Reading Offline: Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments
by Alex Boese
Really odd book about various "scientific" experiments, some gruesome, many just insane. Have't yet gotten to the elephants on acid part, but am definitely freaked out by the "let's decapitate an animal and try to keep just the head alive" chapter. Ugh.
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
by Nancy Milford
I never read much of Millay before, but Milford wrote a really interesting biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, so I was interested to see her next book. Still in the first chapter, but the prolog was amusing in itself. I always appreciate reading the background of how the author started on the book.
Kitchen Confidential Updated Ed: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
by Anthony Bourdain
I gave this to Jon as a gift a while back and only just recently remembered I never did borrow and read it myself. Am very amused so far. Sadly it's not the updated edition I've linked to - preface in our copy's dated Nov. 2000. Wonder what's been added/changed/corrected.
The New Kings of Nonfiction
by Ira Glass
Collection of nonfiction articles previously published in various magazines. Bought a while back in an airport and there are still a few articles I haven't finished reading. I really liked the Bill Buford article that became Among the Thugs.
...About?...
Batgrl is a pop culture junky who loves to mess about with cameras and video games. And is constantly amused by Jon, who she did honest and truly did meet online. Though she's been blogging since the '90s, evil sp@m'rs managed to break the old blog, and thus there's only more recent stuff here. (No great loss, actually!)
Nope, none of this actually has anything to do with each other, just random things I've read in the past two weeks. (Many dug up thanks to MetaFilter.) I'm doing this while on hold waiting to chat with some nice people whose phone service seems to be messed up and is therefore taking forever... (As in over 2 hours to reach someone through the messed up phone system, argh.)
I'm really enjoying reading the No Reservations Crew Blog. Which I usually check out when I read Bourdain's blog, which is almost always a good read if you like his style of writing. Still digging around through the site to see if they ever explained a little more about this steadicam that the cameraman made "out of tin foil and an old erector set." That's the kind of detail I really love.
Schave had grown up in this neon-lighted slum that the author liked to mock as a place of "sunglasses and attitudes and pseudo-refined voices and waterfront morals." And so he knew that Chandler secretly loved this city, in that twisted love-hate way only an Angelino can.
"I read his letters, and I knew Chandler liked to give tours of Los Angeles, about scenes from his books and his crime scenes in particular, and I always had this notion of how do you show people Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles," Schave said."
Ca'Macana - a Venetian Masking Making Company
Fascinating place - I really would love to visit it someday. I wish there were more photos of the workshop - I love how its walls are completely full of interesting things.
"The dam broke into several large pieces, some of which were carried almost 1/2 mile (800 m) downstream, while the center section of the dam—nicknamed "The Tombstone"—remained standing.
...To this day, the exact number of victims remains unknown.
...The Los Angeles Coroner's Inquest concluded the disaster was primarily caused by the paleomegalandslide on which the eastern abutment of the dam was built, but would have been impossible for the geologists of the 1920s to detect. Indeed, two of the world's leading geologists at the time, John C. Branner of Stanford University and Carl E. Grunsky, had found no fault with the San Francisquito rock. Therefore, the jury determined responsibility for the disaster lay with the governmental organizations which oversaw the dam's construction and the dam's designer and engineer, William Mulholland, but cleared Mulholland of any charges, since neither he nor anyone at the time could have known of the instability of the rock formations on which the dam was built. The hearings also recommended, "the construction and operation of a great dam should never be left to the sole judgment of one man, no matter how eminent.""
27 Aquatic lifeforms you never caught while fishing
From a website called New Global Warming Effects - and while I'm not at all sure of that site's facts, the photos are really interesting (and freaky) and the fish are all real specimens.
I'm loving aliens instead
Jon Ronson, The Guardian, Saturday 19 April 2008
"Robbie Williams disappeared from view at the end of 2006. Since then, he has become obsessed with UFOs and extraterrestrials. To gather evidence, he and Jon Ronson headed deep into the Nevada desert"
Biddenden Maids, Mysterious Britain and Ireland
"...These cakes, so hard as to be almost inedible, make good souvenirs however, the more as they bear the most curious effigy: two female figures whose bodies appear to be joined together at the hips and shoulders. These are called the Biddenden Maids."
The Janissaries - which I first read about on Were people vying to become slaves in the Ottoman Empire? at HowStuffWorks.com
"...In general, these slave-soldiers adhered to a strict code of conduct, in which obedience and manners were paramount and any violation resulted in harsh punishment. In addition, they were expected to lead a celibate life, never marrying (at least until the 16th century, when some were allowed to take wives)."
And also Was there really a pied piper of Hamelin?
"...But the original, unbowdlerized Grimm stories still carry relevance. Not only are they fascinating peeks into the psyche of the German people of the Middle Ages, but certain stories actually help us make sense of mysterious and bizarre historical events."
Anatomy gallery: Cabinet of curiosities
New Scientist, 11 February 2009
"These images of historical dissections and mutants were taken by Philadelphia printmaker James Mundie on a tour of European anatomy museums in 2008"
(Warning, some of these are quite gorey.)
Also I've been pondering:
Sir Tryamour: Introduction
Edited by Harriet Hudson
Originally Published in Four Middle English Romances
1. Shag! Haunted Mansion! Want.
2. Bourdain! Love.
3. Sandra Lee. Frightens.
4. Robbie Williams. True?
5. Haida Gwaii. I saw it in 1995 on Granville Island, Vancouver. Took many pictures, was quite impressed. Was walking down Constitution one day a year later and...saw the original at the Canadian Embassy. STILL makes me laugh that I went all the way to Vancouver to discover it when all along it was right under my nose.
1. Yes! Want! But! Price + limited amount...so nah. Would love At least a print to frame, or a book.
2. We also watch Bourdain's show way too much. I'd say our tv is on Food Network, Travel Channel, or Something Football most of the time these days.
3. Sandra is eeeeeeverywhere.
4. Williams is apparently enjoying his time of the radar to do music when he wants to and look into the whole ET thing. Sounded pretty believable to me - though the photo of him in a beard didn't look real at all - but then I've noticed beards are odd like that, you never can tell what a guy'll end up growing. Apparently when my dad tried to grow ones ages ago it was reddish or something, and much giggling from my mom.
5. I have SO been meaning to ask you about that - I bumped into it on Flickr and was interested - thank goodness for Wikipedia and its instant answers or I'd never have understood why I kept finding multiple names for where the statue was located!
