Only anarchists are pretty...

GAH! FUCKING DIE, TWILIGHT!

Tonight: My favorite event of every summer: The Newberry Book Fair. Yes, I'm aware of how dorky it is that this is my favorite Chicago summer event. I've accepted that.

Tomorrow night:



Have a lovely weekend, all...

My Jinx order arrived today:



Fuck yeah.

*

The first, the best, the only: Nancy Fucking Drew.

Via ljsecret (a long time ago), this is summing up my weekend:

Much like my favorite things from any other country/ethnicity/background, I'd have to say literature. Some of my favorite French books include Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan, My Blue Notebooks by Liane de Pougy, poetry by Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, and almost anything by Colette (she wrote Gigi) and Anais Nin. And can't forget Andre Gide, eh, courts828?

The Vampire
by Charles Baudelaire (Via Fleurs du mal)

Thou who abruptly as a knife
Didst come into my heart; thou who,
A demon horde into my life,
Didst enter, wildly dancing, through

The doorways of my sense unlatched
To make my spirit thy domain —
Harlot to whom I am attached
As convicts to the ball and chain,

As gamblers to the wheel's bright spell,
As drunkards to their raging thirst,
As corpses to their worms — accurst
Be thou! Oh, be thou damned to hell!

I have entreated the swift sword
To strike, that I at once be freed;
The poisoned phial I have implored
To plot with me a ruthless deed.

Alas! the phial and the blade
Do cry aloud and laugh at me:
"Thou art not worthy of our aid;
Thou art not worthy to be free.

"Though one of us should be the tool
To save thee from thy wretched fate,
Thy kisses would resuscitate
The body of thy vampire, fool!"

— Translation: George Dillon, Flowers of Evil (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1936)

Via bibliovixen (on Facebook):

( So that's what they call it )

...and with it the stifling Midwestern heat and humidity. Good heavens, I am not fond of heat/humidity. Just biding my time till fall arrives (and I'm hoping it won't be too late this year, since summer arrived so late).

In non-weather news, though, July has much to recommend it, including a visit from S from Cali, 4th (er, 3rd) of July fireworks at Navy Pier, Peter Murphy on the 14th, and the Newberry Book Fair on the weekend of the 24th (right, courts828?). So, you know, best to concentrate on the good stuff.

And also, this weekend is my last Pride weekend in the gayborhood. I plan to enjoy it as much as I can, for I doubt GR's Pride events are quite the same. :)

I'm on some sort of retro-passionate-life kick lately. After spending half the day listening to Edith Piaf yesterday, I went to Borders after work and picked up Piaf: A Biography. I'm expecting to read about many highs and lows, much like the bio of Maria Callas I have. What is it with me and these women singers who had huge talent and roller coaster personal lives? An appreciation for lives lived to their fullest, I imagine.

In the same vein, I picked up The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, a book I've been wanting to read for some time. From the Booklist synopsis:

For their wit, intelligence, good looks, and politics, the aristocratic Mitford sisters were the toast of the mid-twentieth century. They were prodigious correspondents, particularly between each other. Mosley, daughter-in-law of Diana Mitford, has selected and excerpted from some 12,000 letters between the sisters over a period of almost 80 years, to shed light on women described as Famous Notorious Talented Glamourous Turbulent Unpredicable Celebrated Infamous Rebellious Colourful & Idiosyncratic, as quoted from Jessica's obituaries. As friends and confidantes of noted figures of their time, from royals to statesmen to artists, the sisters drop prominent names offhandedly; Deborah, then Duchess of Devonshire (and the only sister still living), comments to Diana: have had my fill & more of Heads of State & begin to prefer the ponies. Notable for their humor and compassion, these letters reveal Nancy's sharp tongue; Pamela's love of the land (but not of children); Diana's lifelong devotion to her fascist husband, Sir Oswald Mosley; Unity's infatuation with Hitler; Jessica's estrangements and distance from the others; and Deborah's role as peacemaker.

Something about these women fascinates me. It will be nice to peek into their worlds for awhile.

My internal wheels are spinning something fierce this week. My mind needs to shut the hell up sometimes, you know? Anyway, here are some things that have caught my attention this week, when my attention has been able to be caught:

-This guy makes cool songs out of movie snippets and such. I recommend "Expialidocious" and "Alice".

-My name is ArtemisWinter, and I'm a bookaholic. Er, well, actually, I am not going to own that stupid title, even if I am a book addict.

-JD Salinger is suing the dude who wrote a Catcher in the Rye sequel. What would Holden Caulfield say? Maybe something like, "All morons hate it when you call them a moron."

-Go look at this Free Verse Project thing. People took a line of poetry, and made it into a image/design somehow. It's. So. Cool.

Friday: Started drinking at 5 p.m. Ended at 1 or 2 a.m. Encore, Clark Street Ale House, Garrett Ripley's, Howl At The Moon (so awful), and The Continental. Never really ate dinner along the way. But did manage to meet a band of firemen from Ireland at Clark Street Ale House, in town for Chicago's St. Patrick's Day festivities. They (OK, I admit, 1 in particular) were responsible for my late night out. And that's all I'm going to confess about that, other than to note that I did drop him off at his hotel and go home alone, feeling a nice little ego boost that's lasted for days. ;) I will, however, provide you with some nice eye candy to let you know the, er, caliber, of a couple of the firemen we met (and yes, the 1 I got to know a bit was of this caliber as well - woot!), though these aren't actual pics of them: The Dublin Fire Brigade Calendar.

Saturday: Finally saw Watchmen, and was mostly pleased with it. It really was well done visually, and very well cast for the most part. I'll be getting the DVD when it comes out. Later on, I saw The Lost Shakespeare Play, which a friend of mine is in. It was quite funny and well-acted, and I highly recommend it. It closes this weekend, so check it out. From there we stopped at Skylark, then I went to Kinetic Playground for Wax Trax night.

Sunday: Much needed day of rest. Finished Galway Bay, which I recommend for a nice, historic, epic yarn. Reminds me a bit in style of The Tea Rose, another book I love.

I love reading a book that makes me admire its language as it transports me to another place. Right now I'm in the midst of A Fine And Private Place by Peter S. Beagle (thanks madflowr), and I came across a couple of sentence gems:

The whistling of a ghost is like no other sound in a fistful of universes, because it us woven of all the whistles the ghost has ever heard, and so it usually includes train moans, lunch whistles, fire alarms, and the affronted-virgin screaming of tea kettles. [p. 127]

***

He had foreseen every such change in his fortune, ignored it always, and called the refusal innocence. [p. 174]

Just...good. Right. I aspire to be the kind of writer that makes a reader smile when he or she comes across certain sentences/phrases/paragraphs, because the words somehow feel perfect.

...which are, in fact, related, in that they all caught my mind this week:

-I'll be at Panic tomorrow night. You should be, too.

-Today I am wearing a necklace that I lent my mum last Saturday night, and it smells like her. That's kind of sweet, isn't it?

-The Guardian has a list of 1000 novels everyone must read, divided into genres. I haven't counted how many I've read, but I know I've read some, at least.

-90s body standards v. those of today, told in celebrity pics. Kind of slaps you in the face with how crazy the whole thin craze has gotten.

-Liss at Shakesville breaks down Tool Academy, my reality show guilty pleasure of the season. My favorite thing about this show is the line they say when they get rid of a guy on the show: "You're still a tool." Genius, eh, scottsteg?

-Harry Potter is a "Zionist" conspiracy. And I'm Phyllis Schafly.

-Apocalypse survival guide.

-I don't mean to sound like a moron, but could the reason that the Post Office is in financial trouble have less to do with our doom-and-gloom economy and more to do with the fact that people just don't use snail mail as much anymore?

-And finally, the quote of the week, from Illinois Senator Meeks yesterday: “We have this thing called impeachment and it’s bleeping golden.”

Have a fucking golden weekend, everyone, and whatever you do, don't give it up for fucking nothing!

-In case you were wondering, that whole thing where the GOP refused to bailout the auto industry? Totally about union busting: A GOP memo entitled "Action Alert - Auto Bailout" was sent to Senate Republicans on December 10, 2008, stating "Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor". And, you know, fuck over millions of Americans in the process. Nice one, assholes.

-Blago has lawyered up...with R. Kelly's defense attorney.

-In the BS files, we have this story that says that Newbery award winning books are just too tough for kids to read and understand. Oh yes, let's just go ahead and stop challenging the kiddies to read good books. Because what if they never read at all, then?! What a crock. Assuming that kids can't deal with serious or complex topics is just so disrespectful to kids. You know what kids like to read? Whatever grabs them. Whatever they can understand. And when a kid finds that he or she isn't into a certain book, well, then he or she can try another, and maybe try the first one again later, when he or she might get more out of it. No matter what, though, the solution isn't to dumb down standards for award winning books. The solution, most likely, is to have parents that shut off the television and hand their kids a book once in awhile, and instill a love of reading and knowledge, so that kids will want to try and read things that might challenge them.

-An 85 year old recent college grad shows that you can always go back to school.

-Ending on a fun note, this is totally my favorite song right now, enjoy:

The weekend was spent with books and films and holiday decor, as I was still sick for some of the time, and clearly my body needed a weekend in. So I read, and watched, and decorated. Thus I am halfway through re-reading Inkspell (in preparation for reading Inkdeath), I caught up on some DVRed television and some classic film, and the xmas tree is up.

On Saturday, I half-watched (reading at the same time, of course) Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 (two Julie Christies for the price of one!) (I must admit to not reading the book - I really need to), and then got to thinking about the end, where Montag meets all the people who have "become" classic books in order to preserve them. So...if you had to memorize and become a book to save it, what book would you choose? It can be anything, of course, but I'm thinking classics more than popular fiction. My own answer keeps changing, but I lean toward Little Women (another film I caught this weekend - the Hepburn version, of course, which I think is the best), Jane Eyre, and Pride & Prejudice. What about you?

Edited to add:

I just have to make a few guesses for some people on my friends list based on what I know of them.

courts828 - The Immoralist, Andre Gide's journals, The Stranger.

constituent - A Confederacy of Dunces.

daven_callings - Too many to name! But definitely the Codex Seraphinianus (I think this is the right book).

caseystratton - The Golden Notebook.

josh_vanity - Watchmen.

And here's the rest

-A Straight Male Geek's Guide to Interaction with Females. Good stuff, fellas.

-Don't like feminists? Stop helping create them.

-Is this heaven? No, it's just a house made of books.

-On rage...John McCain is known for his.

-On debates...Says Joe Biden: "Last week I had a debate with Governor Palin. Well, at least I think it was a debate. And last night Senator Obama had his second with John McCain. I know I'm prejudiced abut my ticket, but if this were a best of five series, it would be over."

-On overhead projectors..."McCain's 'overhead projector' is the apparatus that runs the planetarium, which is a bit like calling the Palomar Observatory a new set of glasses." The Adler Planetarium is none too pleased with John McCain.

-On the milary and veterans...younger military families seem to be turning to Obama, and according to Veteran Report Card, Obama gets a B for supporting vets, and McCain gets a D. (Thanks for that link, caseystratton.)

-On voter suppression...it's happening.

-And finally, on libraries...this might be the coolest one I've ever seen.

Last night, courtesy of the ever-lovely strtmyorange, I took a break from politics and current events and stepped into Neil Gaiman's world for a little while. Believe me, it's a much more fun world to be in than our current one.

Mr. Gaiman read Chapter 3 of The Graveyard Book, showed us the trailer for Coraline, as well as never-before-seen scenes from it (it looks brilliant), and then answered questions for a good bit of time. Then the theatre (The Tivoli in Downers Grove - just a fantastic venue, quite perfect for this - Mr. Gaiman agrees) showed Stardust. What an amazing evening! Mr. Gaiman was the perfect reader, with wonderful voices and inflections. (If you're interested check out video of last night's reading.) When speaking instead of reading, he still talks like he writes: witty, self-deprecating, conversational and grounded, while still open to whimsy and fancy.

Me being me, I took notes when he spoke on writing. Here's what I jotted down:

-Don't use "transition" as a verb. "Move" is better.

-Regarding whether a writer should start out writing short stories or novels, start with short stories. I.e. finish things. Write and finish.

-Make somebody want to turn the page. A story is anything that keeps you turning the pages, and doesn't disappoint you at the end.

-Good endings should feel inevitable to everybody.

-Everything about storytelling is a giant game of Let's Pretend. You take the reader's hand, reassuring him or her that everything will be OK, lead the reader to a dark place, then drop his or her hand and run away.

Via bibliovixen:

* Grab the nearest book.

* Open the book to page 56.

* Find the fifth sentence.

* Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions if you want to.

* Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Nearest book: The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

Page 56, fifth sentence: Peter, disgusted by the leftists' weekend orgies, secretly makes contact with the local African agitators, whose leader is a cook at the hotel. [This sentence is the main character's tongue-in-cheek synopsis of her novel for her agent. This book is the most meta thing I've ever read.]

Today begins Banned Books Week 2008. As a voracious reader, a writer, a citizen, and just a humanist, the idea of banning books is anathema to me. The idea of trying to make people less educated is horrifying. The idea of living in a society where people try to restrict what other people can read and learn is terrifying. This year, a contentious election year, brings the point home more clearly than ever, as we have a potential book banner running for vice president. So I encourage everyone to get out there and read some banned books. And vote against censorship in this (and every) election.

The 10 Most Freqeuntly Challenged Books of 2007 were:

1) “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

2) The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence

3) “Olive’s Ocean,” by Kevin Henkes
Reasons: Sexually Explicit and Offensive Language

4) “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman
Reasons: Religious Viewpoint

5) “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain
Reasons: Racism

6) “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language

7) "TTYL,” by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

8) "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou
Reasons: Sexually Explicit

9) “It’s Perfectly Normal,” by Robie Harris
Reasons: Sex Education, Sexually Explicit

10) "The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

Take a look at that list. So many of the books are challenged on sex grounds, and only one on grounds of violence (and that one had a challenge on sex grounds, too). What does it say about the priorities in this country that parents are more afraid of their children reading about sex, which, after all, is something almost everyone will experience at some point in their lives, than violence?

See also the Top 100 Challenged Books 2000–2007. I've certainly read quite a few on that list (and now have a guide for reading more).

* -John Aiken