“Feast Day in the Colonies”
Our three-legged pig has been run over by a hay cart. I use my grandfather’s cleaver to cut the meat from the bone. Even the gristle and fat go into the great iron pot. The sizzle is like the sound of the locusts we eat. The dried vegetables we add look like pieces of shed skin. Gravy is the day’s gift. While we gnarled four squat in the dappled shade, the old woman sings, her voice rasp as an empty bag. The one-eared boy watches from a distance, his eyes glistening like grease.
—Robert Miltner
—from hotel utopia
agelast /A-jə-last/. noun. One who never laughs; a humorless person. A borrowing from Rabelais’ Middle French agelaste, from Greek agélastos (not laughing).
“But the calumny of certain cannibals, misanthropists and agelasts had been so atrocious and unreasonable that it overcame my patience and I decided not to write another jot.” (Francois Rabelais)
“…a similar confusion underlies the story of one determined Roman ‘agelast’ (‘non-laugher’), the elder Marcus Crassus, who is reputed to have cracked up just once in his lifetime. It was after he had seen a donkey eating thistles. ‘Thistles are like lettuce to the lips of a donkey’, he mused (quoting a well-known ancient proverb)—and laughed. There is something reminiscent here of the laughter provoked by the old-fashioned chimpanzees’ tea parties, once hosted by traditional zoos (and enjoyed for generations, until they fell victim to modern squeamishness about animal performance and display).” (Mary Beard)
“… it is no coincidence that the term ‘agelast’ was most recently revived by Milan Kundera for the apparatchiks of Socialist Czechoslovakia who, if they smiled at an interrogation, did so with a terrible earnestness.” (Charles Martindale)
Behold, the Passive Aggressive Anger Release Machine, just one kind of vending machine I’d consider placing in my office. And living room.
Some fascinating visualizations of creativity and US cities using Kickstarter project data that both confirm and deny some common sense (and anecdotal) evidence. Dig in!
An intriguing letter (in both language and detail) from Clyde Barrow—to former gang member Raymond Hamilton—in Bonnie Parker’s hand, is up for auction. At a $40K estimated price, it’s just a little too rich for me. But you can see and read the letter on the auction web site.
Speaking of letters and correspondence: I’m not sure how I missed the amazing looking book Pen to Paper: Artists’ Handwritten Letters from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art until now! See an illustrated review and then just try to resist it. Clamorites interested in handwriting (and “hand-thinkers and hand-folders”) should make the Handwritten site a regular stop.
An interview with John McWhorter, on the release of his new book Words on the Move, including notes on language drift and “literally” (literally).
I’m not a massive sports fan, but…this: When a guy comes in ninth and still wins an Olympic medal, you know the drug problem in sport is bad.
LOOK/HEAR “explores the relationship between scenes and soundscapes, looking and hearing. A system of aural and visual signals generates shifting typographic forms and triggers associations about people and environment.”
Why Is the Basic Marble Notebook Made by So Many Brands Still So Popular?. Since 1886!
Take a minute to check out these mesmerizing and varied examples of How Mapmakers Make Mountains Rise Off the Page.
Today in 1851, the first issue of The New-York Daily Times (later to become simply The New York Times) is published, selling for just one penny. Originally a Monday-Saturday publication, the NYT would add a Sunday edition in April 1861 to accommodate US Civil War news. In 1914, the NYT—now famously branded with publisher Adolph Ochs’ jab at the salacious newspapers being printed by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer: “All the News That’s Fit to Print”—would become a global newspaper thanks to dirigible delivery to Europe. Known today both for its journalistic qualities and its forays into technology from its web presence and archives to its paywall, the NYT reported in 2013 that revenue from subscriptions eclipsed that from advertising for the first time in many decades. For all of its relative prominence online and in social media, the NYT isn’t even the highest circulation newspaper in the United States (it lags behind both USA Today and The Wall Street Journal), much less globally, where it is just inside the top 40.
Todd Klein is an amazing letterer, artist and calligrapher who has worked with the likes of Neil Gaiman and Allan Moore. Click through for more and better views of his works…and prints for purchase if you’re so inclined. [Thanks, Reader B!]
For the (many!) in the Clamor who avoid social media, here’s the musician personality of Corey Feldman “performing” on the Today show. There are some sadnesses you just can’t unsee. You have been warned.
Reader C. on zibaldones: “Zibaldone! I assigned that as the major project for my creative writing class: 60 pages for the semester (easy) filled with illustrations of any kind, recipes, poems, etc. References included a certain Chris Lott’s online Commonplace Book. ¶ I wish this article had been available then. I have never not done one…just did not know there was a name for them.”
Reader B. on dakhma(s): There’s a tower of silence sequence in Pynchon’s Against the Day. ¶ A character rides into a scary western town, and finds, first, corpses hung from telegraph poles. Then:
“[w]hen the townsfolk of Jeshimon ran out of telegraph poles back around 1893, trees being scarce out here, they turned to fashioning their arrangements out of adobe brick. Sophisticated world travelers visiting the area were quick to identify the rude structures with those known in Persia as ‘Towers of Silence’—no stairs or ladders, high and steep-sided enough to discourage mourners from climbing, no matter how athletic or bent on honoring their dead—living humans had no place up top…”
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