Busy Day Jello Commercial (1956)

Rain fell on Skagit Valley

 Rain fell on Skagit Valley.

It fell in sweeps and it fell in drones. It fell in unending cascades of cheap Zen jewelry. It fell on the dikes. It fell on the firs. It fell on the downcast necks of the mallards.

And it rained a fever. And it rained a silence. And it rained a sacrifice. And it rained a miracle. And it rained sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem.

Moisture gleamed on the beak of the Raven. Ancient shamans, rained from their homes in dead tree trunks, clacked their clamshell teeth in the drowned doorways of forests. Rain hissed on the Freeway. It hissed at the prows of fishing boats. It ate the old warpaths, spilled the huckleberries, ran in the ditches. Soaking. Spreading. Penetrating.

And it rained an omen. And it rained a poison. And it rained a pigment. And it rained a seizure. 

Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

Mark Twain with chickens

 

If you feel like crap. . . or even if you don't

Watch this. If you don't go "awwwwwww. . . " at least seven times, you have a heart of stone. This is one of the very few cat videos I've seen that has no superfluous chatter in the background. Just the cats.

Enough is enough is enough

The novelist and children’s writer explains why he resigned as a patron from the Oxford literary festival

‘If you are professionally involved in a project you should be paid’ … Philip Pullman. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

Friday 15 January 2016 08.39 GMT

I resigned as patron of the Oxford literary festival because I couldn’t reconcile it with being president of the Society of Authors, which is campaigning strongly for speakers at literary festivals to be properly paid (to be paid at all, actually).

The OLF has never paid me for any of the events I’ve done during the 20 years of its existence. In the early days, when it was a smaller-scale affair run on a shoestring, local patriotism inclined me to speak for no payment, but later it became much grander, with a large array of corporate sponsors. It gave itself an air of being exclusive and prestigious, with black tie dinners and receptions involving minor members of the royal family. None of that has anything to do with literature, in my view, but everyone to their own taste: it just isn’t mine.

Philip Pullman: professional writers set to become 'an endangered species'

More important was the principle (it seemed to be a principle) of not paying speakers. Simple justice argues that if someone is professionally involved in a project, ie isn’t working as a volunteer, they should be paid. Festivals have to pay cleaners, designers, printers, administrators, publicists, taxi drivers, cooks, waiters, suppliers of marquees and toilets and electricity and food and drink. Only the authors, the very reason anyone buys a ticket in the first place, are expected to do it for nothing. Well, enough is enough.

BLOGGER'S THOUGHTS. I shared this piece on FB, and it's gaining more "likes" and shares than I thought possible. Writers are reluctant to admit they agree with this, because they are afraid it will get around that they're ungrateful to work for nothing. Then they won't be asked back at all, and they'll have less than nothing. The following is a comment I posted on FB in response.

I often get the feeling it's considered in poor taste for writers even to think about money in connection with their work, let alone think about asking for it. They're considered egotists if they desire a readership, as if it's purely mercenary and not the basic need for the storyteller to tell her story to someone who will listen. At the same time, and paradoxically, writers are expected to do well and "sell", so long as they act as if it isn't important to them. In fact, if they DON'T sell it's murmured that they are failures and box office poison and will certainly never get another book deal.

Not only do authors not get paid for appearing at literary festivals, they must pay for their own plane tickets/meals/laccommodation wherever they go. They can end up seriously in the hole. Why must they donate so much of their money and time when the guy who screws in lightbulbs is automatically paid? To say no and/or protest means you're ungracious and unappreciative of the opportunity to have all that "great exposure". 

We pay the person who delivers the paper ever morning. Why not pay people who deliver the message?

The world of writing and publishing is crazymaking in the extreme. It reminds me of a dysfunctional family which communicates with muddy/mixed messages, where you can't win because you don't understand the "code" - mainly because it keeps changing and you're constantly kept off-balance.

All things are made better with cats (especially art)

The paintings 'made better with cats'

By Genevieve Hassan  Entertainment reporter, BBC News

Venus of Urbino happily ever after, based on Titian

Russian artist Svetlana Petrova has become known for her online artwork of famous portraits featuring her big ginger cat Zarathustra.

Ahead of a new exhibition bringing the internet meme into a physical setting, the artist tells the BBC why she first created the artwork and how digital technology is helping to create new art forms.

"I lost my mother in 2008 and she left me Zarathustra. I got horrible depression after her death and for two years I was unable to do something creative. By chance a friend asked me 'why don't you make an art project with your cat because he's so funny'.

"I've had cats before and included them in my work, like playing in theatre shows and I've made costumes for them. But I thought, 'What can I do with Zarathustra, because my mother spoilt him and he's so fat'.




Occupy the Sky, based on Marc Chagall, Over the town


"Zarathustra likes posing and is a really intelligent cat. He likes to lie on his back and make strange faces like he's speaking with somebody, so I began to take photos of him and inserted them into paintings.

"I liked the result so I sent it to some friends, other artists and galleries. Everyone laughed so much, so I made a website, but then forgot about it because I had another project.

"After a few months, another friend saw my cat work in my albums and asked why I had it. I told him it was my cat and he said: 'Your cat is all over the internet!'




Portrait of an Unknown Woman in Russian Costume and a Very Known Cat in a Vet Collar, based on Ivan Argunov


"Now we have special photo sessions with a professional photographer and a team who entertain Zarathustra. But sometimes he's not in the mood and I have to wait months until he agrees to make the right face.

"I see his pose and imagine what painting he can enter, or I find a painting and try to make him play that role of the character I see in the painting.




Mona Lisa true version, based on Leonardo da Vinci


"Sometimes it's a character in the original painting, sometimes it's an added character.

"Like with the Mona Lisa - in the original photo, Zarathustra was really sinking in my hands on my lap and sliding because he's too big - it makes Mona Lisa look like a modern girl who's taking a selfie with her cat.




Arrangement in Grey, Black and Ginger. Whistler's Mother and the Cat, based on James Abbott McNeill Whistler's Arrangement in Grey and Black No 1


"I also now make digital paintings - I use high-resolution digital reproductions of the artworks and insert the cat in the style of the painting.

Then I print them on natural canvas in the size of the original and paint over them with textured gels and oils and match the colours as closely as possible.




Portrait of Catherine II the Legislator in the Temple Devoted to the Cat, based on Dmitry Levitsky


"Sometimes people don't realise it is not the original painting - my friend went to the airport with a gift I gave her of one of the artworks in a museum-style frame and it was very hard for her to prove to customs it wasn't an old painting.

"She tried to explain: 'Do you think an 18th Century painter would really draw cats instead of horses?' She had to scratch it with her nails to show it was printed underneath.




Heroes (Bogatyri), based on Viktor Vasnetsov




Ameri-cat Gothic. I can has cheezburger? Based on Grant Wood's American Gothic


"People usually think art is something they cannot touch, but there is a lot of art in the viral internet world - like internet memes. There is a new trend and generation of artists and critics thinking about it.

"For me it was a possibility to create something that is beautiful and make people investigate something new and interesting, and try and create some art themselves.

"Digital technology gives people the opportunity to make art and museums should be more attentive to it."




Kitteh givez new hope, based on Shepard Fairey's Hope

"Oh, look at that one": cute cat pictures!

Every blogger's cheapest trick. But they ARE cute, aren't they?

Bob Dylan quotes: he who's busy being born

There's no black and white, left and right to me any more; there's only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I'm trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial such as politics. They has got nothing to do with it. I'm thinking about the general people and when they get hurt.
Address to the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (13 December 1963)

a poem is a naked person . . . some people say that I am a poet

Liner notes, Bringing It All Back Home (1965)

Reporter: How many people who labor in the same musical vineyard in which you toil - how many are protest singers? That is, people who use their music, and use the songs to protest the, uh, social state in which we live today: the matter of war, the matter of crime, or whatever it might be.
Bob Dylan: Um...how many?
Reporter: Yes. How many?
Bob Dylan: Uh, I think there's about, uh...136.
Reporter: You say about 136, or you mean exactly 136?
Bob Dylan: Uh, it's either 136 or 142.
Press conference in Los Angeles, California (17 December 1965), as seen and heard in No Direction Home.

Keep a good head and always carry a light bulb.
Heard in the D. A. Pennebaker documentary Dont Look Back (1967)

God, I'm glad I'm not me.
Said when reading a newspaper article about himself in Dont Look Back (1967)

Chaos is a friend of mine.
Newsweek (9 December 1985)

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.
Interview published with the Biograph album set (1985)

The first two lines, which rhymed 'kiddin' you' and 'didn't you,' just about knocked me out, and later on, when I got to the jugglers and the chrome horse and the princess on the steeple, it all just about got to be too much.
Discussing the song "Like a Rolling Stone" in Rolling Stone magazine (1988)

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around — the music and the ideas.
The Guardian (13 February 1992)

That ear - I mean, Jesus, he's got to will that to the Smithsonian.
In reference to Brian Wilson, Newsweek (1997)

Because Dickens and Dostoevsky and Woody Guthrie were telling their stories much better than I ever could, I decided to stick to my own mind.
Liner notes, The Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964 (2004)

We may not be able to defeat these swine, but we don't have to join them.
As quoted in Kingdom of Fear (2003) by Hunter S. Thompson

Sometimes you say things in songs even if there's a small chance of them being true. And sometimes you say things that have nothing to do with the truth of what you want to say and sometimes you say things that everyone knows to be true. Then again, at the same time, you're thinking that the only truth on earth is that there is no truth on it. Whatever you are saying, you're saying in a ricky-tick way. There's never time to reflect. You stitched and pressed and packed and drove, is what you did.
Chronicles: Vol. One (2004)

The road out would be treacherous, and I didn’t know where it would lead but I followed it anyway. It was a strange world ahead that would unfold, a thunderhead of a world with jagged lightning edges. Many got it wrong and never did get it right. I went straight into it. It was wide open. One thing for sure, not only was it not run by God, but it wasn’t run by the devil either.
Chronicles: Vol. One (2004)

I put one on the turntable and when the needle dropped, I was stunned — didn't know whether I was stoned or straight.
Referring to the first Woody Guthrie record he ever heard, on Chronicles (2004)

Morality has nothing in common with politics.
Chronicles: Vol. One (2004)

I had ambitions to set out and find, like an odyssey or going home somewhere… set out to find… this home that I’d left a while back and couldn’t remember exactly where it was, but I was on my way there. And encountering what I encountered on the way was how I envisioned it all. I didn’t really have any ambition at all. I was born very far from where I’m supposed to be, and so, I’m on my way home, you know?
No Direction Home (2005)

You can't be wise and in love at the same time.
No Direction Home (2005)

He's a pinboy. He also wears suspenders. He's a real person. You know him, but not by that name... I saw him come into the room one night and he looked like a camel. He proceeded to put his eyes in his pocket. I asked this guy who he was and he said, "That's Mr. Jones." Then I asked this cat, "Doesn't he do anything but put his eyes in his pocket?" And he told me, "He puts his nose on the ground." It's all there, it's a true story.
When asked about the meaning of the song "Ballad of a Thin Man" during a 1965 interview.

I don't call myself a poet, because I don't like the word.
Said at a press conference, as seen in the Martin Scorsese documentary No Direction Home

I don't believe you! You're a liar! … Play it fucking loud!
Dylan's response to the shout of "Judas" by a heckler, followed by his instructions to his band over the count-in to "Like A Rolling Stone." Heard on The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966

I read On the Road in maybe 1959. It changed my life like it changed everyone else's.
On the influence of Jack Kerouac on him, as quoted Grasping for the Wind : The Search for Meaning in the 20th Century (2001) by John W. Whitehead

Someone handed me Mexico City Blues in St. Paul [Minnesota] in 1959 and it blew my mind. It was the first poetry that spoke my own language.
On the influence of Jack Kerouac, as quoted in Jack Kerouac (2007) by Alison Behnke, p. 100

It’s not a character like in a book or a movie. He’s not a bus driver. He doesn’t drive a forklift. He’s not a serial killer. It’s me who’s singing that, plain and simple. We shouldn’t confuse singers and performers with actors. Actors will say, “My character this, and my character that.” Like beating a dead horse. Who cares about the character? Just get up and act. You don’t have to explain it to me.
. Bob Dylan, interview with Bill Flanagan. telegraph.co.uk (13 Apr 2009)

It's peculiar and unnerving in a way to see so many young people walking around with cellphones and iPods in their ears and so wrapped up in media and video games. It robs them of their self-identity. It's a shame to see them so tuned out to real life. Of course they are free to do that, as if that's got anything to do with freedom. The cost of liberty is high, and young people should understand that before they start spending their life with all those gadgets.
Rolling Stone #1078 (14 May 2009), p. 45

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"Positively 4th Street", by Bob Dylan

You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there grinning

You got a lotta nerve
To say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on
The side that’s winning

You say I let you down
You know it’s not like that
If you’re so hurt
Why then don’t you show it

You say you lost your faith
But that’s not where it’s at
You had no faith to lose
And you know it

I know the reason
That you talk behind my back
I used to be among the crowd
You’re in with

Do you take me for such a fool
To think I’d make contact
With the one who tries to hide
What he don’t know to begin with

You see me on the street
You always act surprised
You say, “How are you?” “Good luck”
But you don’t mean it

When you know as well as me
You’d rather see me paralyzed
Why don’t you just come out once
And scream it

No, I do not feel that good
When I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief
Perhaps I’d rob them

And now I know you’re dissatisfied
With your position and your place
Don’t you understand
It’s not my problem

I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you

Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You’d know what a drag it is
To see you

Blogger's revenge. Yes, I did write some stuff about this, how therapeutic this song is for so many people, then deleted it. About how he gets away with saying things we maybe all should say, but instead we try to be Nice and keep it inside and let it rot us until we go completely insane. I too had to finally tell someone I had had ENOUGH, but she did not at all at all understand it, so I became the heavy for breaking up a wonderful friendship. So who was I to rescue someone trapped in a mine cave-in of their own making?

As a nice post-script, but without the tune because it's virtually identical to the above. And without Blingees. Or with only one. Or two?

He sits in your room, his tomb, with a fist full of tacks
Preoccupied with his vengeance
Cursing the dead that can’t answer him back
I’m sure that he has no intentions
Of looking your way, unless it’s to say
That he needs you to test his inventions

Can you please crawl out your window?
Use your arms and legs it won’t ruin you
How can you say he will haunt you?
You can go back to him any time you want to

He looks so truthful, is this how he feels
Trying to peel the moon and expose it
With his businesslike anger and his bloodhounds that kneel
If he needs a third eye he just grows it
He just needs you to talk or to hand him his chalk
Or pick it up after he throws it

Can you please crawl out your window?
Use your arms and legs it won’t ruin you
How can you say he will haunt you?
You can go back to him any time you want to

Why does he look so righteous while your face is so changed
Are you frightened of the box you keep him in
While his genocide fools and his friends rearrange
Their religion of the little tin women
That backs up their views but your face is so bruised
Come on out the dark is beginning

Can you please crawl out your window?
Use your arms and legs it won’t ruin you
How can you say he will haunt you?
You can go back to him any time you want to

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Why Ringo is the best ex-Beatle

Or should we say, "better" ex-Beatle? Since there are only two left (my math isn't THAT bad).

Why doesn't anyone ever mention how great Ringo looks? In his youth, he was the most  awkward-looking of the group. Girls loved him because they wanted to mother him. He was a solid journeyman drummer, but nothing special, so what did he add to the group? Vulnerability, naivete, and an appealing homeliness.

Now he has aged into his features and clearly kicks ass, outstripping Paul (who has had a little work done, obviously). Not only that: say the name Paul and no one knows which Paul you mean, but Ringo. . . 

Biblioclasm: or, what happened to all my books?

THESE ILLUSTRATIONS OF UNUSUAL WORDS ARE AMAZING
BY AILSA ROSS

JANUARY 10, 2016

YOUR ENGLISH TEACHER PROBABLY TOLD you to steer clear of flowery language, but how great would it be if words like ‘ultracrepidarian’ (a person who gives opinions and advice on matters outside of one’s knowledge) came back into common parlance? These visual interpretations of unusual words, by Project Twins, are amazing. Here’s your A-Z rundown.

1

Acersecomic

Acersecomic: A person whose hair has never been cut.

2

Biblioclasm

Biblioclasm: The practice of destroying, often ceremoniously, books or other written material and media.

3

Cacodemonomania

Cacodemonomania: The pathological belief that one is inhabited by an evil spirit.



4

Dactylion

Dactylion: An anatomical landmark located at the tip of the middle finger.

5

Enantiodromia

Enantiodromia: The conversion of something into its opposite.

6

Fanfaronade

Fanfaronade: Swaggering; empty boasting; blustering manner or behavior; ostentatious display.

7

Gorgonize

Gorgonize: To have a paralysing or mesmerising effect on: Stupefy or Petrify.

8

Hamartia

Hamartia: The character flaw or error of a tragic hero that leads to his downfall.

9

Infandous

Infandous: Unspeakable or too odious to be expressed or mentioned.



10

Jettatura

Jettatura: The casting of an evil eye.

11

Ktenology

Ktenology: The science of putting people to death.

12

Leptosome

Leptosome: A person with a slender, thin, or frail body.

13

Montivagant

Montivagant: Wandering over hills and mountains.

14

Noegenesis

Noegenesis: Production of knowledge.

15

Ostentiferous

Ostentiferous: Bringing omens or unnatural or supernatural manifestations.



16

Pogonotrophy

Pogonotrophy: The act of cultivating, or growing and grooming, a mustache, beard, sideburns or other facial hair.

17

Quockerwodger

Quockerwodger: A rare nineteenth-century word for a wooden toy which briefly became a political insult.

18

Recumbentibus

Recumbentibus: A knockout punch, either verbal or physical.

19

Scripturient

Scripturient: Possessing a violent desire to write.

20

Tarantism

Tarantism: A disorder characterised by an uncontrollable urge to dance.

21

Ultracrepidarian

Ultracrepidarian: A person who gives opinions and advice on matters outside of one’s knowledge.

22

Vernalagnia

Vernalagnia: A romantic mood brought on by Spring.

23

Welter

Welter: A confused mass; a jumble; turmoil or confusion.

24

Xenization

Xenization: The act of traveling as a stranger.

25

Yonderly

Yonderly: Mentally or emotionally distant; absent-minded.

26

Zugzwang

Zugzwang: A position in which any decision or move will result in problem

P. S. These are not "mine", but quoted from somewhere else. Some Facebook-y thing, which quoted somebody who was quoting somebody else (links provided). I could post a link to the original, but nobody would follow it because my links are shit. So I hereby disown these. They have GOT to be more interesting than that godawful post rating the danger of dollar store products, but their sheer ubiquity (and I only posted them from A - M!) made them irresistible. These, though - I know what "welter" is, they threw that one in to keep us from slapping ourselves on the forehead with frustration and despair, but the rest - I sort of know some of them, and the rest of them - come ON, people, we know these aren't real words!

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