Constant, Schmonstant.
For a Physics final back in high school, we had the option of writing a paper or putting together some sort of group "artistic option" illustrating 12 physics principles. Thus: the filming of the VHS classic, "Physics Project of Doom," in which two friends and I featured relevant snippets from Casablanca, Barbie surfing in the bathtub to the music of The Breeders and of course, 12 illustrations of basic physics principles, all completely riddled with flaws and incorrect calculations.

I think our poor, beleaguered teacher—a really, really young guy whom we caught one Saturday that year working a second job as a salesclerk at Sears—gave us a B. That B was a gift: our movie was lovingly crafted juvenile shlock, but it was crap in terms of an illustration of what we were actually supposed to have learned that year.

The latest on Found Magazine's beautiful website is in the same spirit, I think. Anonymous elephant illustrator, I salute you.

The Fact Men post their very funny Year in Review.
(Coincidentally, Wikipedia lists no such entry as "Very Little Known Facts".)

Loving Miranda July (even) More
Write a press release about an ordinary event! Take a flash photo under your bed! Draw Raymond Carver's Cathedral!
This is the best idea I've seen in a long time. If you've got any lazy days coming up this winter break--and even if you don't but just want to feel all warm and squishy inside for some slightly inexplicable reason having something to do with the allaying of the fear that all this goofy internet technology is alienating us from one another--I encourage you to check this project out.

The Dance of Destiny, the Loafing of Laze.
There’s a reading tonight on campus, but I’m feeling extremely hermitlike in here, inside what my roommate calls “Your Cave.” She always comes home, all the house lights turned off: the kitchen, the hallway, my bedroom, back, back, back until, there’s my office, all warm and dim and cozy. I specifically don’t want to interact with a bevy of people or sit up straight in a chilly auditorium wearing real clothes tonight. I just want to curl up inside by the blazing radiator in an afghan on the amazing antique rocker I found a few weeks ago. Chamomile tea, even, and nobody in sight for miles. Just this book. Hell, if I were outside on a park bench with this book and a handy streetlight, I'd take it.

So, I’m here.
Carmelita and I had this really yummy brand of frozen pizza for dinner, which is worlds better than the delivery alternative. I’ve never seen this, but Carmelita says that whenever we order from Papa John’s, we get the creepiest delivery boy ever. Last time he came, he warned Carmelita to be careful of jumping over the giant corners in our house, his stare hard and evil and empty.
“And he drove up, his car blaring with that song! That 'Whoa-whoa-whoaaaa' dance song?”

Logically, I thought: I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about, Carmelita. But then I heard myself singing back to her, “Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more…” We both laughed over the fact that we keep that song stored away inside ourselves without even knowing it. She says this: Something about that song, coupled with that delivery boy, equals creepy.
What is love?

I always just sort of linked that song in my mind with Rick Astley, who, a number of years earlier, sang that “Never Gonna Give You Up, Never Gonna Let You Down” dance song, which is basically, like, the same song. It also being true that Rick Astley and the “What is Love?” man possess basically the same voice. And what if they are blood kin, we wondered? What if all dance singer men are chosen from one family of men, like boy sopranos of English days of yore? Chosen for how their grumbly-weird voices sound, projected over a very specific beat.



Ecce Romani
I need to go running. No; better than that. I need to do community service; need to take a year of my life and devote it to relief in Somalia. I’m saying this not because I had pizza for supper tonight, five pounds of hors d'oeuvres at a party last night and haven’t gone running in a week. This isn’t about being skinny or fit; it’s about real virtue, or total lack thereof. It’s because of the other thing I ate last night, which a friend brought to said-party: a gourmet dark chocolate bar with bacon in it.
He told me about it and I said, “No. Gross. Gah.” But then I went and tried it and yes: It is the best, most evil thing I have ever put in my mouth. The incomprehensible, looming, loamy sweetness of the darkest chocolate and then, the crunchy, salty Perfect Foodness of bacon, all there in one really, really decadent bite. I would have felt less wrong, less tainted with Romulus Augustus-styled hedonism, had he fed me some damn foie gras on a Chicken McNugget. Just hand me a toga and a feather. Surely, we are the Romans.

Read it.

The Used World, by Haven Kimmel. The Used World, by Haven Kimmel. The Used World, by Haven Kimmel.

Goodness gracious, sakes alive.

Dirty deeds, done deep-fried.
Burger King would like for you to engage in a pact with the Evil One.

Important stuff, ya'll.

These underpants
These underpants come in a pack of three. It’s the way their colors match so beautifully, the way that you loved holding the berry, purple and fuchsia fabrics together there in the store, that made you want to buy them. Sigh, so pretty.

So perfect together. Which is why you feel a bit sad, breaking the plastic connector and separating one from the other, for folding in your drawer, for wearing. This moment had to arrive. You bought underwear to have underwear, after all.

They’re still nice, but not as nice somehow, as they were there together, on the hanger, in the store. You wish that there were some trendy style, the way there is with tank tops, in which you’d wear two or three pairs layered together, perhaps the fuchsia over the purple one day, the pink over the fuchsia another. It would look so nice, if only. If only you could actually do that and every-day people would even see your underwear in a way that was understood a healthy appreciation of color, rather than as something trashy, or a come-on.

Which is what they are in the store, I guess. A different kind of come-on. They look so pretty you drink ‘em in with your eyes, yes, sure, now, but once you get them home and separate them, never again.

Except here. Which is why I picture them, Henshaw. Just so you can see those pretty colors. Nice, huh?

WWJD?
From the q&a section of the website of Krista Blondin, a Canadian Janis Joplin impersonator (my favorite words here are "a minor detail"):

"Q: Will Krista be swigging a bottle of Southern Comfort on stage and using coarse language at my event-like Janis did on stage?
Generally No, especially when we do concerts that are all age family events or corporate functions. Some of our concert goers and biggest fans have been as young as 8 years old, so we have a cleaner version of the show that includes no swearing or glorification/encouragement of the use of drugs or alcohol. Krista is completely able to capture the essence of Janis Joplin without this minor detail. Of course we have an authentic bottle handy, easily filled with ice tea if this is something you would really like to see in the show! At night clubs where people are over the age of 19 there may be the occasional swear word in the show for example: Rap during Ball & Chain."

Didn’t want that monkey anyway.
So in this crazy-fascinating article, the NY Times says it turns out that monkeys rationalize things, too. Like many of us, I think that I just assumed that that thing you do? When you’re choosing between two cars and kind of like the pretty/fancy one but then it turns out you can’t afford it? So you go with the practical, ugly one. And by the next day, the practical, ugly one is so much better, in your estimation. Someone even so much as mentions the words, “Rust-red Cooper Mini,” and you think: Oh, they’re just so expensive to fix. And so small.

Same thing with exes. Our brain points out all the ways they’re so unattractive. That thing with his jaw when he’s thinking. There was always something so showy about it. So it turns out that we are—and by “we are,” I mean, of course, “I am”—not crazy. Either that or all primates are equally crazy.

Hands down.
Possibly the best Craigslist ad, ever.


"Pine cones - $19
6" - 9" pine cones; you decorate for the holidays. Six cones, boxed and shipped. Shipping and handling included in price. Allow 5 days for check to clear before shipment."

Dutch television shows contain mystery messages.

So, I'm told by Blogger that as an honored user of Firefox, I can download some new application for this site that will play the song I'm listening to at any given moment I happen to be typing an entry or something.

Right now, I'm thinking that would be brilliant if and only if I could choose this song for every entry.

There's terror in paradise.
There’s this awful movie called Snake Island that came before Snakes on a Plane, about this island, see, and these cruiseship people who get trapped there, and, well, there are these snakes.
Tricky plot.
Well, it was while watching this movie that my friends and I were able to define the classic answer to the horror movie question of Who gets killed next? The answer is always the people who deserve it, because they’re either:
A – Having sex. Sex that’s enhanced visually onscreen with saline or silicone, and, more to the point, sex that’s frivolous and naughty, because we Puritans love to see the frivolous sex-havers getting their due.
B – Complaining. Tacky mustachioed whiners are always the second to get killed by the snakes. Followed by all other brands of whiners.

So, to warn one another that we were about to start bitching and therefore probably deserved to get bitten by all manner of serpents, our shorthand became, “Okay, this is totally Snake Island territory, but…”

So, it’s Snake Island time. I've warned you.

Whatever I devote my attention to, I feel guilty; I should be doing something else. Whatever I’m doing becomes diminished in its importance as the responsibilities I’m not turning my attention to loom up and, just outside the corner of my vision, become these huge, amorphous shapes, impossible to gauge and harder still, to overcome; there will always be more.
I should be grading papers, I should most definitely not be grading papers; I should be writing, but writing what? Is it for my thesis? No? Well, then I should be doing research on my thesis, but that feels like nothing but noodling around on the internet most of the time. (And just what has this or that particular goofy little article to do with my focus, anyway? If the answer's not immediately clear, I'm wracked with anxiety.) So, soon I’m back to working on the paper due Wednesday instead. It’s cut and dry; six pages. Thesis, paragraphs, conclusion, all assigned, all straightforward, all utterly forgettable.

When I was in nursery school, I got this evaluation from a teacher: “Alice gets utterly absorbed in whatever it is she’s working on, but has a hard time moving on to a different task.” This was my problem as a reporter, too. I like working on one thing, not twelve. Grad school is like being a reporter, only on acid. No, I don’t know what I mean by that. I need to get back to work, now.

Catcam
These folks have attached a camera to their cat's collar, and the results are kind of breathlessly charming.

What I hear
...on any given public radio story:
"So, they've decided to hit those bad employers where it hurts.
[Pause for dramatic effect.]
In the wallet."

What I'd like to hear
"So, they've decided to hit those bad employers where it hurts.
[Pause.]
In the testicles. Hard."