Rule, Brittaniea! Miss Beehive 1963
The Reader
I know I’ve already said this, but Instapaper is the bee’s knees.
Here are links to some stories on writing I’ve recently bookmarked, read, and then felt compelled to save:
Freelance Fizzle! — Workin’ for The Mag ain’t quite like it used to be
Physical Discipline — A delicate and disturbing short story, a favorite of Maud’s
Confident? Or [...]
Hook and wool
How’s this for inspiration?
Amid more than 200 dead, a 98-year-old woman was pulled from the rubble of her home nearly 30 hours after Monday’s earthquake in Italy. How did she occupy herself while waiting for rescuers she wasn’t even sure would come? She crocheted! (Link via web-goddess)
Mudblast
Right, first things first. The motorbike is not like a car.
Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear writes about newbies on two-wheeled vehicles, and how much he “hated” the new Vespa. (This was written last October. I know it’s old. It’s still funny.)
Last summer when gas was $4 a gallon everyone started buying scooters and Houston was [...]
Ocean of fear
My partial viewing of a documentary on the USS Indianapolis recently caused to surface a previously unrealized phobia — the sight of prey (in this case, people) thrashing about in open water. Don’t you know that the kraken can smell fear?
The kraken legend is Norwegian, and has a real-life relationship to the giant squid. The [...]
Etymology
Driving through a small Texas town this weekend I saw a sign on a building: Parlor for Funerals. The wording was odd but it set me off on a spiral of thinking about words whose origins are more synergistic than their current usages belie.
Parlor is one of them. Originally meaning “a room for receiving or [...]
Chest and drawers
“I don’t let any of my female relatives buy underwear from men. It’s just too embarrassing.”
The Associated Press on the awkward business of buying lingerie in Saudi Arabia.
Mexico, 1956
We’ve Crossed the Zone Line – Tropic of Cancer – Mexico, 1956, originally uploaded by vieilles_annonces.
I want to go to Mexico so bad, but I’ve waited too long, and now it’s not safe. This collection of vintage vacation photos will tide me over for now. (Link via Wipe Your Feet.)
Two things I am looking forward to today
Freelance Camp
Leslie and the Lys with Stereo Total
Save the date
Even if you don’t have a scooter you should still come. If only to drool over ours. More details TBA. In the meantime, check here.
Another day, another rally
Are you a Mod? Or are you a Rocker?
The first Mod vs. Rockers rally to take place in Houston in many years has been scheduled for September. The site is short on details, but it’s gonna be organized by the same guys who put on the Dallas rally and it’s gonna be awesome.
God, I [...]
Mateys
Apparently there is a whole subculture of people who like to dress and act like pirates, for fun. They’re like furries, I guess. But with eye patches.
Galveston Island once had it’s own bona-fide pirate, pictured above. His name was Jean Lafitte.
Memoir workshop at Houston Public Library
Went to a kick-ass memoir-writing workshop last night at the downtown library. The free two-hour class was led by Thomas Larson, personal essayist, journalist at the San Diego Reader and author of The Memoir and the Memoirist. He also teaches college-level writing classes and workshops like the one I took last night.
I was so glad [...]
Checkitout
I’m blogging for the Houston Press now. This makes me beyond happy.
Homemade velodrome
Makes me dizzy.
Censorship dies in the light of day
NPR reported last week that Judith Krug, librarian, First Amendment champion and creator of Banned Books Week, has died.
Banned Books Week isn’t until late September this year. I went through a phase once wherein the only books I would read were books that had been banned or challenged. It was my Henry Miller phase.
Speaking of Henry Miller
Dogmatika has linked to a 35-minute documentary of Henry Miller, 81 years old, delivering a monologue in the bathroom of his California home.
Do not ask me how Miller differed from Bukowski. He just did. They were both misogynists, but something about Miller I really loved. I was never really drawn to the sex, per [...]
Alec Baldwin vs Caitlin Flanagan
When he calls a slim and attractive girl… a pig, he is using the word in another sense, one that suggests a particularly feminine kind of repulsiveness.
Can’t believe I was ever even remotely impressed by something Caitlin Flanagan would write. Alec Baldwin is no better.
Link via Gwen
The Adelsverein
…was was a colonial attempt to establish a new Germany within the borders of Texas.
Stumbled across this while doing research for a story. Interesting. I’ve always wondered about the prevalence of German names, towns and culture in the Texas Hill Country. New Braunfels and Fredericksburg were the first cities to be established.
A town where one can ride…
“… with no stoplights, no police, no danger to hit some cage or some dog.”
This site is old as hell, but on the 23rd anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, please read this woman’s account of her motorcycle trip to the ghosts towns nearby.
Rock ‘n’ Roll
Four-time Tony Award winner Tom Stoppard returns to the Alley with Rock ‘n’ Roll , winner of London Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Best New Play. It’s August 1968, and Russian tanks are rolling into Prague. Jan, the Czech student, lives for rock music, Max, the English professor, lives for Communism, and Esme, the flower [...]
Today, I
Fed a baby alpaca
Ate a really good hamburger
Drank locally-brewed mint honeywine
Rode through Sam Houston National Forest
Got rained on
Met a French blues musician
Hunt, TX
Read about my trip to Stonehenge II (and the Texas moais) for the Houston Press. More pictures here.
The Rock
Remember my trip to Enchanted Rock? I finally wrote it up for the Houston Press travel series. Click the picture to see more.
Two things I have enjoyed today:
Writing is time that’s spent on you. — Words of advice from Janice Erlbaum
I printed this out to keep in my notebook.
***
Just before she flew off like a swan
to her wealthy parents’ summer home,
Bruce’s college girlfriend asked him
to improve his expertise at oral sex,
and offered him some technical advice:
Use nothing but his tonguetip
to flick the [...]
The May 2009 Smithsonian has EVERYTHING!
naked man on the cover
narwhals!
Cold War espionage
Depression-era fashion photography
references to Henry Miller
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