Links, My Work

Weekly Tumblr Dump 4/18/14

Cien años de soledad  is one of my favorite books from the magic realism style he created. While I don’t think it’s apparent, my writing DNA has a considerable amount of Gabo in it. Que descanses en paz.

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Rod McKuen, from Listen to the Warm, 1967

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Via Laughing Squid is a great 8-Bit Cinema of The Fifth Element,  including the taxi chase scene and Zorg ZF-1 test demo.

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St. Vincent at the State Theatre in Minneapolis. Photos by Nate Ryan. Her new album is really good, I recommend “Rattlesnake” and “Prince Johnny”.

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Writing

Death Bar Operational

I’ve done a lot of writing lately, but I need a deadline. That’s when I turned to señor Warren Ellis for some help. He’s currently writing his second novel, Gun Machine, and to get it done in time for release he needs to finish 5000 words a week. He’s using the above progress meter to show how much of the (at the moment 80000) word goal he needs to meet. I’m only doing a small amount, 5000, in a week, just to see how much I actually get done.

As to why I call it a Death Bar, Ellis has given it that nickname. I’m using it as a proxy name until I see how much time I get done.

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Art, Research

Happy Horny Werewolf Day: The Origins of St. Valentine’s Day + Funny VDay Cubee

I’m not one to knock on St. Valentine’s Day/Single’s Appreciation Day/ Hallmark Holiday #4. My point of view is that any day that produces any emotion, be it love or bitterness or abject Mafia rage, is a good one in our increasingly mind-numbing world. That being said, a couple of years back Warren Ellis posted up this message on the internet:

Always remember: Valentine’s Day is a Christian corruption of a pagan festival involving werewolves, blood and fucking. So wish people a happy Horny Werewolf Day and see what happens.

I was intrigued by this message, so I researched this holiday’s origins. I found Lupercalia, which is a spring cleansing festival from Ancient Rome tied to the Capitoline Wolf . To put the most important acts succinctly, priests would sacrifice a dog and two goats, shower in their blood, then cut out the entrails of said goats and whip women with them in order to increase their fertility and ease childbirth pain. There is a more left field take to this ritual, however, and although it comes from a very questionable source, I’m not gonna let things like conspiracy theories get in the way of a good joke. Here’s a fun part from it:

As the Romans grew ever more sophisticated, the Lupercali would be celebrated by a man binding the lady of his choice wrist to wrist, and later by passing a billet to his object of desire, suggesting a romantic rendezvous in some secluded place.

On an unrelated but equally as funny note, I made a pretty amusing cubee for my girlfriend today. Check it out:

To all my friends: Have a Happy Horny Werewolf Day.

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