, AKA TiltedListener, does a fine job dismantling the latter sentence-by-sentence and Taylor Jones, a linguist cited in the article, demolishes whatever credibility is left. Where all this ultimately led me was to some writing about “ableist language”, which poses an ongoing challenge in my own speech. Particularly the word “crazy,” which, for some reason, I battle with myself about changing. || See also, John McWhorter’s interesting take on the poem that started the whole thing.

2. “Shocking” is right. → The Untold Story of Otto Warmbier, American Hostage

3. Forensic linguist reveals how murderer was snared sending texts because of commas || See also: Words on Trial and What is Forensic Linguistics?

4. Whither Clark Bars, Mary Janes, Thin Mints and the eponymous half-chalk-dust half-sugar wafers? → Necco shuts down abruptly, is sold

5. Fore-edge painting! → A Hidden Art Form You’ll Flip For (fore-edge painting) || Fore-Edge Paintings at the Lilly Library || Fore Edge Painting - An Introduction | On the Edge. Previously: The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd.

6. “Kurt Vonnegut compared the role of the artist in society to that of the canary in the mines: Both alert us to the presence of danger. The reading brain is the canary in our minds. We would be the worst of fools to ignore what it has to teach us.” → Screen Time Is Changing Our Brain Circuitry || Pairs well with Why ‘getting lost in a book’ is so good for you, according to science.

7. Katexic Clamorites know one of my favorite topics is words we mispronounce(d) because we learned them by reading. Daniel Midgley, host of the fab Talk the Talk podcast, proposes calling them “calliopes” (rhyming with ropes), “persephones” (rhyming with telephones), or “booklish.” Then he and the Speakeasy hosts share many great examples. → Speakeasy: accidental mispronunciations

8. I Say LOL, You Say Ek Number: How People Around The World Laugh Online

9. This week in visuals and visual art: The Daring Golden Bridge || Visarute Angkatavanich’s amazing betta fish photos || Dennis Isip - The Neon Archives

10. Today in 1927, Wings, the only silent film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture (at the first annual award ceremony in 1929), premieres at the Criterion Theater in New York City. Starring famed flapper Clara Bow, Wings not only set the standard for aviation films thanks to the technical achievement of its air-combat scenes, but was also the first movie to show two men kissing and among the first wide-release films to show nudity. This was perhaps in keeping with the debauchery around the set in San Antonio (where The Rough Riders was simultaneously being filmed), which director William Wellman would later describe as the “Armageddon of a magnificent sexual Donnybrook.” Remastered by Paramount in 2012, you can watch ► clips of wings on YouTube and, naturally, pay to see the rest.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Wild Life tells “the story of a dapper young remittance man, sent from England to Alberta to attempt ranching in 1909. However, his affection for badminton, bird watching and liquor leaves him little time for wrangling cattle. It soon becomes clear that nothing in his refined upbringing has prepared him for the harsh conditions of the New World. A film about the beauty of the prairie, the pangs of homesickness and the folly of living dangerously out of context.”

WHAT!?

I’d eat that. → ► Watermelon Smoked to Look Like Meat.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “That Chang-rae Lee quote is dizzying to think of. Buddhist? Quietist? ¶ Where’s the Powers quote from? A fine snapshot of early punk. ¶ PS: another barge floated down the wild river flowing out of Katexia, freighted with delights. The crowd surged the piers, every member demanding more sweetness.” — Thank you! The Powers quote is from Orfeo!

• Reader M.: “Who would have thought photos of coin-operated laundries could be as mesmerizing as watching laundry tumbling in the dryer?”

• Reader N.: “All the talk of ‘othering’ and ‘privileging’ in our speech and writing wears me down. But the article about italicizing non-English words in English texts hasn’t been so easily dismissed.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

For if there is ever a moment when we are most vulnerable, it’s when we’re closest to the idea of the attained desire, and thus farthest from ourselves, which is when we’ll tread through any flame.

—Chang-rae Lee
—from On Such a Full Sea

WORD(S)

cantillate /KAN-tə-layt/. noun or verb. To recite or chant musically, usually a religious text. From Latin antillāre (to sing softly), from cantāre (to sing). See also: cantor and cantata.

When one has lived a long time alone,
and the hermit thrush calls and there is an answer,
and the bullfrog head half out of water utters
the cantillations he sang in his first spring…
(Galway Kinnell)

“What would that strange man, the trope—cantillation—teacher, have said to that? The trope teacher! Why have I suddenly recalled the trope teacher? A quickening beat of the heart in the swiftly gathering clouds of sleep.” (Chaim Potok)

“Punk had blown the top of pop’s skull off, and downtown concert music was on high alert. The scene was stripping down—postminimal, pulsed, machinic. The music grew a skin of brushed steel and smoky glass. It sounded to Els almost nostalgic, like a holy cantillation for a city slipping down into the East River ooze.” (Richard Powers)

WEB

1. “String is far more important than the wheel in the pantheon of inventions.” → The Long, Knotty, World-Spanning Story of String

2. I’d never really thought about this…and now I can’t stop thinking about it. → Bilingual Authors are Challenging the Practice of Italicizing Non-English Words

3. The language at the end of the Earth || Pairs with: Why no-one speaks Indonesia’s language

4. Coin-Op Eye Candy → coinop_london

5. “With the aid of a Georgetown law student, Genevieve Bentz, he [John Mikhail] embarked on a lexicological odyssey into dozens of long-forgotten dictionaries, published over a 200-year period before 1806, 40 regular dictionaries and 10 legal dictionaries” → Trump’s ‘emoluments’ battle: How a scholar’s search of 200 years of dictionaries helped win a historic ruling

6. I’m unsure whether sharing this is the right thing to do. It is definitely challenging to see. → Willoughby Wallace Hooper: Photographer of Death

7. Sometimes I read about physics and math that I barely (to be generous) understand. But still…octonions? → The Peculiar Math That Could Underlie the Laws of Nature

8. I want to be there. → Ye Oldest Public Library in the English Speaking World

9. Wikipedia page of the week: an internationally published Siamese cat. → F. D. C. Willard

10. Today in 1966, singer, songwriter, painter and future Nobel Prize in Literature winner Robert Allen Zimmerman—better known as Bob Dylan—crashes his motorcycle near Woodstock, New York. Or does he? In any case, Dylan didn’t perform publicly for years and took the opportunity to both reshape his image and record some powerful songs that would emerge years later on The Basement Tapes.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Printed Rainbow

WHAT!?

A 1970s Finnish TV cover of “YMCA” — need I say more?

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M.: “Hehehe I knew cupidity and the other three mentioned. In exactly the context of word meanings that surprise you.”

• Reader A: “I’ve been subscribing for a while and I just wanted to say thanks. Each newsletter is a perfectly balanced diet of interest, intrigue, whimsy and delight. Thank you so much for making my Inbox worth opening.”

• Another Reader A.: “Gotta love OEDILF […] But you have to love better a site with grand dreams and an ironic about page (learn about the lighthouse icon)”

• Reader J.: “The OEDILF project is a hoot—quixotic like nobody’s business and loving it. It just makes me sad that Richard Wilbur isn’t around to jump in. Could he write a limerick? I’m sure he could and did, but given what’s on hand here at Inaction Central, I can only offer one of his many ”Opposites":

The opposite of tiller? Well,
It’s when some farmer in the dell
Has grown so lazy that by now
He lacks the energy to plow.

A bowsprit also comes to mind,
Since, like a tiller, it’s a kind
Of stick, and since on sailing craft,
The bowsprit’s fore, the tiller aft.

I also think of butter, brads,
Shoe polish, cannon, shoulder pads,
Daisies, and stock exchange, and goat,
Since none of these can steer a boat.

(R.I.P. Dick Wilbur, 1921–2017)

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

Like Katexic Clippings? I’d appreciate your forwarding it to a friend!

WORK

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark

—Warsan Shire
—from “Home”

WORD(S)

cupidity /kyoo-PID-ə-tee/. noun. Despite the sensual connotation of its Latin roots, cupidity now refers to non-erotic greed, covetousness, lust, or inordinate appetite for material things. From Latin cupidus (ardent desire); from cupere (desire); maybe from Proto-Indo-European root kup-(e)i- (to tremble; to desire). File under: words that might not mean what you think they mean. See also: avarice, rapaciousness and venality.

“Tantalizing aromas: food frying in vats or simmering in huge kettles or roasting on sticks over fires. Sarah pulling me from one culinary spectacle to another in an agony of cupidity.” (Deborah Eisenberg)

“Cassandra in some crafty excitement this woman alone she elected as worthy to share with her—ever more agitated, insisting; Mop, ever so evasively placating—the girl almost hilariously angry; each, although obviously at odds, fully enjoying a tussle in cupidity.” (Mina Loy)

“Inevitably, the unknown became the focus for legends; frustrated cupidity acted as a spur to imagination…” (Evelyn Waugh)

“…this woman had a child, that was unable to walk or talk, at the age of five years, neither could it cry like other children, but made a constant, piteous, moaning sound. This exhibition of helplessness and imbecility, instead of exciting the master’s pity, stung his cupidity, and so enraged him, that he would kick the poor thing about like a foot-ball.” (Sojourner Truth)

WEB

1. The New York Times asks: Why Are Some Crows Committing Acts of Necrophilia?. A fascinating article in itself…and includes one of the best corrections ever (at the end of the article). Pairs well with podcast listening: ► HBM038: Do Crows Mourn Their Dead? and ► The Genius of Birds: Live From the Aspen Ideas Festival. Closer to (my) home and involving the greatest of corvids: Hundreds of birds seem to mourn deaths of fellow ravens.

2. BAP! BARM! COB! BLAA! → Why the UK has so many words for bread. Thanks, Reader B.!

3. The Digital Newberry collections feature more than a million “manuscripts, maps, books, photographs, artworks, & other rare & unique materials” from the famed Chicago research library. Such as my first cool find: a 1931 map of Chicago’s gangland from authentic sources.

4. Myrtis Dightman not only broke the color barrier, but became one of the best bull riders who ever lived…and then he just kept going. → The Jackie Robinson of Rodeo

5. Science says: You Should Actually Send That Thank You Note You’ve Been Meaning to Write

6. The OEDILF—pronounced /oh-DILF/—aims to create “at least one limerick for each meaning of each and every word in the English language.” Currently at about 100,000 entries but most are marvelous! → OEDILF: The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form || Via the highly-recommended A Way With Words podcast

7. Terrifying, sad and emblematic. → Alt-Right Troll To Father Killer: The Unraveling Of Lane Davis

8. Sichuan, spice and spies. → How the chili pepper got to China

9. This week in bots: Botnik’s Twilight Zone but creates eerily apt ideas for revivals of the iconic show. On Twitter, @venmodrugs culls public profiles on Venmo to highlight … umm … strange transactions … and @ThinkPieceBot creates hot take, think piece headlines that often sound much more interesting than the real thing.

10. Today in 1849, poet, translator and teacher Emma Lazarus is born in New York City. Lazarus would publish her first volume of poems and translations, to no small acclaim, at just 18, but her most enduring work was the sonnet “The New Colossus,” which is (for the time being?) inscribed on a plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, ending with the famous lines:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

WATCH/WITNESS

► Can we trace the chain of events that leads to our own birth? Is our existence just coincidence? Do little things matter?

WHAT!?

Recorded in 1987, this is ► the song of the last male Kauai ’O’o singing for a mate. The Kauai ’O’o was declared extinct in 1989. Listen also: an orchestral piece inspired by the song.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader H.: “Somehow I can imagine you and some of Katexic’s readers doing this kind of thing in their spare time. King of Dictionopolis: Why I procrastinate by compiling my own niche dictionaries.”

• Reader S.: “Do you get stats on how many people follow the links you share? Would be interesting to see ‘Katexic’s Top 10 Links for 2018’ at some point if you do. I’m always intrigued by what links call to me. It’s never immediately obvious. There is inevitably at least one per issue (and that is a high success rate in my books) if not more that I do follow, but always interested to see where what piques me does the same to others.” — Great idea! I will dig into this and do a retrospective best of previous years soon!

• Reader P.: “Interesting, as always…” — Glad to hear from you! I miss you and many others from the ol’ Café!

• Reader B.: “This is one of my favorite emissions from the Katexic nebula. ¶ Jára Cimrman! ¶ wyr_bot! ¶ Formation flying over the Alps! ¶ And a good reminder to finally start reading Murdoch. ¶ Thank you so much for this regular deluge of splendor.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen.

—Irish Murdoch
—from The Sea, The Sea

WORD(S)

iatrogenic /iy-A-tro-jen-ik/. adjective. In medicine: an illness or symptom caused by a physician’s treatment or medications. In more general use, a problem caused by the means of treating another problem but ascribed to being a natural part of the original. From Greek iatro- (pertaining to medicine or physicians) + -genic (producing, caused by).

“In healthcare, a significant percentage of illnesses are iatrogenic. In other words, they are caused by the treatment. Antibiotics may solve the problem of a current infection but also may be the cause of a future infection.” (Michael J. Gelb)

“Weber suggested they go outside and stroll down toward the river. A little nervously, Mark agreed. The brisk air worked on Mark. The longer they talked, the more adamant Mark became. It struck Weber that maybe he’d been helping the man create this illness. Iatrogenic. Collaboration between doctor and patient.” (Richard Powers)

“Those who cannot pay constitute about one-third of the population of our overcrowded and hopelessly mismanaged prisons, and the business of their trial by due process delays and overtaxes the courts beyond all reason. These are nomogenic crimes, caused by bad laws, just as iatrogenic diseases are caused by bad doctoring.” (Alan Watts)

WEB

1. The always awesome 99% Invisible podcast put out a particularly tasty episode last week on the interrobang (‽‽‽) and the octothorpe (###) || See also, two new (to me), conversational word nerd/language podcasts I’ve been enjoying lately: Lexitecture and Words for Dinner. Speaking of podcasts, how has it taken this long for something like Wilson—a podcast magazine (sadly iOS only right now)—to become a thing?

2. The Linguist Who Helps Police Catch Child Predators

3. “The Race Card Project encourages people to condense their observations and experiences about race into one sentence with just Six Words.” Some of them are extremely powerful.

4. Play the Font Memory Game for the 30% discount on a quality book…or just because it is addictive.

5. This week in Twitter: @WYR_Bot is a neural network that asks deliciously weird, sometimes surreal “would you rather” questions every three hours on Twitter. A few from recent days: “Would you rather eat your own hair or have a cat with a giant cake?” “Would you rather be able to run anywhere or have no pain?” “Would you rather be santa or climb uncontrollably??”

6. This Week in Wikipedia: the bizarre story of Jára Cimrman, “universal genius, and one of the greatest Czech playwrights, poets, composers, teachers, travellers, philosophers, inventors, detectives, mathematicians, and sportsmen of the 19th and early 20th century.” And entirely fictional.

7. This week in heists: ATMs spewing cash, jet-setting money mules, and more than a billion dollars still missing and the Con Queen of Hollywood (Thanks, Reader B.!)

8. “Such ambiguous words not only allow the speaker to avoid being pinned down but also allow the receiver to interpret the message in a way that is consistent with their preconceived notions. Obviously, the result is poor communication.” → How to communicate likelihood and probability more effectively.

9. “There’s an ambient grandiosity to it all, like fridge poetry for Roman Emperors.” → I don’t get the appeal of Jordan Peterson. This has to be the best (and most brutal; same thing) assessment of Peterson and his “thinking” I’ve been lucky enough to read.

10. Today in 1919, novelist and philosopher (Dame Jean) Irish Murdoch is born in Dublin, Ireland. Winner of the Booker and James Tait Black Memorial prizes, the Whitbread Award, and routinely listed as a top 10, 50, 100 etc novelist, Murdoch’s fiction nevertheless remains under-read, though not as criminally under-appreciated as her philosophy. Murdoch led a rather unconventional lifestyle, marrying novelist and critic John Bayley (who declared that sex was “inescapably ridiculous”) in 1956 and remaining with him, while engaging in numerous destructive affairs with men and women, until her death from Alzheimer’s—a cruel end for such a bright mind—in 1999. To learn more about Murdoch, I highly recommend Martha Nussbaum’s insightful 2001 assessment of Murdoch, the “anomalous” novelist and philosopher. Good places to start with her deeply various fictions are the Booker-prize winning The Sea, The Sea, her first novel Under the Net and the unrepentant and racy A Severed Head.

WATCH/WITNESS

“The film shows the most in-depth and visually easy-to-understand process of making type. It follows the entire process of type making from original design (showcasing Lydian by Warren Chappell) to pattern making, punch cutting, matrix making, and the use of the Benton engraving machine.” → ► Type Speaks - 1948

WHAT!?

► Formation Wingsuit Terrain Flying at the Mettlehorn in Switzerland

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader V.: “Readers might be interested in another OED appeal for reader contributions. This one is for hobby words.”

• Reader B.: “Love those British PSAs.”

• Reader S.: “your word today brought to mind another that I have been recently investigating, psychopomp a term that has come up in my preliminary investigations of ‘death doulas’ as a potential new career choice (not sure how serious I am, but am intrigued and feel like it’s a critical element missing in modern society, proper relation to death and dying.)”

• Reader K.: “That poem… Can I apply it to every single ex-boyfriend I have ever had? The ex-husband? Select family members?”

• Reader D.: “Your poem about darkness reminded me of an episode of RadioLab called Dark Side Of The Earth, specifically the part starting at 9:00 from the beginning, a wonderful and beautiful description of the darkness of space by an American astronaut, Dave Wolf, who was aboard the Mir spacecraft, the precurser of the International Space Station operated by the Russians in the 1990’s. Dave is a riveting story teller. I’ll never forget this segment of RadioLab.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

The Uses of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

—Mary Oliver
—from Thirst

WORD(S)

hierophant /HIY-ər-ə-fant/. noun. In Ancient Greece, a high priest and revealer/teacher of mysteries/duties. Now, a chief advocate or spokesperson. From Greek hiero- (sacred) + phainein (to reveal).

“To all the worlds Sanctity stands forever upon the Terran horizon, perceivable yet remote, holy and unapproachable, fully accessible only to its chosen ones: the Hierophants, the servitors, the acolytes.” (Sheri S. Tepper)

“There have been famous babes; for example, little Moses, from whose adventure in the bulrushes the Egyptian hierophants of seven centuries before doubtless derived their idle tale of the child Osiris being preserved on a floating lotus leaf.” (Ambrose Bierce)

“We had all the time in the world to do everything a beautiful night invites one to do, everything which, on a damask bedspread that was less and less of pearl and more and more of dead leaves, could elevate us to the dignity of the hierophant—I liked to call Léopoldine the hierinfanta, I was already so cultured, so spiritual…” (Amélie Nothomb; translated by Alison Anderson)

“And I am no longer a surgeon, but a hierophant who must do magic to ward off the punishment of the angry gods.” (Richard Selzer)

WEB

1. “The day Joe Howlett died dawned perfectly.” → How one man died so a whale might live

2. The Oxford English Dictionary wants to record “the words, phrases, and expressions particular to where you live or where you are from.” → Appeals: Words where you are | Oxford English Dictionary. Also, a fun Twitter hashtag to follow: #WordsWhereYouAre.

3. Are humans really blind to the gorilla on the basketball court? → Re-thinking the iconic experiment. Pairs well with re-contextualizing the “marshmallow” test and refuting, or at least harshly rebuking, the Stanford Prison Experiment.

4. Celebrating the world’s most beautiful libraries (and a new book about them). → Libraries: Where the world’s memory is stored

5. “The researchers found longevity benefits associated with nearly every level and type of coffee consumption.” Good news, assuming you feel longevity is a benefit. → Drinking Coffee May Help You Live Longer

6. Independent Voices is an open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. → Independent Voices

7. What was the best thing before sliced bread? Now you can know. → The Best Thing Before Sliced Bread - a History of Sliced Bread and Its Idiom

8. World War One Color Photos

9. Allegorical Maps of Love, Courtship, and Matrimony

10. Today in 1867, German artist, printmaker and sculptor Käthe Kollwitz is born in Königsberg, Prussia. Though apparently often dismissed by contemporary artists, this art lover finds her often dark, always emotional work—even her self-portraits, not a favorite genre—irresistible. Some of my favorite pieces include: Old Man with Noose, Woman with Dead Child, Hunger (hey, I said her work could be dark!) and Self-Portrait, Hand at the Forehead. Though she made fewer then 300 prints, there are many more at WikiArt and MoMA.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Lotte Reiniger: The genius of early animation. See also: a great article with links to many Reiniger animations.

WHAT!?

I remember public information films in the 70s as laughably boring affairs. Apparently in England they were occasionally terrifying. → Dark and Lonely Water: The Singular Terror of Public Information Films

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader S.: “The ‘below the surface’ exhibition is indeed a wonder. Not sure what made me click the link but glad I did, impressive both for the finds but as a lesson in elegant web interface too. My favourite objects I found in my exploration of the site were this buddha from the 1930s and this kosher seal (there were many) from sometime in 1700s.” — Awesome. I was intrigued by this partial porcelain angel.

• Reader M.: “The author of the insightful poem in WORK, Ricky Ray, […] has his own brand-new literary journal called Rascal. Check it out!”

• Reader B.: “Another splendid shipment from Port K.!”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

Regeneration

Rising from the wheelchair,
my legs hold me up—
two withered twigs.

I love dead wood,
the way it keeps daring
lightning to strike again.

And I love lightning,
the way it keeps reminding
the heart it’s on fire.

—Ricky Ray
—found in Fealty (2018)

WORD(S)

cincture /SEENK-chər/. noun or verb. A girdle or a belt. More generally, something that encircles or surrounds. From Latin cinctura (girdle), from cingere (to gird, surround).

“Two immense, grape-coloured clouds butted and brawled in the vault of heaven, roped in by a cincture of spine and gorge.” (Nick Cave)

“As he was telling me this I pictured her in my mind, seeing her as one of those maidens of ancient Greece, in sandals and cinctured tunic, surging forwards in ecstatic welcome for the return of some warrior god or god-like warrior.” (John Banville)

“All the nuns at the convent wore plain blouses and skirts except for Sister Edgar, who had permission from the motherhouse to fit herself out in the old things with the arcane names, the wimple, cincture and guimpe.” (Don DeLillo)

WEB

1. “4. I realized that the feeling a man preserves longest is anger. There is only enough flesh on a hungry man for anger: everything else leaves him indifferent.” → from Forty-Five Things I Learned in the Gulag [Thanks, Reader B.]

2. Below the Surface is an amazing project documenting tens of thousands (of more than 700,000) artifacts uncovered during a systematic excavation of Amsterdam’s central River Amstel, a central artery in the city for millennia.

3. RFID Machines in British Libraries Are Producing Charming Found Poetry [Thanks, Reader S.]

4. “Swearing was a litmus test […] Swearing could unite people.” → “Damn your blood”: Swearing in early modern English

5. “The arts of memory are among the arts of thinking, especially involved with fostering the qualities we now revere as ‘imagination’ and ‘creativity.’” → Mary Carruthers (and Alan Jacobs) on memorization

6. Isochrone maps depict time on maps, such as this fascinating map by Francis Galton showing just how large the world was in 1881 (with the center being London, naturally).

7. “How a meteorite hunter’s obsession took him from the mountains of Colorado, to the Bundy Ranch, and eventually landed him in jail” → How one man went from hunting meteorites to being hunted by the law

8. Beautiful. → Daniel Mercadante’s long exposure light paintings

9. Some happy news: After searching for years, Wisconsin woman learns her sister lives next door || Harrogate bookshop tweets about dismal sales and sets a sales record || Teenage Girl Helps a Blind and Deaf Passenger

10. Today in 1916 is the first—and deadliest—day in the four-and-a-half-month long World War 1 Battle of the Somme. Ultimately the largest battle on the Western Front, with more than 70,000 casualties on this day alone—the Battle of the Somme would end only after more than one million wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles of all time. While undeniably the beginning of modern warfare, and the introduction of the British forces to this kind of combat, the strategic value of this most-costly battle remains in dispute to this day.

WATCH/WITNESS

The directorial debut of Jesse L. Martin and Rick Cosnett, this “chilling fable […] depicts one family’s struggle for freedom from slavery.” → ► The Letter Carrier

WHAT!?

KitKat Sushi is a thing.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M.: “How is it I have never heard of Sarah Orne Jewett?! She was spot on about ‘the habit of idle speech’ and that was over 100 years ago! Social media seems to be all about ‘idle speech’, as well as ‘eristic’, another great word I didn’t know.”

• Reader F.: “The Difference Between Being Broke and Being Poor tore at my heart.”

• Reader K.: “There’s nothing complicated about child sex robots. At least until I really thought about it. But, ugh, what a time we live in.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

A quick(ish) but still good(ish) newsletter this week due to travel. Tell your friends (about the newsletter, not my travel).

WORK

The wood-road was not a place for common noisy conversation; one would interrupt the birds and all the still little beasts that belonged there. But it was mortifying to find how strong the habit of idle speech may become in one’s self. One need not always be saying something in this noisy world.

—Sarah Orne Jewett
—from “A Dunnett Shepherdess”
—found in The Country of the Pointed Firs and Selected Short Fiction (1896)

WORD(S)

eristic /ə-RIS-tik/. adjective or noun. Of, given, or relating to, argument, particularly argument for its own sake. A person who engages in such (usually tedious) debates. From Greek eristikos, from erizein (wrangle), from eris (strife). In Greek mythology, Eris was the goddess of discord and discontent.

“Socrates himself was said to have disapproved of this enthusiasm of his: ’On seeing Eucleides devoting himself to eristic arguments, he said, ”You’ll be able to associate with sophists, Eucleides, but not at all with human beings." (Robin Hard)

“…the eristic preoccupation with victory displaces any commitment to truth.” (Gilbert Ryle)

“The Aneristic Principle is that of order, the Eristic Principle is that of disorder. On the surface, the Universe seems (to the ignorant) to be ordered; this is the aneristic illusion.” (Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson)

“Eristic is what contrarianism is all about. Although the main reason for its prevalence in contemporary public debate is that controversies, quarrels, exposés and attacks sell newspapers and get people switching on their television sets, there is another reason besides. This is that the public media think they are engaging in dialectic on whatever happens to be the hot topic of the day, when despite their good intentions they are in fact promoting eristic.” (A. C. Grayling)

WEB

1. “We think the next school shooter could be your son.” → Targeted: A Family and the Quest to Stop the Next School Shooter

2. There may be no end to Mr. Rogers’ awesomeness, generally, but most definitely in his amazing ear for language. → Mr. Rogers Had a Simple Set of Rules for Talking to Children

3. When linguistics and science and chart nerdery unite → Phonetic Periodic Table Poster

4. Infantilizing? Maybe. Complicated? You bet. → Digital Wellness for Grown Ups

5. Also…complicated. → The House Unanimously Passed a Bill to Make Child Sex Robots Illegal

6. This one triggered some feels… → The Difference Between Being Broke and Being Poor

7. Today in Twitterbots, LMAO edition → Tweets by Wheel Of Fortune Answers (@wofanswers) via the excellent Pop Loser, “a weekly newsletter of innumerable confusions and a profound feeling of despair.”

8. The lavishly illustated story of the beautiful Reforma font. Three fully featured families of typeface goodness. Did I mention that it’s free?

9. 50 [mostly] ingenious logos with hidden meanings

10. Today in 1849, poet, novelist and short story writer Sarah Orne Jewett is born in South Berwick, Maine. Jewett began publishing at just 19, with stories—like her later longer work—notable for a keen ear for local color and dialogue. Often compared to Flaubert, and a strong influence on later writers including Willa Cather, Jewett’s 1909 New York Times obituary observed that she was “regarded as one of the foremost women writers of America,” and her reputation has only increased in the intervening years. For your reading pleasure, a baker’s dozen of Jewett’s books free on Project Gutenberg.

WATCH/WITNESS

► “Robin Williams met Koko in 2001.”

WHAT!?

A platform floats in a neutral space. Strange men, identical except for the numbers on their back, appearing as though out of some dystopian future, must work in concert to prevent the platform from tipping. The emergence of a strange box, a new development in this closed and sterile space, disrupts the tedium but also the teamwork…

► Balance

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M.: “The etymology of ‘feisty’ is priceless! ¶ As is the ‘blueblack cold’ of Robert Hayden’s heart-wrenching poem ‘Those Winter Sundays’.”

• Reader B.: “That opening poem hit me hard, fellow father.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

“Those Winter Sundays”

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

—Robert Hayden
—from Collected Poems

WORD(S)

feisty /FIY-stee/. adjective. Lively, tenacious, excitable, aggressive. From American English feist (small dog) > from fisting cur (derogatory term for lap dog) > from Middle English fysting curre (stinking cur) > from Middle English fysten (break wind) > from Proto-Germanic fistiz (fart). See also: spunky, plucky, gutsy, spirited, etc. || Pairs with the legendary Embuggerance & Feisty article.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, an “1811 slang dictionary defines fice as ‘a small windy escape backwards, more obvious to the nose than ears; frequently by old ladies charged on their lap-dogs.’”

“My! Don’t he look feisty?” commented Octavia, with courteous admiration. “Watch him jest a-lickin’ out his tongue in Eve’s face. Lord,” she sighed conventionally, “how prone women air to sin!” (Alice MacGowan)

“His chest and arms are a panorama of tattooed emblems: feisty dragons, coiled chrysanthemums, uncoiled serpents.” (Truman Capote)

“A few experiments with foster parents did not end happily. I was what’s known as a ‘feisty child’. In the end the state agreed I was best off with the Jesuit Brothers.” (David Mitchell)

WEB

1. An online, community reading of Willa Cather’s novel, “My Ántonia”… three page-spreads at a time. Beautiful. → The Slow Read Thanks, Reader M!

2. Food for intentional technology thought. → Taking a photo of something impairs your memory of it, but the reasons remain largely mysterious.

3. Don’t let the geeky name stop you, the Regex Dictionary lets you find words of all kinds based on their construction and their part(s) of speech. Surprisingly useful…for word nerds like myself anyway.

4. Alexandra Bell’s Counternarratives revise, re-contextualize and re-write subtle (and sometimes none-too-subtle) racism on the New York Times front page, turning them into large pieces of public art. More and sometimes larger images can be seen in Art21 and on the Spencer Musefum of Art. Discovered via this (potentially paywalled) New Yorker profile of Bell.

5. BotSpot: Sex And Sensibility: A horde of Jane Austen-quoting bots leads to Russian porn sites. Thanks, Reader B!

6. “Speakers of anumeric, or numberless, languages offer a window into how the invention of numbers reshaped the human experience.” → How Do You Count Without Numbers?: Some human societies lack words for numbers. What does this say about the rest of us—and human evolution?

7. “A recursive recipe is one where ingredients in the recipe can be replaced by another recipe. The more ingredients you replace, the more that the recipe is made truly from scratch.” For example: make that apple pie from scratch in just over 7.5 years.

8. The Archive of Styles - From Gutenberg to the Moon - Reserve of Punches is an immensely browsable archive of physical typefaces, punches, experimental typography and much more that will entrance any type nerd. Clamorites might want to start with the curiosities, featuring manicules, coats of arms, bestiaries, lunar phases and more.

9. And some memes and slang too! → Dictionary.com Has Officially Added Emoji

10. Today is Father’s Day in the United States. Founded in 1910 in Vancouver, Washington by Sonora Smart Dodd as “Fathers’ Day” and celebrated by Presidents including Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge and Lyndon B. Johnson, it would take 62 years for Father’s Day to become an official holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law. Father’s Day is the fourth-biggest sales day for the greeting card industry, though it trails far behind Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.

WATCH/WITNESS

► People react to being called Beautiful

WHAT!?

“Nearly 1 whole week of standing still and over 4 thousand pics later… I present to you, ► Dancing Without Moving.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader D.: “Bumf? So what is Banff?”

• Reader B.: “Red Harvest is a fun book. Inspiration for my favorite gangster movie, Miller’s Crossing. ¶ Really enjoyed that wine bottle name article, especially for its use of bibliomancy.”

• Reader G.: “Is Dashiell Hammett one of the most underrated prose stylists ever? Why yes, yes he is.”

• Reader C.: “That record logo collection is a stupendous, Proustian-level memory trigger.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

“I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn’t think anything of what he had done to the city’s name. Later I heard men who could manage their r’s give it the same pronunciation. I still didn’t see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves’ word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better.”

—Dashiell Hammett
—from Red Harvest

WORD(S)

bumf /BUMF/. noun. Literally, toilet paper. Figuratively, worthless, superfluous, boring papers. Abbreviation of slang bum-fodder (same meaning).

“…I heard a tentative rap at my office door. I rose to open it and found Judd Wilkins. He was bearing a roll of bumf bound with a low-tech rubber band.” (Lawrence Sanders)

“‘Humanity treads ever on a thin crust over terrific abysses …’ Of course there weren’t inevitably abysses, sometimes only shallow ditches, Martin thought. Novelists were very prone to exaggeration. ‘Let’s have a look at all this bumf then, shall we?’ he said.” (Ruth Rendell)

“…this is all nonsense. You’ve no idea how much of this bumf I have to wade through in a week. I wake up in a blue funk at night, asking myself if this is how we’re going to fight the war, with reports and queries and signatures required in triplicate.” (John Banville)

WEB

1. An amazing collection of Record Label Logos.

2. I dropped “Jeroboam of wine” into a conversation the other day (because that’s what I do). Then I needed to know more. Now you will too. → Why Are Extremely Large Wine Bottles Named after Biblical Kings?

3. Preaching to the Clamor Choir here, but a nice pair of articles about reading and the brain: What’s Going On In Your Child’s Brain When You Read Them A Story? || Your Brain on Reading (Why Your Brain Needs You to Read Every Day)

4. With at least 7000 glyphs (compared to fewer than 850 for Latin scripts that can be used to represent hundreds of languages), Chinese fonts are just as awesome and complicated as you would expect.

5. I think it’s possible to embrace the idea of cultivating quiet time and even that some technologies tend to have more negative effects on our (or at least my) inner landscape without buying wholesale into the “technology is ruining our brains” market. → Why we owe it to ourselves to spend quiet time alone every day. See also: (Bored and Brilliant)[http://ktxc.to/bored-and-brilliant] and Being Bored Is Fun and Good, Sorry.

6. And I thought learning that porcupines could climb trees was scary… → New Research Shows That T-Rex Was as Smart as a Chimp

7. Kids these days, with their smart phones and their globe and paper making, leather-working and clog-cobbling.

8. Twenty years after finding a newborn, buried alive with his umbilical cord still attached, the jogging rescuer is reunited with him.

9. The 100 Best One-Star Amazon Reviews of The Great Gatsby || Pairs well with Report: John Grisham Slowly But Surely Climbing List Of Greatest Living American Authors Thanks, Reader B.

10. Today in 1894, Dashiell Hammett, premiere author of hard-boiled detective novels and stories, is born on a farm in Saint Mary’s County, Maryland. Hammett wasn’t just one of the best, iconic authors of tough-guy mystery fiction, but one of America’s best prose stylists, evidenced in books such as The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon as well as indelible short stories including “Corkscrew” and "Nightmare Town. A dedicated anti-fascist, Hammett managed—despite being a disabled veteran of World War I with tuberculosis—to re-enlist during World War II, where he served in the Aleutians. Incidentally, if you can get there, the Aleutian World War II Museum and the bunkers in Dutch Harbor are extraordinary.

WATCH/WITNESS

► AMA - a short film by Julie Gautier

WHAT!?

Army Doctors Grew a Soldier a New Ear — On Her Forearm

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader G.: “Kumi Yamashita’s work! All I can say is – WOW!”

• Reader B.: “I have nothing to say in response, except wordless applause for your fine work.” – Thanks…it is nice to know people are reading!

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

“Imagine a city where graffiti wasn’t illegal, a city where everybody could draw whatever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall — it’s wet.”

—Banksy
—from Wall and Piece

WORD(S)

funambulist /foo-NAM-byoo-list/. noun. A tightrope walker. From French funambule (tightrope walker); from Latin funambulus; from funis (rope) + ambulare (walk).

“But after a week there had been an office crisis. The cabaret editor died on the job, in an incident involving a French funambulist and seven live eels (one of which was in flames).” (Will Self)

“It was a funambulesque exhibition sans parasol. To race with deft, sure steps, to grease his way through rather than ponder on equilibrium—that seemed the safest measure.” (Henry Miller)

“But then, perhaps one needs to be conceited, or at least to have no doubts about oneself, if one is to prosper in funambulism or any other métier that requires absorption of the mental self in the physical self, an absorption that is indistinguishable—as you point out in the interview—from concentrated thought.” (J. M. Coetzee)

“Electrical wiring that had lost its moorings hung like a clothesline for the laundry. Pants and shirts floated like truncated sentries while they slept. On windy nights the garments danced on the wire, friendly funambulating ghosts.” (Rohinton Mistry)

WEB

1. Welcome news for word nerds: the new Fiat Lex (“a podcast about dictionaries by people who write them”), featuring Kory Stamper (author of the immensely entertaining Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries) and Steve Kleinedler, whose book I haven’t read yet. See also: The great American word mapper, which lets you map usage in the US based on a harvest of billions of tweets.

2. Doesn’t the legal system’s insistence in the face of any amount of evidence prove the problem? → One Test Could Exonerate Him. Why Won’t California Do It?

3. “Of the roughly 230 men who flew mail for the Post Office Department between 1918 and 1927, 32 lost their lives in plane crashes. Six died during the first week of operation alone.” → Delivering the Mail Was Once One of the Riskiest Jobs in America. See also: A Chicago Man Filled Out a Single Postal Change of Address Form and Redirected UPS Corporate Mail to His Apartment. And, just for funsies (via Reader B.), Postal Service Unveils New Line Of Stamps Honoring Americans Who Still Use Postal Service.

4. We need more voices like Wil’s. → My name is Wil Wheaton. I live with chronic Depression, and I am not ashamed.

5. Chess boxing (yep, it’s a thing) as a path upward for poor Indian girls? You bet. → How an Obscure Sport is Transforming the Lives of Indian Girls. Via Mr. TH.INK, a newsletter everyone in the Katexic Clamor should subscribe to.

6. Laughter climax (and conception): the structure of stand-up comedy. See also: Researchers uncovered 2 pages of ‘dirty jokes’ in Anne Frank’s diary.

7. The secret languages of flight attendants, plants, ships, handheld fans and babies.

8. This bot-written Modern Love column is one of the best and funniest pieces of its kind I’ve ever read. → My Marriage Was Just Dinner

9. Think you can explain a hard idea using only the ten hundred most used words? Prove it!

10. Today in 1992, the City Council of Chicago votes to ban the sale of spray paint claiming that “mindless ‘taggers’” were turning them into “weapons of terror.” The ban wouldn’t be enforced until 1994, when Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens turned down an emergency request by spray paint manufacturers and sellers to postpone the ban. While the city’s handgun ban was struck down in 2013, spray paint cans remain unavailable for sale in the city’s limits.

WATCH/WITNESS

In ► Coda, “a lost soul stumbles drunken through the city. In a park, Death finds him and shows him many things.”

WHAT!?

Using thousands of nails and a single thread, Kumi Yamashita creates amazing, intricate portraits.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. on double spacing between sentences: “My understanding is completely different from what was explained in the article on single spacing or double spacing after a period. Typewriters produced manuscripts. Certain rules are applied to instruct the typesetter. Two spaces after a period was to help the typesetter distinguish the period from a comma. Similarly, underlining instructed the typesetter to put specific words into italics and not to reproduce the underline. Word processing programs resemble typesetting, not typewriting, so there shouldn’t be a double space after the period, unless you are imitating a typewriter, such as when you use Courier type.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

The warm night claimed her. In a moment it was part of her. She walked on the grass, and her shoes were instantly soaked. She flung up her arms to the sky. Power ran to her fingertips. Excitement was communicated from the waiting trees, and the orchard, and the paddock; the intensity of their secret life caught at her and made her run. It was nothing like the excitement of ordinary looking forward, of birthday presents, of Christmas stockings, but the pull of a magnet – her grandfather had shown her once how it worked, little needles springing to the jaws – and now night and the sky above were a vast magnet, and the things that waited below were needles, caught up in the great demand.

—Daphne du Maurier
—from “The Pool”
—found in Echoes from the Macabre: Selected Stories

WORD(S)

isthmus /IS-thməs/. noun. A strip of land with water on both sides that connects two relatively larger land areas. In anatomy, a narrow part or organ connecting two larger parts. From Latin isthmus, from Greek isthmos (narrow land between two seas). Further history is unknown, though it could be from eimi (to go) and suffix -thmo (step, movement).

“They journeyed by canoe as far as the Chagres River would take them, then onward by mule. The isthmus, a thin, serpentine twist on the map, became five days’ journey through a stinging, biting fog.” (Alissa York)

“There was of course her figure to be assimilated; and only the most vicious corset, he thought at first, could so constrain the isthmus of her waist.” (Martin Amis)

“She sat on the sand and put her shapely foot in his lap, oblivious to the fact that she was exposing the metallic-gold isthmus of thong bikini between her legs, or that her pumiced heel was pressing down on his groin.” (Tatjana Soli)

WEB

1. Thanks to Reader K. for pointing out this compelling selection of photos of Russia from 100+ years ago. The photo of Tolstoy isn’t even the most interesting! See also: the rest of the more than 2600 photos in the Prokudin-Gorskii Collection at the Library of Congress, a link from last year that leads with one of my favorite century-old color photos and, not quite as ancient but still amazing, Scenes Unseen: The Summer of ’78 (in NYC).

2. Some fascinating background—and some litt words—in this “analysis of nearly one billion Tweets” that “maps the emergence of new words across the USA in unprecedented detail”.

3. This is the Surface of a Comet! Thanks, Reader B.

4. James Somers gets a bit deep in the weeds at times in this piece on reverse engineering Google Docs but the general idea of the “archaeology of writing” is one of the more intriguing in this time of living documents. You might remember Somers as purveyor of one of the greatest pieces of word advice for Mac users ever, featured here a few years ago.

5. Behold how 19 other U.S. states could be packed into the state of Alaska!

6. Quite a moving story of a teen who serendipitously rediscovered a book and, through it, her dead mother and herself.

7. Dollar Street documents the lives of 264 families in 50 countries through more than 30,000 photographs. That’s cool enough, but the sorting by income makes the photos even more interesting.

8. MSG gets a bad rap. And I’m not the only one who thinks so: An MSG Convert Visits the High Church of Umami.

9. Multiple people shared the provocatively titled article “One space between each sentence, they said. Science just proved them wrong.” Except the research actually shows no such thing as the article itself clearly shows. Do I really need to spell this out? #DeathToTheDoubleSpace

10. Today in 1907, author and playwright Daphne de Maurier is born in London to a prominent family of actors and authors. Her most famous work, the novel Rebecca, was an instant best-seller, though initially panned by critics. In addition to being the basis of the Oscar-winning Alfred Hitchcock film of the same name, Rebecca was also used as by the Nazis as a code key during World War II and the monstrous housekeeper Mrs. Danvers has infiltrated popular culture.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Diffusion Choir, a kinetic sculpture that visualizes the organic movements of an invisible flock of Tyvek birds moving in harmony.

WHAT!?

POV video of ► Claudio Caluori on the Mont-Sainte-Anne downhill mountain biking course. Looks like a video game.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader L.: “I need more lagom in my life.”

• Reader B.: "Too bad the Philip K. Dick tv series is weak. ¶ Man, that GQ piece! I have resisted responding so far.

• Reader C.: “Book Cell = Amazing”

• Another Reader B.: “Roget was cray-cray. See what I did there?”

• Reader J.: “That subject, ‘Rusting Sights First and Last’? – I see what you did there.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

No newsletter next week, but I welcome suggestions for what is bound to be an awesome issue two weeks from now!

WORK

My venerable and much thumbed copy of Black’s Medical Dictionary, by the estimable and ever unflappable William A. R. Thomson, M.D.—Adam & Charles Black, London, thirtieth edition, with 441 black-and-white, or grey-and-greyer, illustrations and four colour plates which never fail to freeze the cockles of my heart—informs me that rosacea, a nice name for an unpleasant complaint, is due to a chronic congestion of the flush areas of the face and forehead, leading to the formation of red papules; the resultant erythema, the name we medical men give to redness of the skin, tends to wax and wane but ultimately becomes permanent, and may, the candid Doctor warns, be accompanied by gross enlargement of the sebaceous glands (see SKIN), leading to the gross enlargement of the nose known as rhinophyma (qv) or grog blossoms. The repetition there—gross enlargement … gross enlargement—is an uncharacteristic infelicity in Dr. Thomson’s usually euphonious if somewhat antiquated prose style. I wonder if he does house calls. He would be bound to have a calming bedside manner and a fund of information on all sorts of topics, not all of them health-related. Medical men are more versatile than they are given credit for. Roget of Roget’s Thesaurus was a physician, did important research on consumption and laughing gas, and no doubt cured the odd patient, into the bargain. But grog blossoms, now, that is something to look forward to.

—John Banville
—from The Sea

WORD(S)

lagom /LAH-gəm/. adjective. A Swedish word meaning something like “happily and satisfyingly just the right amount.” Often translated as enough or adequate, lagom has a more positive connotation of fulfillment (though not perfection). Popularly believed to come from laget om (around the team), which goes back to the Viking custom of passing around a shared drink, each person contentedly sipping, it is actually derived from laghum (according to common sense). One of Sweden’s most well-known proverbs is Lagom är bäst, literally “the right amount is best” but often translated as “enough is a good as a feast.” See also: hygge.

WEB

1. From the brain trust at GQ, 21 Books You Don’t Have to Read (and 21 you should read instead)…with a little something to irritate everyone.

2. The New New York Times Twitter account tweets words as they appear in the New York Times for the first time. Great fun to follow despite the occasional “firsts” that are misspellings || Related: NYT Minus Context, posting often surreal verbatim bits from the New York Times || See also, more Twitter fun: Fake Library Stats

3. With pictures this powerful, I can’t imagine what experiencing the The National Memorial for Peace and Justice would feel like.

4. Even if just browsing them as nerdy eye-candy, Xenographics (“weird but (sometimes) useful charts”) are great.

5. Choose Your Own Adventure books are being adapted into interactive Choose Your Own Adventure Movies.

6. Two examples of large scale book art made their way to me this week…and they are astounding! → Alicia Martin’s Biografias Book Sculptures and Matej Kren’s “book cell”, which could come straight out of my head.

7. Inspired by this NYT article, I gave the peanut butter and pickle sandwich another try. And…they were right. Except in dissing the bread and butter pickle’s delectable suitability.

8. Can Handwriting be Copyrighted? Well, no. But using the names of celebrities could have been a problem.

9. Some great art this week: Seung Hoon Park’s woven photos & Mimi Choi’s Makeup Artistry & Kate Kato’s paper sculpture

10. Today in 1852, the first edition of Peter Mark Roget’s Thesaurus is published. Originally “only” 15,000 words, the current 7th International Edition contains more than 325,000 words and phrases. Highly recommended: The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus, an ultra-readable biography of Roget, a driven, eccentric polymath, inventor of the slide-rule and, umm, frolicsome bachelor who was compelled to categorize just about everything starting at the age of eight. In fact, he intended his thesaurus to be not just a categorization of words, but of the world’s ideas.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Dirty Computer - an emotion picture* by Janelle Monáe || Incidentally, the Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams television series is mostly a forgettable, anemic Black Mirror imitation…but Janelle Monáe’s turn as an android factory representative was extraordinary.

WHAT!?

► Fresh Guacamole by PES. The shortest film (1 minute, 40 seconds) ever nominated for an Oscar.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M.: “Nobokov is mystical. Thanks for mentioning. People hate Lolita now because of the subject. I guess I want people to see it as more than that without disregarding what’s in it.”

• Reader G.: "Thanks for posting that Kit Kat story, it’s so interesting - it reminded me of this I read last week: Is the Chinese Language a Superstition Machine? How ambiguity in language can create unique taboos..

• Reader D.: “Mayracha. That’s probably a Japanese Kit Kat, too…”

• Reader B.: “If you have the time, you should see this: Prague Astronomical Clock - 600th Anniversary Show. ¶ This is not the official video, but I like this one better.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

“Without any wind blowing, the sheer weight of a raindrop, shining in parasitic luxury on a cordate leaf, caused its tip to dip, and what looked like a globule of quicksilver performed a sudden glissando down the centre vein, and then, having shed its bright load, the relieved leaf unbent. Tip, leaf, dip, relief – the instant it all took to happen seemed to me not so much a fraction of time as a fissure in it, a missed heartbeat, which was refunded at once by a patter of rhymes: I say ‘patter’ intentionally, for when a gust of wind did come, the trees would briskly start to drip all together in as crude an imitation of the recent downpour as the stanza I was already muttering resembled the shock of wonder I had experienced when for a moment heart and leaf had been one.”

—Vladimir Nabokov
—from Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited

WORD(S)

frottage /FRAW-tawzh/. noun. Taking a rubbing from a textured surface, such as from a gravestone. Sexually touching or rubbing, while clothed, against someone. From French frotter (rub, scrub, scrape, caress).

“It glowed, an eerie, mechanical hatchery, replete with all the secret trip levers of an ingenious Max Ernst frottage.” (Richard Powers)

“His hand slides slowly down the pole, touching her fingers, so she bids her fingers retreat. He chases, they bump again, she retreats farther. Their hands slide down, all without eye contact. One of many daily contests here. Beware of frottage. Readjust your balance at every lurch. If you don’t know what time it is, wait for a peek when he changes his grip.” (Colson Whitehead)

“He riffles through his drawer, handing me one last ‘curiosity object,’ an English pamphlet describing every conceivable sexual act, beginning with frottage…” (Malena Watrous)

WEB

1. Some amazing engineering, ancient and most contemporary.

2. My whole life is research into this → Sitting Too Much Can Change Your Brain & Impact Your Memory, A New Study Says

3. Every once in a while, a crossword puzzle scratches an itch. A good, free bet: Will Nediger, who posts an original, “erudite, witty idie puzzle” every Monday.

4. SkyKnit: When knitters teamed up with a neural network

5. Lu Xinjian’s City DNA series: complex abstract art based on views from Google Earth using colors based on the city and national flags of each city.

6. I knew Kit Kats were popular in Japan because I’ve tried some of their regional variations. But now I know why.

7. Mayochup is a thing. I can’t wait for Mustaise or Mayotard.

8. Grammar gripes: why do we love to complain about language?

9. Of course an air conditioning company would create a fascinating look at 20 Incredible Ways Animals Keep Cool. And I learned the word (a)estivation.

10. Today in 1922, novelist, poet and entomologist Vladimir Nabokov is born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Though English was Nabokov’s second language he was one of its finest craftsman with a penchant for dazzling wordplay and verbal puzzles that reward multiple readings. I don’t think you can go wrong with Nabokov, but if my recommendation matters, Lolita (so underestimated and misunderstood) or Pale Fire are the best places to start.

WATCH/WITNESS

Prince - Nothing Compares 2 U official video.

WHAT!?

10 Satirical Covers for the Terrible Books You Can’t Get Away From: Imaginary cover designs for the worst clichés in publishing.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “Another fine word-hoard! ¶ That Powers interview made me deeply happy. I need to catch up with his latest novels. I loved Galatea and Plowing the Dark. Had lunch with him once – brilliant, generous, kind man.”

• Reader S.: "Thanks so much for the link to the Richard Powers interview. I have Generosity: An Enhancement on my desk, out from the library, hoping to get to it soon. And now a new one, The Overstory.
  The interview was worth it for this insight alone:

‘I believe the reason for that retrenchment into the personal is that we have all completely habituated to the first tenet of commodity-individualism: meaning is entirely something we make for ourselves. We have absorbed that belief so completely it is impossible for most of us even to imagine that there might be other possibilities. But there is, of course, a meaning of and for trees, a meaning to the hugely interconnected living world that cares very little for human meaning.’

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

Very Good Boy

“Does your dog do any tricks?”

“He published his autobiography last autumn.”

Laura’s brow wrinkled.

“I beg your pardon?”

“He wrote a book on the history of Russian ballet, and he has a novel in the works too—a spy novel set in Berlin. He needed something both to challenge his skills and to regain his crown as the king of the thriller.”

She looked down at the chocolate-colored Labrador, and gave David a look of complete incomprehension.

“He’s the strong, silent type.”

The dog licked its paw.

“Down, boy, down.”

Sources: New Oxford American Dictionary, Collins COBUILD Primary Learner’s Dictionary, The American Heritage Dictionary, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

—Jez Burrows
—from Dictionary Stories: Short Fictions and Other Findings
—(a book composed entirely of example sentences from various dictionaries)

WORD(S)

satisfice. verb. A blend of satisfy and suffice, coined by Nobel Prize winning economist Herbert A. Simon in his 1956 article ‘Rational Choice and the Structure of the Environment’ to describe the behavior of pursuing the minimum satisfactory outcome. Satisficing is the opposite of maximizing or optimizing. Also, a Northern English/Scottish synonym for satisfy.

“That tendency is known as satisficing, a blend of sufficing and satisfying: a response bias that errs on the egocentric side of plausible answers to a given question. As soon as we find an answer that satisfies, we stop looking, whether or not the answer is ideal or even remotely accurate.” (Maria Konnikova)

“Then there is satisficing, a coping strategy whereby one takes in just enough information to meet a specific need and ignores the rest. This could be considered a practical approach for one who is not aware of the full range of choices.” (David A. Sousa)

“According to [the scholar Herbert] Simon, people can be maximizers and satisficers in different contexts. For example, when it comes to, let’s say, tacos, I’m a maximizer. I’ll do a rigorous amount of research to make sure I’m getting the best taco I can find, because for me there is a huge difference in the taco experience. A satisficer will just get tacos wherever they see a decent taco stand and call it a day. I hate getting tacos with these people. Enjoy your nasty tacos, losers.” (Aziz Ansari)

WEB

1. An amazing thread of grace, borders, trees and hidden treasures that leads to a physical network of Small Pilgrim Places suitable for all of us who are journeying. Thanks, Reader T.

2. This is perfect. → If the Zuckerberg hearing were the Gutenberg hearing

3. Google has released some cool experiments: Semantris is Tetris meets word association, powered by machine learning. I might have played a few dozen times already. Talk to Books is a Google Books search trained using human conversations (useful!).

4. Oh, and the green hair is a mohawk…and it sports fashionable stubble. → Green-haired turtle that breathes through its genitals added to endangered list

5. “The first step is for each of us to commit unsuicide.” → An Interview with Richard Powers

6. Cool story about how the “Harvard Sentences” Secretly Shaped the Development of Audio Tech. And those sentences have a kind of poetry of their own.

7. When algorithms surprise us demonstrates the weird ingenuity demonstrated by AI/neural nets. The tic-tac-toe solution is my favorite || pairs well with neural network-named tomatoes… “sun bungs” or “shart delights” anyone?

8. I shouldn’t be surprised this is so well written. → Molly Ringwald Revisits “The Breakfast Club” in the Age of #MeToo

9. Why is American currency so boring? → The year’s most beautiful banknotes

10. Today is World Art Day, an international day for celebrating the fine arts and promoting creativity. Founded by the International Association of Art (IAA) in 2012 to coincide with Leonardo Da Vinci’s birthday, activities are held around the world to celebrate…but there’s no reason you can’t celebrate on your own. One place to start: Open Culture’s list of 1.8 million free works of art (online) from world-class museums.

WATCH/WITNESS

Project Revoice uses recordings of earlier speech to give ALS patients their voices back.

WHAT!?

Shia LaBeouf “Just Do It” Motivational Speech

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: "Another brilliant installment… I vow to integrate pinguid into my vocabulary. Thank you again! ¶ The WORK from Cioran (new to me) got me looking through Johnson’s Idler essays for the first time in ages. (“We do not indeed so often disappoint others as ourselves.”) ¶ And reminded me of the concept of SLACK as preached by the Church of the Subgenius. ¶ “The reason They have been so successful these last 10,000 years is that – ironically – at any given time you actually have more Slack than you can possibly appreciate until it is taken away.”

• My other favorite Reader B.: “Pinguid: have you seen this? ¶ Cioran sounds very good. He might satisfy my Ligotti cravings.”

• Another Reader T.: “E. M. Cioran has obviously never had a cat or a dog.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

A zoologist who observed gorillas in their native habitat was amazed by the uniformity of their life and their vast idleness. Hours and hours without doing anything … Was boredom unknown to them?

This is indeed a question raised by a human, a busy ape. Far from fleeing monotony, animals crave it, and what they most dread is to see it end. For it ends only to be replaced by fear, the cause of all activity.

Inaction is divine; yet it is against inaction that man has rebelled. Man alone, in nature, is incapable of enduring monotony, man alone wants something to happen at all costs—something, anything…. Thereby he shows himself unworthy of his ancestor: the need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla.

—E. M. Cioran
—from The Trouble With Being Born

WORD(S)

pinguid /PEEN-gwid/. adjective. Fat, greasy, oil. Unctuous. Rarely (usually referring to soil): fertile. From Latin pinguis (fat) + -id (adjective suffix, as in languid, torpid, etc.).

“For the first minute the water grips me like a cryonic gel, glacial, faintly pinguid…” (Greg Jackson)

“Her suspicions got embellished by, of all people, Mike Fallopian of the Peter Pinguid Society.” (Thomas Pynchon)

“In the numb gesture of this ever-dead, a pair of pinguid crows hopped, foot to foot, along one pleading limb, like two conspiring nuns cackling and pecking and flapping into the air…” (Nick Cave)

“The angel would stand, giant in her consciousness, its head bent down. She would stare up into its meteor-scarred face and its wings would open slowly, with pinguid plumage, a wider span than any sea eagle.” (J. M. Ledgard)

“There, staring back at us, between the drum major’s braided cap and the gold epaulettes, were the dark pinguid features of Dada made flesh: His Excellency Al Haji Field Marshal and President for Life of Uganda: Idi Amin Dada.” (T. C. Boyle)

“Pingle should not be confused with pinguid, which means greasy, though if the food is too much the latter, it may cause the former. So if you were stuck with a bad cook in Antarctica you might pingle a pinguid penguin.” (Mark Forsyth)

WEB

1. A Major Dictionary Has Officially Added Emoji || A pairing from the other end of the dictionary spectrum: The Nationalist Roots of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary

2. This tree has been receiving love letters, upwards of 1000 a year, for more than 100 years…it even has its own postal code and mailman. || See also, a photo essay about Japanese mail boxes and (public) Mailboxes Of Seattle. || And I might as well throw in the ubiquitous (and rightly so) Brocolli Tree parable here too.

3. Unruly Bodies, a month-long [pop-up] magazine exploring our ever-changing relationship with our bodies.

4. Much beauties in this piece on Astronomical Typography.

5. Even people who “don’t listen to podcasts” can enjoy the trend of incredible, short-run, journalistic series such as Repeat and the upcoming Caliphate. The latter features (the awesome) Rukmini Callimachi. Read her recent report, The ISIS Files: When Terrorists Run City Hall, on the strange business workings of the would-be Caliphate and listen to her interview on Longform.

6. April Fool’s pranks written by neural network. Thanks, Reader B.

7. A wealth of photographic riches: 2018 Sony World Photography Awards || Fukushima, Seven Years On || Cascade of Lava

8. RIP → The World of Cecil Taylor

9. Don’t be so sure you know what a lowercase G looks like. Thanks, Reader S.

10. Today in 1911, writer and philosopher E. M. Cioran [chore-AWN] is born in Resinár, Romania. Author of amazing, #sadhappy books like The Trouble with Being Born, A Short History of Decay and On the Heights of Despair—titles emblematic of Cioran’s position as a leader of philosophical pessimism–Cioran was also a notable, and notably bleak, aphorist, writing such dark gems as “the fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live—moreover, the only one,” and “melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.”

WATCH/WITNESS

A great short talk by Austin Kleon, a creative hero of mine. If you make things you should watch this.

WHAT!?

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M.: “…interesting stuff to browse, and then to browse links that come with it .. thanks for these invitations to wander ..”

• A different Reader M.: “This is an awesome selection of interesting tidbits, from start to finish! Thanks!”

• Reader B.: “Another rich delivery to my mental mines. Thank you!”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

Only here’s what I really, really want someone to explain to me. What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can’t be trusted—? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight towards a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster? Is Kitsey right? If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, is it better to turn away? Stop your ears with wax? Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you? Set yourself on the course that will lead you dutifully towards the norm, reasonable hours and regular medical check-ups, stable relationships and steady career advancement, the New York Times and brunch on Sunday, all with the promise of being somehow a better person? Or—like Boris—is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name?

It’s not about outward appearances but inward significance. A grandeur in the world, but not of the world, a grandeur that the world doesn’t understand. That first glimpse of pure otherness, in whose presence you bloom out and out and out.

A self one does not want. A heart one cannot help.

—Donna Tartt
—from The Goldfinch

WORD(S)

flesh-pot (fleshpot). noun. Literally, a pot in which flesh (a highly desirable foodstuff) is boiled, generally referring to the phrase in Exodus (see below). As an allusion, a place or person of luxury, indulgence and titillation.

“Would to God we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” (King James Bible)

“At the close of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, New Orleans became North America’s pleasure dome. Out of its fleshpots rose jazz, America’s music.” (Andrei Codrescu)

“On my side, and along with my intellectual attractions, were the fleshpots of Egypt. When you could not find me to be with, the companions whom you chose as substitutes were not flattering.” (Oscar Wilde)

“On dry long fingers, Tarr studiously counted off the reasons: first, he never knew a Soviet delegation that didn’t carry a couple of security gorillas whose job it was to keep the boys out of the fleshpots. So how did Boris slip the leash night after night?” (John le Carré)

WEB

1. Anthony Acevedo, a most amazing man, has passed. As a 20-year-old Army medic, Acevedo kept a diary (of events but also sketches) of his time in a Nazi slave labor camp, part of Buchenwald, which can be seen in its entirety online thanks to the United States Holocaust Memorial museum.

2. I was skeptical of the host, but World Map: The Literal Translation of Country Names is pretty cool. And they shared their research links and sources || Pairs obliquely with Terrapattern, a “visual search tool for satellite imagery.”

3. NITCH is compulsively browsable collection of (mostly) portraits and brief, powerful quotes.

4. Ehrmagerd! The Internet Archive has an online handheld History archive with playable games from the 70s and 80s. I literally wore out the keys on a Speak & Spell when I was a kid. And back to it almost 40 years later…I was transported. || Related retro: will 2018 be the (next) year of HyperCard? See (and submit to) HyperCard Zine.

5. Let’s whiplash back to the world of very contemporary technology in our lives… → 12 Things Everyone Should Understand About Tech

6. Utah governor signs law legalizing ‘free-range parenting’

7. On the thriving world of chess as “eSport,” featuring a few of my favorite things (and people) → I Want My ChessTV

8. Why We Like [media] Things That Are Bad For Us

9. Flat-Earther blasts off into California sky in homemade steam-powered rocket

10. Today in 1957, U.S. Customs confiscates more than 500 copies of Allan Ginsberg’s book Howl and Other Poems. You know the one, the title poem begins, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked” (listen to a 1956 recording of Ginsberg reading the poem || view the complete original manuscript and typescript). Two months later, the U.S. Attorney’s office chose not to prosecute. Then, on June 3 of the same year, undercover police with the San Francisco Police bought a copy from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s now famed City Lights bookstore and then arrested Ferlinghetti for publication of obscene materials. Heard before a judge who had recently achieved notoriety by sentencing five women convicted of shoplifting to watching the film The Ten Commandments, Felinghetti (and his business partner Shigeyosi Murao) was supported by a cadre of poets and critics. In the end the judge, Clayton Horn, ruled in Felinghetti’s favor, noting that the book was of “redeeming social importance” and was unlikely to “deprave or corrupt readers by exciting lascivious thoughts or arousing lustful desire.”

WATCH/WITNESS

This Girl!

WHAT!?

Hunting from the Cheetah’s perspective. Amazing.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “Loved the opening quote. And want to use ‘pinchbeck’ as soon as possible.”

• Reader G.: “Much appreciation for the message in the WORK.”

• Reader M.: “I absolutely loved this issue of katexic! Thank you.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”

—Jim Jarmusch
—from Movie Maker (#53, Winter 2004)

WORD(S)

pinchbeck /pinsh-bek/. noun or adjective. An inexpensive copper alloy that looks like gold. A counterfeit or a sham. The word first appears in the 1500s referring to a miserly person, of unknown origin. But it reappears in the 1700s as the name of an alloy used by jeweler and watchmaker Christopher Pinchbeck to make inexpensive products with the appearance of gold, over time coming to be known generically as a synonym for cheap and/or spurious.

“I saw you come aboard with your privileges about you like a cloud of, of pinchbeck glory!” (William Golding)

“Markson calls it ‘the precious, pinchbeck, ultimately often flat prose of Vladimir Nabokov.’” (David Shields)

“…they no more saw through Scarlett’s pinchbeck pretensions than she herself did.” (Margaret Mitchell)

“I told her of Paris. Late lieabed under a quilt of old overcoats, fingering a pinchbeck bracelet, Dan Kelly’s token.” (James Joyce)

WEB

1. A fascinating look at the first AI-generated podcast…a technology in its infancy but growing (and learning) quickly. Thanks, Reader B.

2. The Solenodon is a wobbly, flexible-snouted, butt-nippled mammal that injects venom through it’s grooved lower incisors [the name comes from the Latin solen- (channel, pipe) + -odon (tooth)]. It’s also one of the earliest branches of mammal that survived the asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs. What more could you want?

3. “What is involuntary to most people is a deliberate choice to them, something they can actively switch on if it helps them to achieve their goals, and ignore in other situations.” → How Psychopaths See the World

4. The Boston Public Library is asking for your help transcribing more than 40,000 letters between abolitionist leaders from the 1830s–1870s.

5. Subscribe to Letterjoy and receive “one historic letter every week, on fine cotton paper” from historic figures such as Lincoln and Einstein.

6. Movie poster design is intriguing and Posteritati just might be the one movie poster site to rule them all.

7. “False news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people. Falsehood also diffused faster than the truth.” → The spread of true and false news online (from Science).

8. “Old” media continues to reinvent itself: National Geographic begins reckoning with its racist past; The New York Times is publishing obituaries of “remarkable women” they’ve overlooked.

9. Only one visible at the link, but I really want to see more of Tony Lewis’s collage art/poems built on Calvin and Hobbes. Thanks, Reader M.

10. Today in 1965, Soviet cosmonaut Alexey Leonov becomes the first person to walk in space (or, in jargonese, “conduct extravehicular activity”). Turns out, it was a much more difficult, almost deadly, feat than the Soviets could admit for some time.

WATCH/WITNESS

“On Gong Bin’s right cheek are thin scars from when he deliberately cut his face in November 2014 because UNESCO had added Japanese handmade paper to its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding. According to Gong Bin, that was a ‘day of humiliation for China.’ He cut the lines on his cheek not because he thought the Japanese didn’t deserve the honor, but because, in his words, ‘We lost face.’”

—Mark Kurlansky on Gong Bin, subject of the very short documentary, The Paperist.

Pairs with: The Art Behind Barichara’s All-Female Artisanal Paper Making

WHAT!?

This toad without a face continues to freak me out because, obvious, and because…Demogorgon.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader F. with a reminder: “Don’t forget that other Humble Pie, the Britishest and whitest funk band of the 70s that initially featured Peter Frampton.”

• Reader B. on the contention that technology is resulting in our forgetting how to read: “I wonder why I haven’t caught the reading decline yet. Actually, I have in a single way: my vision is starting to degrade, so reading small print (on paper) is increasingly an issue, mostly late at night or in bad light. But the technology experience hasn’t had that impact. ¶ Am I just too obsessed with books and reading? Or am I doing something weird?”

• Reader G. on Babs’s cloned canines: “cloning a dog is a really interesting thing to do. In some ways MUCH more like cloning people. Because dogs have such personalities. I wonder if she finds that her new dogs have the same personality has her other dog, or if they have radically different personalities. And I wonder if an argument about an animal’s soul could be made based on that. Assuming animals have souls. I think they do, especially dogs. But it seems like the case of nature vs nurture could be made too. If nothing else, it is a fascinating experiment.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

At the end of the bough—its uttermost end,
Missed by the harvesters, ripens the apple,
Nay, not overlooked, but far out of reach,
So with all best things.

—Sappho (c630-c570 BC; translated by Edwin Marion Cox)
—from The Poems of Sappho (1925)

[Note: the “sweetapple” referred to in the transliterated version of this fragment was likely the result of grafting an apple and a quince]

WORD(S)

humble pie. noun. Metaphorically, the dish we eat when we have to admit we were wrong or retract a statement in humiliating fashion. I assumed the origin was humble as in not proud or of low origin, but it’s not! In fact, the humble in humble pie comes from umble pie, with umbles being the innards of an animal, usually a deer. In other words, a low-class food, allowing the punny humble pie to emerge. Umbles itself comes from the Middle English numbles (offal).

“…I came home just as Dodger was serving up a massive humble pie, stuffed with livers and heart and tripes in a simmering, rich brown gravy that was as thick as custard.” (Cory Doctorow)

WEB

1. From Linkmeister B., two great links: the surreal (phantom sheep! goats that are dogs!) and the surrealer (watch some of the ‘Director of Behavio’ videos).

2. Literally found in a cardboard box underneath some old bed sheets: parts of a draft slang dictionary for A Clockwork Orange.

3. Barbra Streisand’s dog Samantha died last year. So she had her cloned. Three times. The rich really aren’t like you and me.

4. A few weeks ago we went inside one of the last American pencil factories. On the other side of the pond, even holding a pencil is becoming a challenge.

5. While indulging my Anglophilia, I have to note that the Royal Mint is releasing a Quintessentially British A to Z Silver Proof Coin Series. Some of the entries—‘S’ - Stonehenge and ‘K’ - King Arthur—are obvious. But I admire the playful entries for ‘B’, ‘F’ and ‘Q’…

6. Future Fonts is a marketplace where type designers sell works in progress. The price goes up with each successive release/revision. And at the opposite end of the typography times, see some of the fascinating collection of historical printing artifacts, particularly steel type, in Britain’s St. Bride church: Part 1 and Part 2

7. Like many, Michael Harris is convinced that new media has made him forget how to read. Is there anything to our traditional notion of reading being an aberration? See also: the Gutenberg Parenthesis.

8. Say what you will about books, but dating sites aren’t going anyplace. If you’re in that particular circle of purgatory (or enjoy some wordy schadenfreude), you might want to read From ‘Bae’ To ‘Submarining,’ The Lingo Of Online Dating.

9. Target is selling an exclusive Oregon Trail handheld game. Now you can die if dysentery on your own couch! The floppy-disk style power button is a nice touch.

10. Today is National Grammar Day in the U.S. Expect a parliament of pedants (though I prefer a ‘quibble of pedants’ or, even better, an ‘actually’) to use this opportunity to try to foist their almost uniformly baseless rules and preferences on you. Just say no…unless you filled with generosity and can lovingly try to help such wayward souls figure out what they are really afraid of. Or, celebrate by reading a fun book like Ammon Shea’s Bad English.

WATCH/WITNESS

A map of Language Difficulty Rankings in Europe according to the Foreign Service Institute. The full FSI list includes more than just European languages. See also: a well-done infographic on the topic.

WHAT!?

Tatsuo Horiuchi creates intricate digital landscapes using…Microsoft Excel.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader D.: “Another sabot is an eight-foot dinghy sailboat popular in Southern California. Kids learn to sail in them.”

• Reader B.: “Those faces, waiting for the execution with such eagerness. And such comfort and happiness among them. ¶ Another splendid Katexification!”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

I was a man alone
Leaning on the white courtesy phone
Holy fools and hobo signs
I rebuke in moony lines

I drove into the sun
Yeah I was the dirt and when the wheels spun
Wanting to escape myself
Leave the gun upon the shelf

Stroll through, ’scuse me but I thought I knew you
Smiling like a check is due
Feeling pleasure that you’re bound to lose

Wait! Oh, you’ll find a better way
Oh yes I’m free to face all the darkness on my own

You were a holy mess
You were dressed in infinite forgiveness
But you were the heaviest
Cat in the crowd nonetheless

You were a wretched wave
All the sullen trolls that you swam out to save
All the moves and all your mind
Dust swirls in the sunlight

All things empty and amazing
Jot ’em down upon the wall
Dressed like a professional

Wait! Oh, you’ll find a better way
Oh yes I’m free to face all the darkness on my own

—Mike Doughty
—lyrics from “Wait! You’ll Find a Better Way”
—found on The Heart Watches While the Brain Burns

WORD(S)

sabot /SA-boh/. noun. A wooden shoe or clog. A sleeve that holds and guides a projectile through a rifle tube. In baccarat, the box or shoe for dealing cards. In Australia, a small, snub-nosed dinghy. From Old French çabot, a blend of çavate (old shoe) and bote (boot).

The word sabotage is derived from sabot, though the popular folk etymology that saboteurs threw their wooden shoes into the machinery like the proverbial monkey-wrench is sadly unlikely. More prosaically, sabotage comes from the general sense of the term used in French for doing things badly, particularly performing music, which would be likened to the sound of wooden shoes clomping across the floor.

“They were in the forest, as on the day before, in a hut used by sabot makers. Its walls were of straw, and its roof came down so low that one had to stoop. They sat close together, on a bed of dry leaves.” (Gustave Flaubert)

“I drank greedily, determined to chuck a monkey wrench or hurl a sabot into the entertainers’ works and to have a good time in the bargain…” (Gilbert Sorrentino)

“The inside of the flintlock had been replaced with newer technology and contained a magazine of real bullets complete with sabot and primer caps, cleverly hidden in the stock, and a rifled barrel.” (John C. Wright)

WEB

1. Issue #28 of Robert Wright’s Mindful Resistance newsletter (a highly recommended subscription) has a piece answering the question “What is the Mindful Response to a School Shooting?” I can’t believe I live in a time where something like that needs to be written…and I wish I could believe something will change.

2. Jason Kottke is an inspiration to many, not least for his longevity. Any reader of Katexic CLippings has to be familiar with his work and should read Last blog standing, “last guy dancing”: How Jason Kottke is thinking about kottke.org at 20

3. Take a gander at the Star Wars posters of Soviet Europe.

4. Inside the OED: can the world’s biggest dictionary survive the internet? → Thanks to the indefatigable Reader B.! || See also: a notable link in the article which I shared here years ago, but deserves a new look now that the project is now live: BabelNet

5. Daily Art Magazine has painstakingly documented every piece of art in all four seasons of BoJack Horseman.

6. Mr. Rogers is getting a stamp. About time. Related new-to-me news: Catherine O’Hara has Canadian stamp.

7. Explore the Largest Known Early Map of the World, Assembled for the First Time.

8. Take a minute for this beautiful Google Arts & Culture exhibit of Japanese paper wrapping: Ogasawara-Ryu Origata Wrapping.

9. The images of the crowd, at least as interested in the woman who was supposed to “pull the trap,” are as horrifying as the photos of the condemned at the last public execution in the US.

10. Today the annual plum blossom festival is celebrated at the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine in Kyoto, Japan, with a special tea ceremony (Baikasai) performed by geiko (geisha) and apprentices (maiko) for more than 3000 visitors. While the outdoor tea ceremony dates back to “only” 1952, the shrine was built in 947.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Watch the first episode of Mr. Rogers’ from Feb. 19, 1968. See also: Mr. Rogers learns to breakdance.

WHAT!?

I was skeptical, but this ► cover of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by Japanese group Goose house won me over.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: "From Twine to the Roti-matic, what a fine return for Katexic!

• Reader G.: “Loved the WORK in this publication. With #21 – ‘love forgives everything’ – for me, that applies until I’ve fallen out of love. Maybe too, there are different levels of forgiveness.”

• Reader A.: “This one [#6 -- 'Expect no more of anyone than you can deliver yourself.'] is tough. One of the things a manager must do is hire those with more skill than themselves so that the work which gets done is top notch. Managers need to be competent enough to understand the product of their team, but to draw out work from each member so the whole is greater than the parts. Micromanagement is the bane of creative teams.”

• Reader R.: “Family drama with my love’s daughter remains in full force, and nothing could have been a better start to my day than seeing you in the inbox and reading these wonderful words of wisdom.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

My thanks to those who welcomed the newsletter after my unscheduled break. I want readers, not just subscribers, so it was gratifying to hear from you!

WORK

1. Be patient. No matter what.
2. Don’t badmouth: Assign responsibility, not blame. Say nothing of another you wouldn’t say to him.
3. Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you.
4. Expand your sense of the possible.
5. Don’t trouble yourself with matters you truly cannot change.
6. Expect no more of anyone than you can deliver yourself.
7. Tolerate ambiguity.
8. Laugh at yourself frequently.
9. Concern yourself with what is right rather than who is right.
10. Never forget that, no matter how certain, you might be wrong.
11. Give up blood sports.
12. Remember that your life belongs to others as well. Don’t risk it frivolously.
13. Never lie to anyone for any reason. (Lies of omission are sometimes exempt.)
14. Learn the needs of those around you and respect them.
15. Avoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission and pursue that.
16. Reduce your use of the first personal pronoun.
17. Praise at least as often as you disparage.
18. Admit your errors freely and soon.
19. Become less suspicious of joy.
20. Understand humility.
21. Remember that love forgives everything.
22. Foster dignity.
23. Live memorably.
24. Love yourself.
25. Endure.

—John Perry Barlow (RIP)
—from: unknown, to me, but dates back to at least 1977

WORD(S)

tribology /triy-BAWL-ə-jee/. noun. The study of fiction, lubrication and wear between interacting surfaces. From Greek tribos (rubbing) + -logy (suffix indicating science, study, theory).

“Individual trolls live for a long time, hibernating during the summertime and sleeping during the day, since heat affects them and makes them slow. They have a fascinating geology. One could talk about tribology, one could mention the semiconductor effects of impure silicon, one could talk about the giant trolls of prehistory…” (Terry Pratchett)

“…many thousands of recent unbound periodicals to which the library subscribes—serials with titles like Welding Design & Fabrication, Nutrition Reviews, Journal of Tribology, The Canadian Journal of Soil Science, Car and Driver, and Bee Culture—were secretly tossed into recycling bins this past February, March, and April; but no books were.” (Nicholson Baker)

WEB

1. A study that documents how people with depression use language differently (note the first finding and #16 in Barlow’s list above).

2. Some interesting reading, fully available online: Manly P. Hall’s Secret Teachings of All Ages, an “esoteric encyclopedia.” || Pairs with (kind of), a trove of Victorian magazines.

3. JC Debroize’s Organic Typography is…unsettling.

4. The New York Times explores our possible Post-Text Future…which might be a good thing given that we human paper users are losing “an elemental struggle between the natural and the mechanical” in the form of the ever-present—and possibly eternal—paper jam.

5. The Disconnect is the online magazine you can only read offline. I love playful publishing experiments like these!

6. How Facebook Is Killing Comedy is really about how Facebook’s omnipresence is crushing independent entertainment of all kinds.

7. Thanks, Reader B. for a pointer to a conversation about consciousness, particularly the “Where Are Words?” entry.

8. If you appreciate Iain M. Banks “Culture” series, Joseph Heath’s essay “Why the Culture Wins: An Appreciation of Iain M. Banks” is worth some time. If you don’t…I can only assume you haven’t read them.

9. I don’t want to be a Linear Lungs, so without further ado, the Wikipedia list of the moment: CB slang.

10. Today in 1990, Nelson Mandela, African political leader and symbolic leader of the anti-apartheid movement, is released from prison after 27 years. Mandela served much of his time in the notorious Robben Island Prison and refused at least three offers of conditional release in those years before newly elected South African President F. W. de Klerk ordered his release as part of his dismantling of apartheid.

WATCH/WITNESS

“► Leo and Laura traveled the world together, but now in their 90’s it’s become much smaller.”

WHAT!?

Honestly, at least half of these “unbelievable” kitchen gadgets, from the “head knife block” to the “Banana Surprise Yum Station,” seem at least as desirable as they are bizarre.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader T. comments on my radio segments: “Dude! You sound like This American Life meets The Writer’s Almanac. Well Done!”

• Reader D. on ruction: “When I was growing up in Indiana back in the ’40’s, the Hoosier grandmas and grandpas had ruction in their active vocabularies. I assumed it was somehow an offspring of ruckus. ¶ If it were new today, we’d naturally figure it must be related to erection, eh?”

• Reader B. with a flurry: “What a fantastic pause in Grossman’s dynamic tale. ¶ Lindy West on Twitter – no, I’m still not seeing it. I think this is a case of people using the tech wrong, to be frank. ¶ PS: ruction->rumpus brought to mind the catchphrase ‘what’s the rumpus?’ from the very great Miller’s Crossing.”

• Reader S. writes in: “Liked the piece on marginalia. I had forgotten about twine which is a neat tool. We have so far to go when it comes to the web – I am not sure if it will be possible to have our ‘representation theory of truth and singular points of view’ cake and eat our ‘knowledge as socially constructed act on the world’s biggest copying machine’ too. I guess time will tell.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

Did you know I was on the radio? I’m pleased to be a regular on Robert Hannon’s Northern Soundings. You can also listen to just my 3–5 minute segments in the KUAC-WORD section of the Katexic website, updated today!

WORK

The snow here hadn’t thawed. Its large, rough crystals were filled with the blue of the lake-water. But on the sunny side of the hill the snow was just beginning to melt. The ditch beside the path was full of gurgling water. The glitter of the snow, the water and the ice on the puddles was quite blinding. There was so much light, it was so intense, that they seemed almost to have to force their way through it. It disturbed them and got in their way; when they stepped on the thin film of ice over the puddles, it seemed to be light that was crunching under their feet, breaking up into thin, splinter-like rays. And it was light that was flowing down the ditch beside the path; where the path was blocked by stones, the light swelled up, foaming and gurgling. The spring sun seemed to be closer to the earth than ever. The air was cool and warm at the same time.

—Vasily Grossman
—from Life and Fate

WORD(S)

ruction /RUK-shən/. noun. A noisy disturbance; an uproar. Etymology unclear, but possibly derived from insurrection (not to mention destruction, which was first recorded almost 500 years earlier), or even eruption. See also: ruckus (rumpus + ruction?), rumpus, rookery and ruffle.

“Oh God, but is hard sometimes to love one another; if he get on like a beast, bind him hand and foot. I can’t have no ruction in this place.” (Derek Walcott)

“Pratt was raving. He appeared to be not only sore because the general ruction had spoiled his barbecue plans and ruined the tail end of his country sojourn, but specifically and pointedly sore at Wolfe for vague but active reasons…” (Rex Stout)

“They arrived at the church and waded through the tall, unshorn grass of the graveyard, amongst crooked ranks of crucifixes, stones and slabs, many of them askew and at oblique angles, as though they had been displaced by some crazy ruction of the earth.” (Jonathan Barnes)

WEB

1. A beautiful photo exploration. → Inside One of America’s Last Pencil Factories.

2. Notes: 1) the main point is about cursive writing, not handwriting generally and, 2) education today is based more on “myth” than not (because…the art part!) → Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths

3. Robin Sloan is always doing interesting things at the intersection of writing and technology. Two new projects: Penumbra’s New Fiction, featuring one story at a time in a limited edition printed on an old school Risograph (remember those?), and Music of the Mazg, about the “creative machine”-created music for the audiobook version of his fantastic novel Sourdough (that does, indeed revolve around sourdough starter).

4. Behold! More technology that works for us. → Automated Voice Recognition Typewriter

5. “Being on Twitter felt like being in a nonconsensual BDSM relationship with the apocalypse.” → I Quit Twitter and It Feels Great by Lindy West

6. East Village Bar Boldly [and literally] Bans Customers Who Say ‘Literally’

7. Well, not literally all of us… → Why do we all have balls on our hats?

8. A great story about how Charles Schultz brought Franklin to his comic strip. → Guess Who’s Coming to ‘Peanuts’

9. This gets a little geeky, but I can’t be the only person challenged (and often troubled) by how marginalia is represented on the web. → Interactive marginalia

10. Today is World Cancer Day, which “aims to save millions of preventable deaths each year by raising awareness and education about the disease [and] pressing governments and individuals across the world to take action.” You can still get involved and, even better, think about how you might contribute a little toward this disease that has surely affected all of us.

WATCH/WITNESS

The hype is intense, but I don’t see any reason technology can’t support focus, mindfulness and meditation…which makes these brain-wave sensing sunglasses quite interesting! See also: brief reviews from Digital Trends and The Manual.

WHAT!?

Marbles, Magnets, and Music (Synchronized) to Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers” (you’ll recognize the tune).

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. loves the puns, I am sure: “Flours of Evil? I groan, sir. ¶ On Tarrare, I notice this Gothic theme from Wikipedia: ”After being suspected of eating a toddler".

• Reader C. was the first to express this sentiment about those Flours of Evil: “Cookie dough ruiner!”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention—invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble. That is the big secret that has brought us down the ages hundreds of thousands of years, from chipping flints to switching on the washing up machine.

—Agatha Christie
—from Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

WORD(S)

mudlark / mudlarking. noun or verb. Rarely, slang for a hog. Traditionally, a street urchin or scavenger (or the activities of such); now, hobbyists and treasure seekers who search in muddy areas along rivers. Also, a generic name for various birds that like muddy environments, particularly the magpie lark and Australian slang for a racehorse that excels on muddy tracks.

“Other sewery professions included toshers and mudlarks who delved through muck, in sewers and along fetid riverbanks, for lost jewellery or the odd silver spoon.” (Bill Bryson)

“He had no time for reading, nor did he care what I wrote, nor did he believe I would ever get anywhere, but he liked to hear about it. He was interested in horses, mud-larks particularly. Listening to me was a harmless diversion and worth the price of a good lunch or a new hat, if needs be.” (Henry Miller)

“‘Mudlarks,’ Fraser told him, picking his way. ‘Winter and summer, they slog up to their middles, in the mud o’ low tide. Hunting lumps o’ coal, rusty nails, any river-rubbish that will fetch a penny.’” (Bruce Sterling and William Gibson)

“They resumed conversations that had been interrupted by tavern-fights thirty years earlier at the first Bomb in Dunkirk. And I began to understand that even Queena-Kootah is not so terribly far from London. Standing on a ship in Japan, I am closer to London than ever I was standing on the banks of the Thames as a mud-lark boy.” (Neal Stephenson)

WEB

1. Why Practice Rarely Makes Perfect

2. Fake news is old news. → Yellow Journalism: The “Fake News” of the 19th Century

3. I first noticed the little warnings (“to bake is to wait…”) while doing some Thanksgiving baking. Apparently, there is good reason → Thanks a Lot! New Reasons Not to Eat Cookie Dough. And it looks like the time is finally right for my manuscript, Flours of Evil.

4. Scurrilous manuscript that could have undone John Donne discovered

5. “[Tarrare] died shortly afterwards, following a lengthy bout of exudative diarrhoea.” And that’s far from the worst part of a story of failed espionage and a pathological food obsession…among other things. → Tarrare [Thanks, Reader C.!]

6. “On the eve of the Civil War, a nightmare at sea turned into one of the greatest rescues in maritime history. More than a century later, a rookie treasure hunter went looking for the lost ship—and found a different kind of ruin.” → The Wreck [Thanks, Reader B.!]

7. Last month was 2017 National Novel Generation Month again, in which participants write code that generates novels…and the results are in! Naturally, I am fond of the Edward Lear Limerick Generator, Shakespeare Summarizes Everything and Acrostic Sonnets on Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

8. And in the same vein, the 2017 Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp) winners have also been announced and some of them are amazing. See also: the IFDB (Interactive Fiction Database), “an IF game catalog and recommendation engine.”

9. “After academics picked out 30 words that have been ‘lost’ from the English language, self-confessed ‘word geek’ Paul Anthony Jones reveals obscure yet delightful terms that also need to be saved from falling into disuse.” → Twenty-six words we don’t want to lose

10. Today in 1926, Agatha Christie—future Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, “Queen of Crime,” and the best-selling novelist of all time—disappears. Christie’s car was quickly found abandoned at a quarry along with an expired drivers license and some clothes, but despite a massive search and front-page stories in England and the United States, it took ten days to find Christie, who was registed at a hotel in Yorkshire under the name of her husband’s lovers. Christie never provided an explanation, but many little gray cells have been applied to the real-life mystery, yielding theories ranging from amnesia, fugue states and suicidal depression to an aborted attempt to frame her unfaithful husband for murder.

WATCH/WITNESS

What Flying Was Like in the 60s

WHAT!?

from The Book of Life: The Spiritual and Physical Constitution of Man (1898) [via Public Domain Review]

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M. brought a problem link to my attention. The story of the virtual Japanese pop sensation Miku Hatsune should have pointed to ► this video.

• Reader A.: “I wonder if Poe thought of his raven as rasorial. ¶ Was a bit dusty in the room when I watched ‘Falling Letters’. The pebble alphabet was a cheerful follow-up.”

• Reader B.: "First, the full rhyme [of the poem from which ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ coes] moved me deeply. I just spent an hour moving wood and walking in the forest. It reminded me of birds flying south for the winter, and of storing food against the cold months. ¶ Second, Re: One Flew Over, there’s an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia which turns into the Kesey story. Best of all, it stars Danny DeVito.

• Reader T. issues a corrective: “‘20 years ago there were only 130 websites total…’ Hmm. Maybe 25 years ago now?”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

Vintery Mintery Cutery Corn

Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew East
One flew West
And one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.

—Traditional nursery rhyme

WORD(S)

rasorial /rə-SOR-ee-əl/. adjective. Scratching at the ground or scratching more generally. Originally and primarily used for describing birds. From the scientific Latin Rasores, used to describe an order of birds that scratch the ground for food. From Latin rāsor (scraper).

“They looked toward the door, saw only the paunchy guest of the evening moving toward it, in an unsteady rasorial attitude as though following a trail of crumbs to the great world outside.” (William Gaddis)

“Otherwise I’ll be a rich jailbird. But even if I hung around I wouldn’t see much of it. With two rasorial ex-wives—the Skanks from Hell are both well practiced at deficit financing—and a third who spends like the Hilton sisters, and three kids with college funds…” (F. Paul Wilson)

“I read somewhere of the remarkable optimism of a flea which a man found on his foot after crossing the desert of the Sahara. It had lived on in the sand, goodness knows how long, on the chance of some animal passing within the radius of a leap and so carrying it back to a congenial and not too rasorial a civilisation.” (Frank Frankfort Moore)

WEB

1. FutureMe: Write a Letter to your Future Self (and read some written by others).

2. My Sammelband has Frisket-Bite: A Short Glossary of Delightful Library Terms

3. Legendary typographer and designer, Erik Spiekermann, is bringing new, digital life to the letterpress.

4. The story of Hashima Island is almost as interesting as the ruins found there…which you can explore virtually thanks to a cool Google project using Street View cameras.

5. How ‘thoughts and prayers’ became the stock phrase of tragedies. See also: an apropos clip from Bojack Horseman.

6. Giant Straw Animals Invade Japanese Fields After Rice Harvest

7. For your sunbathing and writing efforts: Clotilde Olyff’s Pebble Alphabet: upper and lower case versions.

8. Every Second on the Internet is a compelling, creative visualization of the insane torrent of information that is the interwebz.

9. And when you are tired of contributing to all those seconds, take a spin or two on the Procatinator!

10. Today in 1975, Milos Forman’s film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest debuts. Based on Ken Kesey’s novel of the same name, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was the 2nd film to win all five major Academy Awards, a feat that wouldn’t be achieved again until the Silence of the Lambs in 1991. The role of Randle McMurphy—intended for Kirk Douglas, who owned the movie rights, and first turned down by Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen and Gene Hackman—was just one of many iconic roles for Jack Nicholson (and his first Oscar-winner), but it was Louise Fletcher’s most famous performance, a role she accepted after it had been turned down by Angela Lansbury, Ellen Burstyn, Anne Bancroft and a number of other well-known actresses. Fletcher was so disturbed by playing the part that she refused to watch the film for many years.

WATCH/WITNESS

Falling Letters (Bokstavsbarn)

WHAT!?

► Miku Hatsune - Ievan Polkka. See also: Diehard Fans Turn Virtual Teen Singer into Japanese Mega-Star and Miku’s Wikipedia entry.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader C.: “Love the Snow tha Product verse in that song.”

• Reader V.: “Reader beware and be careful Googling (onward genericide!) glabrous!”

• Reader T.: “Thanks for links to The Allusionist [‘Open Me’ Part 1 and Part 2] episodes. I devoured them and wanted more. I’m delighted every time I learn that the love of writing letters isn’t limited to myself and my dwindling crew of correspondence companions.”

• Reader M.: "I hope readers weren’t so turned off by your Louis C.K. ‘joke’ (really?) that they missed the excellent, funny animal photos!

• Reader F.: “Those Goofein Journals are great! It amazes me how Gurfein maintained a sense of humor and gentle ardor during what must have been terrifying times.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

As always, I appreciate your support. If you like Katexic Clippings, please share it with your friends (and if you don’t like it, share it with your enemies)!

WORK

I got 1 job, 2 job, 3 when I need them
I got 5 roommates in this one studio, but I never really see them
And we all came America trying to get a lap dance from Lady Freedom
But now Lady Liberty is acting like Hilary Banks with a pre-nup
Man, I was brave, sailing on graves
Don’t think I didn’t notice those tombstones disguised as waves
I’m no dummy, here is something funny, you can be an immigrant without risking your lives
Or crossing these borders with thrifty supplies
All you got to do is see the world with new eyes

Immigrants, we get the job done

[…]

I been scoping ya dudes, ya’ll ain’t been working like I do
I’ll outwork you, it hurts you
You claim I’m stealing jobs though
Peter Piper claimed he picked them, he just underpaid Pablo
But there ain’t a paper trail when you living in the shadows
We’re America’s ghost writers, the credit’s only borrowed
It’s a matter of time before the checks all come
But…

[…]

The credit is only borrowed
It’s America’s ghost writers

[…]

Ay yo aye, immigrants we don’t like that
Na they don’t play British empire strikes back
They beating us like 808’s and high hats
At our own game of invasion, but this ain’t Iraq
Who these fugees what did they do for me
But contribute new dreams
Taxes and tools, swagger and food to eat
Cool, they flee war zones, but the problem ain’t ours
Even if our bombs landed on them like the Mayflower
Buckingham Palace or Capitol Hill
Blood of my ancestors had that all built
It’s the ink you print on your dollar bill, oil you spill
Thin red line on the flag you hoist when you kill
But still we just say “look how far I come”
Hindustan, Pakistan, to London
To a galaxy far from their ignorance
Cos-

Immigrants, we get the job done

—Lin Manuel-Miranda, Residente, Riz MC and Snow Tha Product
—from “Immigrants (We Get the Job Done)”

WORD(S)

glabrous /GLAY-brəs/. adjective. Hairless, smooth. Most often used to refer to skin or leaves. From Latin glaber (hairless, bald).

“This abundance of terms is often cited as a virtue. And yet a critic could equally argue that English is an untidy and acquisitive language, cluttered with a plethora of needless words. After all, do we really need fictile as a synonym for moldable, glabrous for hairless, sternutation for sneezing?” (Bill Bryson)

“Glabrous, which is the loveliest of all hair-related adjectives, means having no hair (on a given part) at all. Please note that glabrous means more baby’s-bottom-hairless than bald or shaved, though if you wanted to describe a bald person in an ironically fancy way you could talk about his glabrous dome or something.” (David Foster Wallace)

“…the neophyte attorneys were easily distinguishable from the parasite poets. The attorneys were glabrous, ambitious, social, and grave, the poets mendacious, flagrantly seedy, thinly optimistic, and (worst of all) poetic.” (Cynthia Ozick)

“A hirsute show of manliness ruffled along his forearms and from the collar of his shirt, reminding me of my own relative hairlessness, my chest (and stomach and buttocks) as streamlined and glabrous as a Ken doll.” (Viet Thanh Nguyen)

WEB

1. Over the past seven years, Rainbow Pack (founded by a 10-year-old!) has given 20,000 backpacks of school supplies to elementary school students in need. They would like to double that total in 2018. And for $10, you can help! → Rainbow Pack 2018

2. Remember when The New York Times tried to get hip with those neato grunge cats? → When Grunge Was Fake News

3. Combining, kind of, two things I love: coffee and paper. → G . F Smith launches new paper made from disposable coffee cups. See also: Kona Paper: Paper Made from Repurposed Coffee Bean Bag Fiber || EcoPaper’s Coffee Paper.

4. Celebrating the “humour & creativity of Tourettes” by not just dispelling myths but sharing nearly 650 pages of funny, shocking, surreal tics, searchable by keyword and theme. → tourettes hero

5. Seriously high-quality art history materials for your learning pleasure! → Smarthistory

6. A free book about artificial intelligence and the future that is both fascinating and readable. → Frankenstein’s Legacy: Four Conversations About Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and the Modern World

7. I had no idea the idea was even a thing. → Why Sign-Language Gloves Don’t Help Deaf People. And while I’m at it, here’s another Atlantic article about a previously unknown (to me) thing, this time in Japan: How to Hire Fake Friends and Family

8. The Allusionist delves into some powerful stories of snail mail relationships. → “Open Me” Part 1 and Part 2

9. Featuring funny, literal animals, not Louis C.K. Behold! → The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards Gallery.

10. Today in 1954, Ellis Island—gateway to the United States for more than 12 million immigrants—closes. From 1892–1924, Ellis Island was the focal point of what is claimed to be the largest human migration in modern history. Apparently, Ellis Island name changes were mostly mythical (or accidental), but the sometimes terrifying health inspections, including occasional eugenic screening, were not. See also: the jigsaw puzzle that could determine a would-be immigrant’s fate || the searcahable passenger lists of more than 51 million immigrants, passengers, and crew members who came through Ellis Island and the Port of New York || Selected Images of Ellis Island and Immigration, ca. 1880–1920 || Ellis Island Photographs from the Collection of William Williams, Commissioner of Immigration, 1902–1913 || Immigrant Number One, the story—and mystery—of the first person to arrive at Ellis Island || Ellis Island Oral Histories

WATCH/WITNESS

“When Marion Gurfein wrote to her husband Joe during his tours of duty in World War II and Korea, she sent him something more than letters. She created a mock newspaper, The Goofein Journal, which she hand-lettered on card stock. The Journal contained banner headlines, illustrations, photos and ‘news’ stories recording family events and a ‘social column’ which kept track of their friends’ whereabouts.” The site includes images, interviews and more.

WHAT!?

► A Chameleon Tongue Crushing Crickets in Slow Motion (20,000 fps). Side note: chameleon tongues can be up to 1.5x the length of their body…and the accelerator muscles that drive the tongue are essentially sphincters. See also: ► Chameleon Tongue Attack in Slow Motion - Earth Unplugged || If a chameleon tongue was a car, it could accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 1/100th of a second

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “Another fine word horde. Thank you.” — Aggressive enough to be a horde, eh?"

• Reader A.: “Oh dear. I guess I mispronounced victuals until this very day. Even though I’ve seen and heard the correct pronunciation, I never made the connection. Thanks! ¶ ► ‘I Have A Message For You’ is a beautiful documentary, and I was also struck by how the animation in it sort of matched the video clip of the Fahrenheit 451 firebook. ¶ Thanks as always for an interesting start to the week!” — I didn’t make the connection between the style of the two videos!

• Reader L. issues a correction: “Quick note! Humbled and honored to have Anguish Languish make the grade, but I think you are attributing to me copy from wikipedia. Sorry if my note didn’t make clear where link ended and reference material began. My bad!!!”

• Reader G. too: “Clan of the Cave Bear doesn’t really have erotic scenes, unless you count the rape scenes. I think you mean Valley of the Horses, which has so many you can just let the books pages fall open to them.” — Sadly, no, I really meant Clan. Even the young me, who was clueless regarding the violence, knew the book was terribly written (and, to my knowledge, my mom didn’t have any others)!

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

The Fifth of November

Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England’s overthrow.
But, by God’s providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stake
For King James’s sake!
If you won’t give me one,
I’ll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn’orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!

—Traditional English folk verse
—this version (and much more information about it) on PotW.org.

WORD(S)

genericide /jə-NAIR-ə-siyd/. noun. A more colorful term for when a trademarked name becomes genericized, or so commonly used that it becomes generic and is in danger of losing its protected status. Kleenex and Band-Aid are the prototypical victims of genericide. Technically, when a brand name is used generically, it is an example of antonomasia, a kind of metonymy in which a proper name is used for a common name. Fear of genericide is why you don’t hear Google employees using Google as a verb or see it used that way in their official sites and documentation. Google it and see!

For a living example, see the official Velcro videos ►Don’t Say Velcro and ►Behind The Scenes: Don’t Say Velcro.

“Today, all have become common nouns, bereft of monetary value, victims of ‘genericide’. This term was coined by marketing mavens to denote trademarks and brand names repeatedly lower-cased in everyday parlance.” (Scott Winokur)

“ …‘genericide,’ or (as Orin Hargraves puts it) ‘trademark creep’-is a common, neverending process. Common words that started as specific, trademarked products include ‘zipper,’ ‘thermos,’ ‘escalator,’ ‘popsicle,’ ‘band-aid,’ and ‘pooper-scooper.’” (Mark Peters)

WEB

1. Residents of the tiny Faroe Islands wanted Google to map their island. So they did…using sheep equipped with solar powered 360-degree cameras.

2. Super Terrain has create a version of Fahrenheit 451 that can only be read by applying flame to the pages. Thanks, Reader B.!

3. The alt-right is creating its own dialect. Here’s a complete guide. If that’s too—something—how about The IKEA Dictionary? Or The Don Martin (of Mad Magazine fame) Dictionary? Or a collection of short fiction composed entirely of example sentences from dictionaries?

4. Language ridiculousness du jour → Court rules request for ‘lawyer dog’ too ‘ambiguous’

5. Photos! We’ve got photos (and video)! → Photos Published of Female Librarians on Horseback Delivering Books in the 1930s || Photographer Spends Almost 10 Years Photographing the Most Beautiful Libraries Around the World || An aerial view of Chicago taken in 1914 with video from today

6. A podcast assertion about the mystery of consciousness led me to the story of The Man Who Lives Normally With Damage to 90% of His Brain. The truth turns out to be a bit different…but still pretty amazing.

7. The First Woman to Translate the ‘Odyssey’ Into English

8. Via Reader L. comes Anguish Languish, about which he writes, “Although written with a serious purpose in mind, the humorous aspects cannot be ignored, especially with Chace’s additions of phrases not in the traditional stories (‘A nervous sausage bag ice!’ for ‘I never saw such big eyes!’) and added plot twists.” See also: the Wikipedia article on this “ersatz, homophonic” language.

9. Where was this when I was skimming through Clan of the Cave Bear? → Audible’s new feature lets you skip right to the most erotic part of romance novels

10. Today in 1930, Sinclair Lewis is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters.” When a Swedish journalist called Lewis the morning of the award, Lewis thought it was a friend of his playing a joke and mocked the journalist’s accent, saying he could do better and repeating, “You haf de Nobel Brize.” In his Nobel Lecture, appropriately titled “The American Fear of Literature,” Lewis praised many other writers who he felt deserved the prize more than he, including William Faulkner, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather and Thomas Wolfe, but also noted that “true-blue” professors of literature in America thought that, “literature is not something that a plain human being, living today, painfully sits down to produce. No; it is something dead; it is something magically produced by superhuman beings who must, if they are to be regarded as artists at all, have died at least one hundred years before the diabolical invention of the typewriter,” who liked their “their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.” I’d say Lewis was mostly correct in his assessment of others…and his implicit assessment of his own work.

WATCH/WITNESS

“To escape Auschwitz, she left her father to die. Decades later, she got a message from him…”

WHAT!?

Photographer [Stefan Draschan] Spends Countless Hours Waiting To Capture Museum Visitors Who Match The Artworks. See also: Draschan’s People touching artworks series.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader N.: “I used to pronounce the word ‘victuals’ (pronounced vittles) as ‘vic-tu-als’. I found it in a poem by A.E. Housman and recited it to a few people until one person exasperatedly said he could not believe I was saying it incorrectly. In my defense, I was but 14. ¶ Reading a lot is a good way to learn how to pronounce words incorrectly.” — I mispronounced ‘victuals’ the same way…until just a few years ago!

• Reader M.: “Great to hear you in Northern Soundings with your usual erudition. One suggestion: sloooooow doooooown.” — I appreciate the advice…you aren’t the only one to tell me that. I’ll be working on it!

• Reader G.: “I really appreciated the article about the 2 soldiers who refused to participate in the Sand Creek massacre. I think it is really important to realize differences of opinion in history and notice those who took an unpopular stance and stood up for what is right. This is an important lesson for all of us when faced with participating or not in an injustice.”

• Reader B.: “A gorgeous newsletter. Well led off by the great Bradbury.”

• Reader P.: “Thanks for this. Keep ’m coming.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

I’m pleased to announce that Katexic Clippings is now a regular part of Robert Hannon’s Northern Soundings radio show. Listen for our word-a-licious segment at the end of each episode airing Tuesdays at 10a AKST on KUAC radio (and via live streaming) or anytime on the Northern Soundings site. Even if you’re tired of me, Robert’s interviews on the show are uniformly great and deserve a much wider audience!

WORK

“For these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles – breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.”

—Ray Bradbury
—from Something Wicked This Way Comes

WORD(S)

oronym /OR-uh-nim/. noun. A sequence of words or which sounds like a different sequence of words because of ambiguous word boundaries in speech. “I scream” and “ice cream” are perhaps the most common examples. An oronym is essentially an extended version of the homophone, which usually refers to single words that sound alike. Many puns are oronymic, such as “visualize whirled peas.” Mondegreens, or misheard song lyrics (“excuse me while I kiss this guy”) are musical oronyms and many mistakes in popular sayings result from this kind of confusion such as “it’s a doggy dog world.” Coined by Gyles Brandreth in his 1980 book The Joy of Lex.

• “The seamlessness of speech is also apparent in ‘oronyms,’ strings of sound that can be carved into words in two different ways: The good can decay many ways. ¶ The good candy came anyways.” (Stephen Pinker)

• “…a computer has no way of telling the difference between ‘The stuffy nose may dim liquor’ and ‘The stuff he knows made him lick her.’” (Joshua Foer)

• “She argued passionately against stopping violins in the street.” (Gilda Radner on Saturday Night Live)

• See the classic “Four Candles” sketch by The Two Ronnies. And not related to oronyms, you might as well take a few minutes to watch the “Sweet Shop Sketch” too!

• If you are seriously geeky, you might enjoy skimming Jennifer Hughes’ M.S. Computer Science thesis on the “MisheardMe Oronyminator” and “a nice cold hour.”

WEB

1. Clamor favorite Marian Call’s Grand Tour continues on the West Coast through November and early December. Catch a show (or two)!

2. Art and writing vending machines are a thing there should be more of (what better way to use old cigarette machines?). Check out Montreal’s Distroboto aka the zine machine and the Art-o-Mat.

3. I wish I’d heard this story a long time ago. → Remembering U.S. Soldiers Who Refused To Kill Native Americans At Sand Creek

4. Who knew that figuring out how to unboil an egg could lead to a revolution in cancer treatment (and make “unboil” a word?

5. Setting aside the controversy over the Booker Prize expanding its eligibility to any English-language novel, George Saunders 2017 win for Lincoln in the Bardo is well deserved. See also: George Saunders and Jason Isbell in conversation || George Saunders on life after the Man Booker Prize || A performance excerpt from the novel.

6. The ampersand (aka the “commercial and” or “esperluette”) is arguably the most beautiful glyph…this is a nice bit on its history with delightful illustrations. As always, I can’t bring up the ampersand without pointing you to Keith Houston’s short, illuminating series on the character and plug, again, his book Shady Characters.

7. Mansplaining is a problematic, perhaps over-used, idea…but two new words stemming from that conversation caught my eye this week: the funny (and equally problematic) mantrum and the significantly more useful, and sadly observable, hepeating.

8. Nostalgia’s unexpected etymology explains why it can feel so painful.

9. Woman Earns Over $70,000 a Year Showing Her Feet on Instagram.

10. Today is National Cat Day in the U.S. (but why limit yourself?), a day intended to “celebrate cats and help them to find forever homes.” They’ve even got a blog with “think pieces on life with felines.” See also: 20 Ways to Celebrate National Cat Day || the “Purr-fect Purr-sonalities” photo contest. But for my allergies, I agree with Mark Twain, who wrote, “If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.”

WATCH/WITNESS

A powerful story of forgiveness: ►Debbie Baigrie befriends, and eventually helps free, the young man who shot her and was serving a life sentence.

WHAT!?

Were you ever asked “if they jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?” Well, ►245 people did just that in a rope jump in Brazil. Note that this was a rope jump, not one using elastic bungee cords as you might expect. This ►first-person video of the jump is illuminating.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader R. – err - L.: “Loved the asemic writing link! Part of the hypnotherapy background includes what we call ‘automatic writing’, so this was a nice connection between that part of my life and proper literary pursuits.”

• Reader B.: “Crash blossoms are awesome. Thank you. ¶ Zone Rouge: a fine metaphor for the way WWI looms like a homicidal ghost throughout the next century.”

• Reader C. remembers a nice ‘crash blossom’: “…from our own Daily News Miner: ‘US urges North Korea to drop nukes.’ This was probably 15 years ago. ¶ I used to have the clipping from the paper, but I can’t seem to find it right now.”

Reader J. makes a great point: "It strikes me that ‘crash blossoms’ (and more particularly garden path sentences) are strategies poets use all the time, or are related to their strategies, which are often given a special inflection with line breaks I only have time to look for an example from my own stuff, but you can surely find better:

Like Aleph and Zed,
crossbreeds dearly crosshaired, a couple
does and a coupled ease …

I think this is related also both to pre-Chomskian syntactic models (which were more linear, and more common-sensical, than his transformational grammar–though his ‘syntactical ambiguity’ is at the heart of all of this) and to Donald Davidson’s understanding of semantic behavior as a kind of hypothesis machine (which, I believe, contemporary linguists don’t like at all, though I’m working on very limited data). But the combination of enjambment and sound-play in those lines of mine (a crosshaired couple of does/ a couple of those and a couple of these/ what a couple does [duz] leading to a coupled ease) seems to me to point up a more general expectation that the kind of compression poetry allows (like the kind of compression headlines require) presses us to doublecheck our backtracking and revisit our anticipations all the time."

I hadn’t thought of enjambment in this way before, but it makes perfect sense. An example from a poem appropriate for the season, Burlee Vang’s “To Live in the Zombie Apocalypse”:

The moon will shine for God
knows how long.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

Another query for the Clamor…any favorite ‘crash blossoms?’

WORK

There were people I wanted so much before I had them that the entire experience of having them was grief for my old hunger.

—Sarah Manguso
—from 300 Arguments

WORD(S)

crash blossom. noun. An ambiguous headline, particularly one that yields comedic interpretations. Coined in 2009 by Danny Bloom based on the headline “Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms” in Japan Today, crash blossoms tend to occur in headlines because of space constraints. These linguistic gems are a kind of garden path sentence, in which one must backtrack to resolve an ambiguity, most often due to words that can be nouns or verbs, as in the classic example: “The old man the boat.”

Language Log has a category devoted to crash blossoms with many great examples. One of my favorites: “Mutilated body washes up on Rio beach to be used for Olympics beach volleyball.”

Ben Zimmer wrote a New York Times column on the phenomenon yielding, among other gems, “Giant Waves Down Queen Mary’s Funnel.”

A few other choice examples:

“Fat men enjoy longer lasting sex scientific research show”

“McDonald’s fries the holy grail for potato farmers”

“Lawmen from Mexico Barbecue Guests”

“Genetic Engineering Splits Scientists”

“Girl found alive in France murders car”

“Trump demands dog ‘Dreamers’ deal”

WEB

1. 10 Books About Words For Logophilic Readers Interested In The Wonders Of Language (I’ve read five of them and all were good).

2. Inside Racists Anonymous.

3. About “Zone Rouge,” areas in France still cordoned off due to human remains and unexploded munitions from World War I.

4. The Washington Post’s robot reporter has published 850 articles in the past year.

5. An awesome collection of 70s Movie Poster Typography.

6. President Trump’s Lawsuit Against Estate Of Johannes Gutenberg. While we’re linking to The Onion, how about this one: Historians Discover Meditation Spread From Ancient China By Annoying Monk Who Wouldn’t Shut Up About How It Changed His Life.

7. A quick-hit exploration of asemic writing/art, including examples from Henri Michaux and Xu Bing, author of A Book from the Sky.

8. I find Brand New, a site that collects changes to famous (and not-so-famous) brand logos, strangely addictive.

9. Merriam-Webster has quite a few word games on its site that Clamorites are likely to enjoy. I had fun with, and did terribly on, the Original Meanings Quiz (subtitled: a quiz for the pedantic and those annoyed by them!)

10. Today in 1917, Margaretha Geertruida ‘Margreet’ MacLeod (née Zelle), better known as Mata Hari, (in)famous femme fatale and legendary spy (or was she?), is executed by a firing squad in Paris. A bit of trivia: what do Mata Hari, Geronimo, Beethoven, Descartes and the Marquis de Sade have in common? They all had their heads (more or less) stolen.

WATCH/WITNESS

From quarks and stuff to smart machines making more smart machines…in just under 20 minutes: a ► history of the entire world, i guess (through May 2017, at least).

WHAT!?

► Fidget spinner spinning in space! Can we finally say the fidget spinner phenomenon has jumped the shark?

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “Re: Abbot and Costello, this is a nice set of audio explorations. ¶ Fun podcast in general.”

• Reader B. also adds: “Re: Frankenstein, the extra book is Volney’s Ruins of Empires. Really interesting late 18th-century book. Apparently the first European history to consider African nations on a par with their own.”

I appreciate the responses to my question about experiences discovering you had been mispronouncing a word for a long time. Perhaps my description of “mortified” was hyperbolic, though it’s been my experience that there can be a classist/elitist component to the experience, such as the time in my first year of college when I, a “hick from the sticks,” managed to mispronounce both clique (it’s not click-way) and cliché (it’s not kleesh) in the same presentation in a literature class I was in every way unready for. Anyway, on to your thoughts:

• Reader R.: “I could not count the number of times I’ve learned my pronunciation was wrong. I have always thought it came from learning words through reading rather than hearing. Since that is a mark of grace I have never been mortified.”

• Reader A.: “The only one is from long long ago. My favorite vegetable as a kid were those little kidney shaped green beans. One time in class (like 2nd grade) my teacher asked the class if anyone knew what a llama was. I shot my hand in the air and described the beans…”

• Reader S.: “I learned in my fifties (I am now in my seventies, but the pain of the discovery is still raw) that I was saying “donkey” wrong. Until that moment, I had pronounced it to rhyme with “monkey”. The way I say it now doesn’t rhyme with anything really, but at least I’m saying it right: ‘don’ as in ‘Donald’. ¶ Or perhaps it isn’t that simple. I was born and live in England, but between the ages of fifteen months and nearly eight years, I lived in the USA, in New Jersey to be more precise, and I have occasionally vaguely wondered whether NJ people say “donkey” to rhyme with “monkey”. Or perhaps I have always had something of a tin ear.”

• Reader D.: “I’ve never been sure how to pronounce ‘plebeian.’ I thought I knew how to pronounce it, and then I had someone rather disdainfully pronounce it a different way (to make the point that I did not know how to pronounce it, but also to undermine the point I was making in what I was saying. In other words, her goal was to make me feel dumb because she did not like my point. But I still avoid using it because I’m afraid that I pronounce it in the wrong way.”

• Reader G.: “Hors d’oeuvres is, of course, the mispronunciation I was teased for most ruthlessly. Deservedly so as I was well aware of how to pronounce the word when used at a party, but I believed it to be a different word when I read it in a cookbook. I’m sure there were many, many more, as my parents and older brother loved to laugh at my expense when they corrected me.”

• Reader J. "…try as I may, I can’t think of a comparable experience of my own, and I’m guessing that the reasons for this are more interesting than the fact itself, to wit:

it’s much more likely that someone would mispronounce a word than that they’d discover it; or so it seems to me, since I never discover any such thing;

I’m fiendishly driven to look things up, and (I believe) much more likely to make a wild (but pronounceable) substitution than to risk using a word I’m not sure about;

(and this is a rich one!) I have a passable working knowledge of English morphemes and their lexical combinations, and an absurd confidence in my capacity to engage and produce new combinations in an appropriate way. This in no way assures that I’ll pronounce unfamiliar words (most of mine are medicinal, these days: ah, rosuvastatin! oh, sweet finasteride!) correctly; but it does assure that I think I’m pronouncing them aright, and thus I proceed with sublime confidence and scorn all nay-sayers. Quod erat demonstrandum."

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

I have a question and would to hear from the Clamor: have you had the mortifying experience of belatedly, perhaps very belatedly, discovering you’ve been pronouncing a word wrong? Bonus points if it appeared you were the only one not in on the secret. What were some of those words? I suspect this is something that happens a lot to people who were strong readers as children, particularly if they grew up before the emergence of the many media opportunities we have now to hear less common and confusing words spoken.

WORK

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering and I responded … sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

—George Saunders
—from Congratulations, by the way

WORD(S)

litotes /LIY-toh-teez/. noun. A figure of speech using understatement to express an affirmative by negating its opposite. The definition is necessarily more complicated than the use: litotes is basically the opposite of hyperbole. “Warren Buffett isn’t too bad off,” is an example, as would be John Coltrane saying he “played the sax a little.” If you’ve ever used a phrase like, “he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed,” then you employed litotes. From Greek litotes (simplicity); from litos (small). See also: meiosis, which includes understatement of other kinds.

A few example of litotes in use:

“For that matter, I, too,
lost someone in the war at Troy—my brother,
and no mean soldier, whom you must have known…”
(Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald)

“In her days of courtship Mr Kernan had seemed to her a not ungallant figure…” (James Joyce)

“Ferris does not have what we consider to be an exemplary attendance record.” (Principal Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)

“Sir, it is not unreasonable; for when people see a man absurd in what they understand, they may conclude the same of him in what they do not understand.” (Robert Boswell)

WEB

1. Kazuo Ishiguro wins the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature. I only recently came around to the sense in awarding Bob Dylan the 2016 prize. I enjoy Ishiguro’s work, but it is so opposite Dylan in every way that I wondered at first if it was a prank.

2. If you can spot the “glaring errors” in this ABA Journal editorial quiz, I applaud you. If you catch all the “venial errors,” I bow before you.

3. The whole article is available free, but the bottom line: significant physical brain changes, not limited to the areas associated with “executive function,” were observed in three groups practicing, each practicing a different kind of meditation.

4. A fascinating short essay making a case for the importance of bridging the “neurotypical”/“neurodivergent” communication divide.

5. Flashbak has unearthed some compelling photographs of Belfast, Ireland circa 1955 || Pairs with these phenomenal photos, with equally great captions, taken of passengers by a cab driver in 1980s San Francisco.

6. Hapax (logomenon) was the WORD exactly two years ago. Now, Atlas Obscura provides more grist for the mill.

7. Some great long-forgotten expressions to knock your interlocutors for six. The one I plan to use first: a lazy sheep thinks its wool is heavy.

8. “Hijacked minds” and a “smartphone dystopia” are the definition of click-bait phrases…but at the heart of articles like Paul Lewis’s recent Guardian article is what I believe to be not just a real concern, but an incipient tragedy.

9. How is it that I’m not learning until just now that there’s a newly discovered Kurt Vonnegut story, “The Drone King,” in The Atlantic?

10. Today in 1942, comedy duo Bud Abbott and Lou Costello launch their famous The Abbott and Costello Show on NBC Radio. The show (many episodes can be found in the Internet Archive) would run for nearly nine years. In 1952, the duo’s television show, also called The Abbott and Costello Show, would premier. The TV show lasted only two years, but appears in multiple “top 100” lists and was one of Jerry Seinfeld’s primary influences when creating his eponymous (and I guess some would say successful) series. Incidentally, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet radio program also on the Internet Archive debuted on the same day as Abbott and Costello’s radio show.

WATCH/WITNESS

Spend four minutes with ► Adelene Koh, a (maybe the only) hand bookbinder in Singapore. Beautiful work (and thoughts on) rebinding old books.

WHAT!?

Timely for the season, peruse all of LitHub’s “40 of the Creepiest Book Covers of All Time”. Can you think of more and better? Thanks, Reader B!

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader J. on the Isle of Dogs: “I don’t see the Kurosawa influence, but the trailer looks fabulous. Now if only I can survive till March 23rd (it was hard enough holding out for Blade Runner!)”

• Reader B. on the reading lists hidden inside great books: “I love the syllabi novels. ¶ I always wanted to teach a course of the books referenced in Frankenstein.” — I remembered mentions of The Sorrows of Young Werther (a favorite of mine) and Paradise Lost…but searched and found a third, Plutarch’s Lives. Are there more?

• Reader D.: “Fun word fact about Madame Bovary - T.S. Eliot turned said madame’s name into an ism. He wrote: ‘I do not believe that any writer has ever exposed this bovarism, the human will to see things as they are not, more clearly than Shakespeare.’”

• A different Reader J.: “I just spent an hour browsing the Degas notebook and it was not time wasted. I want more!”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

Today would have been H. Palmer Hall’s 75th birthday. I had the pleasure of publishing the essay from which today’s WORK is taken in the inaugural issue of Eclectica more than 20 years ago. RIP.

WORK

I remember Petra perfectly after more than two decades, the sound of her voice whispering “ich liebe dich,” the way she looked when she dove naked into the water at Hippie Hollow, the arch of her back when she dried her hair after a swim, the way her bare feet felt next to mine, the sheer wonder of her pale hair as the dry wind blew it into my face while she napped, the slightly salty taste of her skin in the hot Texas summer sun. She will always remain as she was then and I would not know her now in her mid-fifties. As poorly versed as we were in that language that is not considered a language of love, but of war, German will always be for me an erotic language.

—H. Palmer Hall
—from “The Woman of My German Summer: A Sixties Idyll”
—found in Eclectica (Vol. 1, No. 1)

WORD(S)

interoception /in-tair-oh-SEP-shən/. noun. The sense of conditions and stimuli within the body. Compare to exteroception (the sense of stimuli acting on the body) and proprioception (the sense of the position of the body, and parts of the body, to other bodies or parts of the body). Thanks for the WORD, Reader S.

“We gain access to the body’s wisdom through interoception, which literally means ‘perceiving within.’” (Daniel J. Siegel)

“In addition to proprioception, there is another not-commonly-known sense called interoception. This is the sense of knowing how your body is feeling from the inside. It is not based in thinking about how your body is, but on the direct experiencing of it. It is an internal, embodied feeling, a felt sense. Someone asks you how you are feeling and you say ‘fine.’ How do you know you are fine? Interoception.” (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

“That will prepare you to understand the gist of interoception, which is the origin of feeling. After that, we’ll discover the unexpected and frankly astonishing influence that interoception has over your thoughts, decisions, and actions every day.” (Lisa Feldman Barrett)

“Buddhist meditation increases the thickness of the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula (structures associated with attention, interoception and sensory processing)…” (Sarah Lazar)

WEB

1. “Frances Glessner Lee’s miniature murder scenes are dioramas to die for” → How a Chicago Heiress Trained Homicide Detectives With an Unusual Tool: Dollhouses

2. An Edgar Degas notebook online, complete and in high-resolution.

3. I continue to be fascinated by the Container project, creating “books that aren’t books.” They’ve announced their next two projects, available soon → E, UIO, A is “a series of 30 typewritten letters in envelopes with hand-inked elements and other embellishments” and Tem is a boxed set of “origami gemstones cradled in containers of plaster-fused gauze.”

4. An interesting essay that makes fitting use of creative web design/presentation → Long live the group chat: a look at the beauty, ubiquity, and therapy of group chats for black and brown people.

5. Got the morbs. Coffee sisters. Parrot and monkey time. Some great stuff in this Dictionary of Victorian Slang.

6. The Reading Lists Hidden Inside 12 Great Books.

7. Wow → Scuba Diving Magazine’s 2017 Underwater Photo Contest Winners.

8. Adam Aleksic, aka theETYMOLOGYnerd (a fun site to browse) has created quite an array of etymology infographics on topics as diverse as Star Wars, the anatomy of the eye, and Harry Potter spells.

9. Links to a variety of “games with a purpose,” where your playing contributes to language research and other projects. Cool. → GWAP.

10. Today in 1856, Gustave Flaubert publishes the first installment of his new novel Madame Bovary. The serialization of what is now considered one of the most important and influential novels every written would continue until December 15. Shortly after, French public prosecutors charged Flaubert (and the owner and printer of La Revue de Paris) with obscenity. The prosecutor’s speech is a literary read in itself, a passionate argument full of flights such as this: “…from this first fault, this first fall, she glorified adultery, she sang the song of adultery, its poesy and its delights. This, gentlemen, to me is much more dangerous and immoral than the fall itself!” Flaubert and the others would be acquitted, driving the popularity of the novel even higher. English readers might be interested in Julian Barnes’ assessment of the problems of translating, generally, and Flaubert and Madame Bovary in particular.

WATCH/WITNESS

A beautiful moment to witness → ► 66 year old Bodybuilder William Reed sees color for first time.

WHAT!?

Introverts, ambiverts and clumsy conversationalists like myself might find these conversational silence cards a tempting handout.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader G.: “…the Humble Comma is the absolute best example of using punctuation (while imbibing its virtues) that I have ever read. Someone should make an inspirational poster out of that and put it up in high school English classrooms everywhere.”

• Reader B. adds: “Commas: William Shatner must surely be a divine force.”

• Reader T.: “Sounds like reader ‘V’ is a bona fide snowflake. Need to grow up, indeed.”

• Reader D.: “I have to admit: for the longest time I thought ‘fazed’ was actually ‘phazed’ and derived from Star Trek and being stunned.”

• Reader J.: “Light as sound? I get it, like sound stored as a tactile surface. And I totally don’t get it. And I love it.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

Thus all these tiny scratches give us breadth and heft and depth. A world that has only periods is a world without inflections. It is a world without shade. It has a music without sharps and flats. It is a martial music. It has a jackboot rhythm. Words cannot bend and curve. A comma, by comparison, catches the gentle drift of the mind in thought, turning in on itself and back on itself, reversing, redoubling and returning along the course of its own sweet river music; while the semicolon brings clauses and thoughts together with all the silent discretion of a hostess arranging guests around her dinner table.

Punctuation, then, is a matter of care. Care for words, yes, but also, and more important, for what the words imply. Only a lover notices the small things: the way the afternoon light catches the nape of a neck, or how a strand of hair slips out from behind an ear, or the way a finger curls around a cup. And no one scans a letter so closely as a lover, searching for its small print, straining to hear its nuances, its gasps, its sighs and hesitations, poring over the secret messages that lie in every cadence. The difference between “Jane (whom I adore)” and “Jane, whom I adore,” and the difference between them both and “Jane – whom I adore – ” marks all the distance between ecstasy and heartache. “No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put at just the right place,” in Isaac Babel’s lovely words; a comma can let us hear a voice break, or a heart. Punctuation, in fact, is a labor of love. Which brings us back, in a way, to gods.

—Pico Ayer
—from “In Praise of the Humble Comma”
—found in Time (June 24, 2001)

WORD(S)

faze /FAYZ/. verb. To perturb, disturb, unsettle or fluster. Unrelated to phase (from the Greek phainein, to show), with which it is commonly confused—see the Mark Twain example below—faze derives from the dialectal feeze (to alarm or frighten), from Old English fēsian (to drive away, to banish).

“His spirit?—why, it wasn’t even phased.” (Mark Twain)

“Peter and Don each did the same from down below, hooking their arms around her legs. It was a most awkward, animalistic position, and yet Peter found that it didn’t faze him in the least to be doing this.” (Elisabeth Hyde)

“It doesn’t faze me when my dreams are interrupted; they’re so gentle that I keep dreaming them as I speak…” (Fernando Pessoa)

“Red-Eyed Randy stands close to ArmedCompanion, who has the unfazed expression of a professional boxer challenged to a fight by a drunken nightclub bouncer.” (Nuruddin Farah)

WEB

1. Minna Sundberg, author and artist of the dystopic serial comic Stand Still. Stay Silent created a beautifully realized visualization of the tree of human languages.

2. Sometimes science fiction becomes reality, one small step at a time → Biomedical engineers connecting a human brain to the internet in real time || Also, another amazing (and beautiful) breakthrough: Scientists Can Now Repaint Butterfly Wings.

3. I don’t really get the science, but the idea (and the metaphor) are seductive → Light Has Been Stored as Sound For The First Time.

4. The interwebs have been abuzz with the news that Charlie (of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) was originally a black character…the New York Times has the detailed story.

5. Even Racists Got the Blues (Thanks, Reader S.!)

6. Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes, yet there are only 24 hours in a day?

7. I’ll just leave this right here → A pile of trash in the ocean has grown to the size of France—and some people want it recognized as a nation

8. Interesting history of a now-rarely-used word (though it was used by Chaucer and Shakespeare) and how it probably came to be written into Kim Jong-un’s speech (neukdari just doesn’t resonate) → What is the definition of ‘dotard,’ which North Korea called Trump?

9. A compelling project that increases awareness of the beauty of endangered languages and maybe even contributes to saving some of them → the story of Tribalingual.

10. Today is National Punctuation Day (for Clamorites in the US…the rest of you are spared), celebrating the useful and illogical rules alike and promoting irritating acts of pedantry. I enjoy apostrophe catastrophes as much as the next person, but for my own amusement at the daily struggle of communication, tempered by sympathy, much as I am entertained by—and feel great empathy with—kitchen disasters and cake wrecks. Sorry, all you Eats, Shoots & Leaves fans, for not sharing in the condescending vision of punctuation dystopia. But we can all still laugh and learn the conventions together: XKCD on hyphens, writing skills and a third way || The Oatmeal on semicolons and apostrophes.

WATCH/WITNESS

View the trailer for ► Wes Anderson’s new stop-motion film Isle of Dogs, which he says is heavily influenced by Akira Kurosawa!

WHAT!?

Via Reader B., a story on the Secret History of the Pissing Figure in Art. Pairs well with a typeface ready to make a splash: pissjar sans. I’m (kind of) resisting a steady stream of bad puns here.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader T. was the first of a few to add some context to last week’s WORD: “Just to be anal about it (hmmm — probably not the best expression to use in this context, but I’ll roll with it), a key ingredient to the term ‘cuck’ as used by white nationalists is not just that your wife is having sex with another man, but that she’s being pleasured by a BLACK man. Or, I suppose, a Jew, although I’m not sure how the optics of that distinction would play with the likes of Christopher Cantwell, who would probably be inconsolable in either case.” — Yes, though we are already seeing the term expand there just as it is expanding in terms of gender (in both white nationalist rhetoric and in porn, incidentally). I just chose not to go there assuming (correctly!) that some readers would bring it up.

• Reader M.: “The pairing of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Harriet Tubman was a good one. And ‘cuck’! Getting a little political, are we?” — Not intentionally, or at least not in the way we see it in common public discussions right now. Clearly some readers felt differently: I lost a half-dozen subscribers, including the one quoted next.

• Reader V.: “Your claim to avoid politics and then posting something political makes me sad. Like saying ‘with all due respect’ and then being disrespectful. If you don’t think Coates, Tubman and cucks are making a political statement, you need to grow up.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice. The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine. Enslavement was not destined to end, and it is wrong to claim our present circumstance—no matter how improved—as the redemption for the lives of people who never asked for the posthumous, untouchable glory of dying for their children. Our triumphs can never compensate for this.

—Ta-Nehisi Coates
—from Between the World and Me

WORD(S)

cuckold /KUK-əld/. noun or verb. A man whose spouse has been unfaithful or the act making a cuckold of someone. Of late, a scornful political term embraced most strongly by white nationalists to describe their opponents, often abbreviated as cuck. From Middle English cukeweld (same meaning), from Old French cucuault: cocu (cuckoo) + pejorative suffix -ault.

The interesting aspect of the etymology is its roots in the behavior of the female cuckoo bird, some of which lay their eggs in the nests of—and leave them to be cared for by—other birds, leading to the figurative word we are becoming all too familiar with today.

“Wasn’t I yet another cuckolded husband, slightly distinguished by knowing how to self-define with an Old English word?” (Sherman Alexie)

“There is a word for taking another man’s wife – to cuckold. But what is the word for taking another man’s daughter?” (Zadie Smith)

“…Keith launched into a squalid decameron of recent gallops and tumbles, instant liaisons, valiant cuckoldries, eagerly requited grabbings and gropings, quickies and workouts and hip-twangers and knee-tremblers…” (Martin Amis)

“Once at the facility we got hold of a bootleg video of a group of cuckolded Guilter husbands talking about the difficulties of living with simultaneous rage and gratitude.” (George Saunders)

“To be a cuckold once was the luck of the game, but his double cuckoldry had a whiff of revenge about it.” (William Trevor)

“His face shone as if he had newly washed it with soap, so radiant was he in his enjoyment of his past experience of being robbed, cuckolded, and deserted, and in his sure and certain hope of being so again.” (Rebecca West)

WEB

1. A stupendous photo of wave-like structures in Saturn’s rings…and the story behind it. || Pairs with an amazing photo of the starry sky as seen in Finland. || And how about the most arresting images of Jupiter I’ve ever seen?

2. Investigations range in subject from George Bush and the Prime Minister of Pakistan to Justin Timberlake… → Meet the Font Detectives

3. Palimpsests! → Lost Languages Discovered in One of the World’s Oldest Continuously Run Libraries [back in 2014, it was the WORD]

4. Mondegreens! → I don’t even know if vaseline is edible. [perhaps the most famous example of a mondegreen is hearing Jimi Hendrix’s lyric as “excuse me while I kiss this guy.”] || See also, the classic Science Behind Mondegreens.

5. Eggcorns! → The Eggcorn Database [Eggcorns are similar to mondegreens (misheard lyrics) but aren’t part of songs. For instance, “Holland days” instead of “Hollandaise” sauce.]

6. Reading lists! → More Than 100 Exceptional Works of Journalism || 100 Great Works OF Dystopian Fiction || 2017 National Book Awards longlists

7. Thousands of examples of main titles from films as far back as 1920. → The Movie Title Stills Collection

8. “When you memorize, you start to notice the things that you notice, your own habits of attention, your habits of reading.” → Memorize That Poem

9. “A collaborative project with almost 90 artists and one instruction: look up.” → One Sky

10. Today in 1849, Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland to Philadelphia. Tubman’s brothers Ben and Harry accompanied her at first but had second thoughts, so Tubman accompanied them home before making her own escape. Not content to remain safely in the North, Tubman returned to the South many times, eventually guiding more than 60 slaves—including her parents and many siblings—to freedom. After the Civil War, Tubman settled on a small property sold to her by the abolitionist senator William Seward (yes, he of Seward’s Folly fame), establishing a family center and eventually a rest home before her death in 1913.

WATCH/WITNESS

Tom Gauld on Twitter: “Useful abbreviations for the time-pressed online reader”. Time to celebrate…Tom has a new book, Baking with Kafka, coming out. If you don’t have all of Gauld’s books, you should!

WHAT!?

Inside the Weird and Wonderful World of Pet Portraits

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader K.: “I can’t stop laughing, I mean literally laughing, at those kitchen fails!”

• Reader C.: “We share first names and something else. I was also obsessed with the Guinness Book of World Records as a kid.”

• Reader W.: “I was wondering if you would consider adding to the website at the same time as the newsletter? I am constantly trying to send links to friends from the current edition and they aren’t on the site yet!” — I hope you’ll consider (or continue to) refer your friends to the email newsletter. I think Katexic Clippings is best experienced that way and the website is already a concession to reader demand that I don’t want to make into a full replacement.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

Barring a miracle in productivity, Katexic Clippings will be on hiatus for the next two weeks (though I might post some extras on the website)!

WORK

“Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.”

—Zadie Smith
—from White Teeth (2000)

WORD(S)

cark /kark/. verb or noun. To vex, burden or harass…or to suffer from such. Also: a trouble, a burden, a weight. From Latin carcare (to load a wagon), from Latin carrus (wagon). Less commonly, to die, originally an Australian colloquialism, possibly derived from the caw of the carrion crow.

I want to begin
with a new song
on a love that’s my cark and desire,
but is so far I cannot hit her mark
or my words fire her.
(Guillem IX, Duke of Aquitaine)

“What fondness is it to cark and care so much, at that instant and passage from all exemption of pain and care? As our birth brought us the birth of all things, so shall our death the end of all things. Therefore is it as great folly to weep we shall not live a hundred years hence as to wail we lived not a hundred years ago.” (Michel de Montaigne, translated by John Florio)

“…when I had fewer years than thou, my father said, ‘There are many carks in life which a little truth could end.’” (Edward Bulwer-Lytton)

“The young gentlemen were prematurely full of carking anxieties. They knew no rest from the pursuit of stony-hearted verbs, savage noun-substantives, inflexible syntactic passages, and ghosts of exercises that appeared to them in their dreams.” (Charles Dickens)

“I asks when we’re allowed out for exercise an’ air. ‘We ain’t let out,’ says he, ‘till the ship sails or unless we cark it. Now, the money.’ Wish I could say I stood my ground, but Arie Grote ain’t no liar. He weren’t jokin’ ‘bout carkin’ it, neither: eight o’ them ‘stout an’ willing lads’ left horizontally, two crammed into one coffin.” (David Mitchell)

WEB

1. Corncob? Donut? Binch? A Guide to Weird Leftist Internet Slang || Thanks, Reader B.!

2. Along with providing a lot of information about safely using various drugs, TripSit also provides volunteer, real-time live chat support for, naturally, people who are tripping (as well as taking, or planning to take, other drugs). || See also: one of the best episodes of one of the best podcasts ever, Reply All #44: Shine On You Crazy Goldman.

3. “Elephants use many different vocalizations to communicate. Share a message in Elephant and help us save this endangered language.”

4. I know some Clamorites fly a lot. Artist Nina Katachadourian’s Seat Assignment “consists of photographs, video, and sound works, all made in flight using only a camera phone and improvising with materials close at hand.”

5. “Users [of Buddhist Bitcoin] would be able to earn ‘Karma Coins’ by meditating and teaching Buddhism. The coins could be spent within a special Buddhist community called the ‘Lotos Network.’”

6. Some examples of words/phrases first seen in print the year I was born: bioethics, comfort food, dorky, erectile dysfunction and love handles. What are some of yours? Find out using Time Traveler by Merriam-Webster: Search Words by First Known Use Date

7. “The most significant fact to emerge from this history, though, is also the most obvious: Make It New was not itself new, nor was it ever meant to be. Given the nature of the novelty implied by the slogan, it is appropriate that it is itself the result of historical recycling.” → The Making of “Make It New” || Thanks again, Reader B.!

8. Some of these (nearly 300) kitchen fails are so funny I couldn’t resist sharing the kind of listicle I usually avoid.

9. Subreddit of the week: DadReflexes

10. Today in 1955, the first Guinness Book of World Records—a book that fascinated me like no other when I was young—is published in London. Over the course of its 62-year-long history, the book has become the best selling copyrighted title in the history of publishing, selling more than 134 million copies as of August, 2015. A few records for your browsing pleasure: the oldest surviving love poem (written in 2031 BC), the most piercings (single-count, male), the most piercings (single count, female) (the same person holds the lifetime record, being pierced 4,225 times as of June, 2006) and the fastest time to drink one litre of lemon juice through a straw.

WATCH/WITNESS

“Robin Hanson, research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University, ► speaks to his upcoming book, The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule the Earth. It’s a unique look into the social and economic effects of whole brain emulation.”

WHAT!?

“Unseen for decades and salvaged by a junk dealer in the 1960s from a trash heap outside a house in Texas, his entire body of work would later go on to marvel the intellectual world. But during his lifetime, Charles Dellschau had only been known as the grouchy local butcher.” → Found in a Junk Shop: Secrets of an Undiscovered Visionary Artist

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B., purveyor of links, notes: “Another fine haul, sir. ¶ I note that that apartment’s owner is a Banville fan.”

• Reader M. notes a word in Virginia Woolf’s observation of the eclipse: “Pendent. A lovely, resonate, word. Need to use it more.”

• Reader K.: “Whoooaaa. Those voices from the days of slavery are powerful. I literally couldn’t help but weep at listening to some of the songs from yesterday during these particular days.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

For your timely WORDy pleasure, I dug through the archive and posted the most excellent and apt syzygy.

WORK

“How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously. Frailly. In thin stripes. It hangs like a glass cage. It is a hoop to be fractured by a tiny jar. There is a spark there. Next moment a flush of dun. Then a vapour as if earth were breathing in and out, once, twice, for the first time. Then under the dullness someone walks with a green light. Then off twists a white wraith. The woods throb blue and green, and gradually the fields drink in red, gold, brown. Suddenly a river snatches a blue light. The earth absorbs colour like a sponge slowly drinking water. It puts on weight; rounds itself; hangs pendent; settles and swings beneath our feet.”

—Virginia Woolf
—from The Waves

WORD(S)

tarantism /TAIR-ən-tiz-əm/. noun. A nervous disorder that causes uncontrollable bodily movement; an extreme, even uncontrollable, urge to dance. Derived from tarantula, whose bite was commonly thought to be the cause of the problem. From Latin Tarentum (a town in southern Italy), popularly associated with tarantola (tarantula). || See also: tarantella, a rapid whirling southern Italian dance.

“In Mediterranean countries, spiders are thought to be poisonous, and in Spain and southern Italy the memory of tarantism is still vivid. It was believed that a tarantula bite infected a person with a fatal disease, from which it was possible to recover only by dancing frantically.” (Primo Levi)

“Curvet and caracole are terms from horsemanship for complicated steps and turns. Perhaps Legrand’s type of erratic dance here alludes to tarantism…” (Benjamin Fisher)

“To cope with ‘tarantism,’ the name given to the disease that follows on the bite of the Italian Spider, you must have recourse to music, the only efficacious remedy…” (J. Henry Fabre)

“What could account so entirely for his ways and actions as that strange poisoning which produces the state they call Tarantism?” (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.)

“She may sing and cajole herself into hoarseness, she may smile and gesticulate herself into a mild sort of tarantism, or freeze herself at one end of the table into a statue of Suppressed Reproach…” (Kate Douglas Wiggin)

WEB

1. Annie Dillard’s Classic Essay: ‘Total Eclipse’

2. Shelf life: novelist Hanya Yanagihara on living with 12,000 books…in a one-bedroom NYC apartment.

3. From “1–11” to “Zog,” the Hate Symbols Database “provides an overview of many of the symbols most frequently used by a variety of white supremacist groups and movements, as well as some other types of hate groups.”

4. Voices from the Days of Slavery collects nearly seven hours of recorded interviews with former slaves including their time as slaves, slaveholders, freedom and even sing some songs learned during their time as slaves. Remarkable. || Pairs with a fascinating episode of 99% Invisible on the “Dismal Swamp” which uses interviews and songs from the archive.

5. This 17th-century Jacobean traveling library is beautiful.

6. Scroll down for the graphs! → The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television: Increases in the Use of Swear Words in American Books, 1950–2008

7. Want to Transcribe Rare Magical Manuscripts on Your Lunch Break? Turn out, you can.

8. Ear Hustle is a pretty amazing podcast made by a pair of inmates in San Quentin State Prison.

9. And a bit of a feel-good link: Meet Dindim, the penguin who returns to his human soulmate every year. As in Dindim swims at least 3000 miles to return to the man who rescued him.

10. Today in 1741, Vitus Bering, a Danish cartographer and officer in the Russian Navy, sights the southern coast of what would become the US state of Alaska. Four months later, Bering would become one of the 31 to die on the ill-fated expedition that included the discovery of Kodiak Island. Bering’s sympathy for the native people, including those who murdered some of his crewmen, caused the Russian administration to suppress much of Bering’s story for more than a century. The Bering Sea, Bering Island and the Bering Land Bridge are among the sites named in his honor.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Eclipses Throughout Our Universe

WHAT!?

► disillusionment of 10 point font → “Animated on a Smith-Corona Galaxie Deluxe typewriter” (just like one of mine).

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader C.: “Is that a sinistral coil I see in the Ulysses glove project?”

• Reader B.: “In the fascinating article, ~The 19th Century Moral Panic Over … Paper Technology~ it reads, ‘The letters had to be hand-placed in a matrix, coated with a special…’. This might be a casual description with no intent to mislead, but if one is to be exacting, it’s wrong. Letters are hand-placed into a composing stick and then the grouping of letters are placed into a chase. The ‘matrix’ was the secret to Gutenberg’s success. It was the way of casting letters so they would all be equal in height and base allowing for straight/even lines of text.”

• Reader B.: “Again, from ~The 19th Century Moral Panic Over … Paper Technology~ we read, ‘The problem with wood-pulp paper was its acidity and short cellulose chains, which made it liable to slow dissolution over decades.’ This is true and books printed from about 1850 to 1950 are dissolving in front of our eyes, while much older books persist. However, the technology and chemistry of wood pulp paper has changed and there are those who would argue that high alpha cellulose paper has the archival qualities of rag paper. ¶ One of the early producers of this paper (1940s) was Mohawk Superfine. ¶ I would also point out that many papers today are made from sustainable tree growth. I think such papers have a long future, where as one wonders what happened to the paperless business model. You’d think there would be a reduction in paper use.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.