We All Live in a Capital I

If you pay attention, you can see the exact moment when Sam starts phoning in his performance.

Cattle Calling

Hey all! I'm trying out for a blogger position at Ohdeedoh, Apartment Therapy's site for kids (well, probably more for their parents, but you know). I've been a huge fan of AT for years, so, as you can imagine, I'm thrilled and honoured to have made it to the shortlist. My first audition post is up today. Head on over and see if you can guess which one it is.

Latest Report from the "Context is Everything" Department

To be honest, I'm not even sure context would help with some of these:

"How many winds are there in Vancouver?"
"My orange blood protects my red blood from being burned by the sun."
"A long time ago, before dump trucks were invented, front-end loaders dumped their loads into monster trucks."
"I'm sitting on the step and watching the fairies."
"'I don't like the look of that guy!' That's what octopuses and squids and jellyfishes say when they see a shark."
"Airplanes are sometimes made of plastic and sometimes made of toilet paper."
"I love sitting with you and watching the world go by."

Life May Be a Vale of Tears, but at Least We Have All That Dark Matter to Look Forward To

If you want to hold tight to your last vestige of childlike optimism and faith that humanity is headed in a good direction, I strongly advise you not to read the June issue of Harper's cover to cover.

If, on the other hand, you want to put your own petty beefs into some kind of perspective, have at 'er.

Inside Eudora Welty's Bedroom (and Other Places You Never Thought You'd See)

“This is the phone that William Faulkner was summoned to while working in the fields, to learn the news that he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The writing above the phone is Faulkner's informal address book, preserved in his own handwriting.”

Faulkner's home -- as well as the homes of other Southern literary giants Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor -- is featured in a series called "A Sense of Place" by photographer Susana Raab. What's even cooler is that you can buy some of these prints in her Etsy shop.

To be honest, as interesting as I find this series, the idea of my own bedroom being preserved as a shrine freaks me out a little. Like, I hope somebody at least hides the porn. That won't go over well with the more sensitive tourists.

(via Apartment Therapy)

I Love Lynda Barry So Much, It Hurts a Little

When Barry created her "100 Poses of Marlys" series several years ago, I ordered one of the pieces, sending in my order with a fan letter so gushingly effuse I'd be embarrassed about it now if it weren't for the fact that I meant -- and still mean -- every word.

I still have the letter Barry wrote me back (enclosed with my signed original of "Graceful Pose Marlys"). It's a real letter, not one of those depressing form deals, and Barry is every bit as warm and awesome as you'd expect her to be. I can't even hold it against her that her novel, Cruddy, may have permanently damaged me.

So of course I read this recent interview with Barry in The New York Times from start to finish. It's a nice write-up, even if they did use the word "spunky" to describe Marlys. It's kind of too bad that she's become so reclusive (she and her husband live on a dairy farm, growing most of their own food and even chopping their own wood for fuel), but hey, whatever makes her happy.

On the plus side for the rest of us, she has a new book coming out, What It Is, which explains her method of making drawings and stories. I'll be grabbing a copy, but what I really wish is that I could attend Barry's workshop, "Writing the Unthinkable":

Taking the workshop, which Ms. Barry teaches several times a year, is a bit like witnessing an endurance-performance piece. Aided by her assistant, Betty Bong (in reality, Kelly Hogan, a torch singer who lives in Chicago), Ms. Barry sings, tells jokes, acts out characters and even dances a creditably sensual hula, all while keeping up an apparently extemporaneous patter on subjects like brain science, her early boy-craziness, her admiration for Jimmy Carter and the joys of menopause.

As Marlys would say, daaang.

Why You Should Never Discuss the Classics with Preschoolers

"Why did Moby Dick want to wreck the Pequod?"
"Well, maybe it was because the Pequod hunted whales, and he didn't want to be hunted."
"Why did the Pequod hunt whales?"
"Because a long time ago, people used oil from whales for their lights and things."
"Why did they use oil from whales?"
"People hadn't discovered electricity yet. Remember when we talked about how lights use electricity?"
"Why didn't people discover electricity yet?"
"I guess because it just hadn't occurred to them."
"Why?"
"Well, I don't know. What do you think?"
"No, what do YOU think?"
"I'm kind of stumped, actually."
"Why are you stumped, actually?"

And then my head exploded. The end.

(This post would not have been possible without this fabulous pop-up edition of Moby-Dick, given to Sam by our good friend Shona. It's making me reconsider my hard-line stance against reading the unexpurgated version.)

For Doppelsis

I know, I know. I don't update this site, I don't return emails, I don't send pictures of the kids. Things have been pretty hectic, and I keep forgetting to pull out the camera. But if you want to know what Will looks like these days, this picture should give you a pretty good idea:

(More photos, plus heartwarming story, here.)