Clamorites, I need your help! I won’t be able to be online as much as usual for a few weeks, so now is a great time to send fascinating links, words and quotes my way. The next issue or two will be all about you. Show us what you’ve got! Don’t make me bring out the “all pencil” issue…
We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government—
signs for all to see.I can’t run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
a thundercloud
and they’re going to hear from me.Ring the bells that still can ring …
You can add up the parts
but you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
—Leonard Cohen
—from “Anthem”
psephology /see-FAH-lə-jee/. noun. The scientific study of elections, voting behavior and statistical trends in voting. Rarely, used to refer to Greek numerology. From Greek psēphos (pebble), from the pebbles used by the Ancient Greeks in voting. A side-note: ballot derives from the Italian balla (ball), based on a similar method of voting by placing balls in a container.
“Frank Hardie, a classical scholar and later President of Corpus, said ‘Why not call it psephology? The Athenians dropped a psephos, a pebble, into an urn when they voted.’” (David Edgeworth Butler)
“By the lights of the psephology manuals, Ohio ought to have been a natural for the Democrats…” (Simon Schama, 2004)
“What I want to point out here is that there is a considerable breadth of numerological practices, ranging from psephology/gematria through to practices close to mathematical physics…” (Andrew Gregory)
RIP, Leonard Cohen. David Remnick’s recent New Yorker profile was so well done I had it on my list of links to share well before Cohen’s passing. The song ►“You Want it Darker” has been running non-stop in my head since I heard the news. And if you haven’t read it, Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers is bizarre, hilarious and seductive.
From Merriam-Webster, Trending Words from Election 2016.
“How many ways are there to read James Joyce’s great and bizarre novel Finnegans Wake? ¶ To answer this question, we gathered a host of musicians and writers, artists and scholars, weirdos and generally adventurous people. We decided to set the book to music, creating something that is simultaneously an audiobook as well as musical adaptation.” → Waywords and Meansigns: Recreating Finnegans Wake in its Whole Wholume. [Thanks, Reader A.!]
“The Phantom Atlas is an atlas of the world not as it ever existed, but as we believed it to be.” → A short trailer for the book.
Protect Your Library the Medieval Way, With Horrifying Book Curses. [Thanks, Reader S.!]
“What makes swear words so offensive? It’s not their meaning or even their sound. Is language itself a red herring here?” → Naughty Words
List: Fall DIY Projects That Help Numb the Pain of Existence
►Two sonic branding experts explain the thinking behind some of the world’s most recognizable sounds
Eggsactly, eggsciting, eggscetera. → eggsconcept
Today is World Kindness Day. Please consider celebrating it. A bit of language history: the word kind comes from Middle English kinde, from Old English (ge)cynde, which speaks to “the feeling of relatives for each other.”
Shortly after Stanley Kubrick’s death, Jon Ronson (author of The Men Who Stare at Goats and The Psychopath Test) was invited by Kubrick’s widow to explore the more than 1000 boxes of memorabilia, photos, fan (and not-so-fan) letters, newspaper clippings and more collected by Kubrick about his own films. ►Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes is the result.
New at Tedium, an article exploring the accidental origin and the surprisingly interesting story of the cheese curl (AKA cheese puffs, cheese balls, Cheetos), which included this ►hunger-inducing video.
I feel a little frisson whenever Reader M. writes in: “loved this edition. <3”
Reader J. followed the Karlbox link: “I like the J Peterman catalog too. I’ve never bought, but as I read I went on safari in my mind.”
Reader B. employs tmesis I can stand behind: “Another fan-fucking-tastic report!”
Reader N. tells us how she really feels about the author of the composition 1917–2006 report: “I worked with Andrea Lunsford for several years and can tell you that she is deeply dishonest, profoundly stupid, and very elastic with the truth. She’s a schmoozer and she is NOT a reader. Her mission is to save students from reading literature. She is the kind of person who thinks that a student paper is just as good as or better than Proust and a Beethoven symphony no better than a toddler banging on a saucepan.”
I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.
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