06w16:1 Inventions of the March Hare

Posted April 17th, 2006 by timothy. 1 Comment

Good Reads Mailing List | 2006 week 16 number 1 (inventions of the march hare)

April is the cruelest month, supposedly. But I found March pretty shity. Which is why these didn’t get sent. This is the ‘lost Goodreads March Collection’ for 2006. I nevertheless appreciate this collection as a reminder of how fleeting ‘current’ topics of interest turn out to be. – Timothy

———————————————————————

Text —————————–
Up With Grups | Adam Sternbergh
http://tinyurl.com/g923m
He owns eleven pairs of sneakers, hasn’t worn anything but jeans in a year, and won’t shut up about the latest Death Cab for Cutie CD. But he is no kid. He is among the ascendant breed of grown-up who has redefined adulthood as we once knew it and killed off the generation gap.
// I’ll admit that I only read about 1/3 of this article, and it got some play in the blogosphere during a time when there wasn’t much else (it seemed) to talk about; some consensus around it being too focused on the white upper-middle class of New York

Beijing’s Unwanted Best Seller | Jürgen Kremb
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,407184,00.html
People across China are trying to uncover the name of the mystery author behind the much-discussed best seller “Wolf Totem,” which has sold millions of copies. The tome’s author is a known Chinese dissident who is writing under the nom de plume Jiang Rong. If he had used his real name, the book never would have been published.

The oil in your oatmeal | Chad Heeter
http://tinyurl.com/mbw7s
A lot of fossil fuel goes into producing, packaging and shipping our breakfast

Costing an Arm and a Leg | Carl Elliott
http://www.slate.com/id/2085402/
The victims of a growing mental disorder are obsessed with amputation.

Hole-y Cow | Daniel Lew
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=306
Animals can live a surprising amount of time with a permanent hole to their stomach, especially if it is a surgically made fistula. Humans have had fistulas; the first human on record as having one was a French Canadian by the name of Alexis St. Martin. He sustained a life-threatening musket wound in 1822, and was marked a terminal case by his physician. However, he managed to heal and was mostly functional again within two years – except for a hole in his stomach that would never close. Through this hole doctors were able to examine inner workings of his stomach.

Pedophilic promo has manga maniacs panting for pre-schooler panties | Ryann Connell
http://tinyurl.com/hc6tx
It’s gross, filthy and disgusting, but Japanese erotic manga fans can’t get enough of a comic that comes with a pair of pre-school girl’s panties as a promotional item, according to Cyzo (March).

More than This : Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation | Samara Allsop
http://cinetext.philo.at/magazine/allsop/lostintranslation.html
The film’s emphatic climax is the inaudible whisper however it also places emphasis on the fact that the transgression from friend to lover is never fully realised. Perhaps this is what is so appealing to contemporary audiences who are often used to graphic representations of sexual conduct.

Celebrity Death Watch | Kurt Andersen
http://tinyurl.com/f2jux
Could the country’s insane fame fixation maybe, finally – fingers crossed – be coming to an end? One hopeful sign: Paris Hilton.

Chamber of horrors
http://tinyurl.com/ot4a9
// Santiago Sierra filled a synagogue with carbon monoxide and the viewers toured it wearing gas masks. Gas and Jews, get it? It got shut down for two weeks. Should we care?

The Ten Commandments of Simon | Derek Kirk Kim
http://www.lowbright.com/Comics/10Commandments/10Commandments.htm
// how western males can remain virgins until age 29; online comic

Micheal Ignatieff’s speech to University of Ottawa
http://www.michaelignatieffmp.ca/speeches/speech0.html
// Because he might be Prime Minister within the next five years

Malcolm Gladwell has a blog
http://gladwell.typepad.com/

Audio —————————–
Fighting Terrorism with Schools | Leonard Lopate and Greg Mortenson
http://audio.wnyc.org/lopate/lopate030706c.mp3
After a failed mountain climbing trip to the summit of K2, Greg Mortenson was nursed back to health by villagers in a remote part of Pakistan. He promised to repay them by returning and building a school. Now, he’s built over 50 schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. He describes his mission to fight extremism and terrorism on the Taliban’s home turf in Three Cups of Tea. // Very inspiring.

—————–Lectures —————————–
Lectures Archive
http://www.lecturesarchive.com/index2.html
// a collection of links to a variety of lectures in streaming audio and mp3

Slought Foundation
http://slought.org
// Lectures for the iPod by such notables as Zizek and his would-be canonical companions. As for Zizek, consider this comment from Crooked Timber:

“Today I was wondering whether it was worth buying Slavoj Zizek’s new book, The Parallax View and reading it, even in a spirit of ironic detachment or what have you. Reasons to Buy: 1. Some smart people I know like him. Selected Reason Not to Buy: 1. Life’s too short to deal with bullshit, even if it’s high-quality, triple-sifted, quintessence of ironic Lacanian crunchy-frog bullshit like this […] it’s clear to me that it’s not the Mainstream Media that has anything to fear from the blogosphere, but rather Slavoj Zizek-he will shortly be rendered obsolete by the universe of pop-culture enriched slacker grad-student/ABD bloggers. Even Zizek can’t write fast enough to keep up with them all.”

—————–Norman Mailer and Son ————————

The Mailers in Discussion
Part 1: http://audio.wnyc.org/lopate/lopate030206d.mp3
Part 2: http://tinyurl.com/o785x
// Part 1: March 2nd afternoon on the Leonard Lopate Show; Part 2: March 2nd evening at some lecture hall. Norman Mailer and his son John Buffalo M. talk about their recent collaborative book and Mailer has great things to say about the state of the USA today. Personally, when Norman Mailer dies I’ll consider it a diminishment of humanity.

Video—————————–
The Answer | Peter J. Charlton
http://tinyurl.com/mrojg
// this lends support to my idea that art is meant for the easily impressed, or at the very least that the role of poetry in our lives has been totally taken over by pop lyrics.

The Simpsons in Real Life
http://youtube.com/watch?v=49IDp76kjPw
// Apparently created in the UK to promote the new season; a month ago famous.

Microsoft iPod Video
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2704424
// the importance of good design; a month ago famous. Somewhere it was said that this was actually created by Microsoft in order to critique their design department.

South Park Scientology Episode
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EJN6PT80ZcA
// I think this episode was contrived simply to make fun of Tom Cruise; notable is the illustration of Scientology Doctrine with the overlaid ‘This is what Scientologists Actually Believe’. The question is: what movie did Cruise’s thetan watch 65 million years ago to inspire such feelings for her today? The entire episode used to be at YouTube and is probably still kicking around somewhere. This is the excerpt outlining their beliefs.

—————————————-

Long links made short by using TinyUrl (http://www.tinyurl.com)
To remove or add yourself to this list, go here
http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com

emailed by Timothy on Monday 17 April 2006 @ 3:27 PM