"The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm. He came along the street of Green Town, Illinois, in the late cloudy October day, sneaking glances over his shoulder. Somewhere not so far back, vast lightnings stomped the earth. Somewhere, a storm like a great beast with terrible teeth could not be denied."

—excerpt from Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

I thought this might be appropriate after last night's speech by John Kerry.



The Living Room Candidate

"First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren't rare. But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn't begun yet. July now, July's really fine: there's no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June's best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September's a billion miles away."

—excerpt from Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

This is the 100th post for the blog. Just a reminder to everyone that the second issue of rumble is due out on August 1 and there will be some good stories to read, boys and girls.



Beunaventura Press
A huge archive page of photos about the Iraq War. Some of these are very graphic. Many feature the grieving family members of soldiers killed in Iraq. Link via stereotypography.

"This time [Aureliano] felt the same weakness in his knees and the same tingling in his skin that he felt in his youth in the presence of a woman. He thought confusedly, finally captive in a trap of nostalgia, that perhaps if he had married her he would have been a man without war and without glory, a nameless artisan, a happy animal"

—excerpt from 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez

Frank Zappa Cover Art
I think Americans have a lot to answer for and high on the list is a general tendency to stare at each other like animals in a zoo. Like they have nothing better to do and I am there to be picked over like a piece of cold chicken by their bored and listless eyes. "Starey Jones" is what I've taken to calling them in my mind when for no good reason they just stare and stare so coldly at me. "Hey, there's another Starey Jones" I tell myself. "Gee Whiz".

Cooler than ice is bitter films via consumptive. Tasteful flesh at art nudes and an interview with comic writer guru alan moore. One very elegant website I visit more and more frequently these days is Citrus Moon, which features a huge archive of artistic background tiles, a linkblog, and some fine html code examples. You should go visit. Finally, tiny apps is a site that features small programs mostly under 1 mb, many of which you can carry around on a floppy.

"The sign Aureliano hung on the neck of the cow was an exemplary proof of the way in which the inhabitants of Macondo were prepared to fight against loss of memory: This is a cow. She must be milked every morning so that she will produce milk, and the milk must be boiled in order to be mixed with coffee to make coffee and milk."

—excerpt from 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez



Typo Generator

"I want to be alone with you," he said. "One of these days I'm going to tell everybody and we can stop all of this sneaking around."
She did not try to calm him down. "That would be fine," she said. "If we're alone, we'll leave the lamp lighted so that we can see each other, and I can holler as much as I want without anybody's having to butt in, and you can whisper in my ear any crap you can think of."

—excerpt from 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez



Vampirella #1 Gold Edition
More Frank Frazetta Vampirella:
Large scan of the original cover. High rez pencil and Ink sketches: classic pose :: Vampi w/bat :: kneeling :: classic #2 :: cover art.

I hate the new WYSIWYG editor at Blogger.Com because it screws me over when I'm trying to write simple html.

Some kind person named George sent me a link with a large number of interesting Gabriel Garcia Márquez links. I will post it here. The democratic convention's official blog via scripting news and a community blog for the convention bloggers. Al Franken smashes Bill O'Reilly.

"Her name was Pilar Ternera. She had been part of the exodus that ended with the founding of Macondo, dragged along by her family in order to separate her from the man who had raped her at fourteen and had continued to love her until she was twenty-two, but who never made up is mind to make the situation public because he was a man apart."

—excerpt from 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez

Read the Cory Doctorow article on Isaac Asimov and the movie I, Robot in Wired Magazine. Then go over to Kuro5hin and read the rebuttal and critique.

Read a early edition of Alice in Wonderland when it was called Alice Underground. Link via maud newton




Neat, huh? That's one of the new toys from FeedBurner, a nice utility that just made me a new rss 2.0 feed that almost looks better than my real blog!

"...Within a few years Macondo was a village that was more orderly and hard-working than any known until then by its three hundred inhabitants. It was a truly happy village where no one was over thirty years of age and where no one had died."

—excerpt from 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez



Charles Schulz Wall Mural
"Drawings of Schulz's famed Peanuts characters on a 8' x 12' foot wall were uncovered by the Travniceks after they purchased their Colorado Springs home more than 20 years ago. The wall, which includes images of Snoopy when he still bounded around on all fours and Charlie Brown jumping over a candlestick, was painted by Schulz when he and his young family lived in the house in 1951."

"...That prodigious creature, said to possess the keys of Nostradamus, was a gloomy man, enveloped in a sad aura, with an Asiatic look that seemed to know what there was on the other side of things. He wore a large black hat that looked like a raven with widespread wings, and a velvet vest across which the patina of the centuries had skated."

—excerpt from 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez


Panoramic views of different rooms in the White House. Historical photo essays of White House life. A selection of paintings from the White House art collection, including some donated masters.

"Jose Arcadio Buendia dreamed that night that right there a noisy city with houses having mirror walls rose up. He asked what city it was and they answered him with a name that he had never heard, that had no meaning at all, but that had a supernatural echo in his dream: Macondo."

—excerpt from 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez



the stencil archive
Worth a look: the banned books online webpage. Also, a short biography of the Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven, including excerpts from some of her writings. Summer reading: The Great Gatsby in serial form online. Finally, immense cache of datalinks.

Message to all humans: Live, baby, just live, and keep your eyes open at all times.

"Earl Angstrom has a gray, ragged look. This business has blighted him. He thins his lips across his slipping teeth like a man with stomach trouble biting back gas. He is being nibbled from within. Color has washed from his hair and eyes like cheap ink."

—excerpt from Rabbit, Run by John Updike

Collecting cans and bottles so you can buy cigarettes: The government has made them really expensive because they are evil and don't care about your life.

• Get up really early because other people want those cans and will get them if you don't go out at like 5:00 a.m. and beat them to it.


• Public parks are a good place to look, especially during the weekends. Again, get up early because the city crews will empty those trash cans and you'll get nothing.


• Go to your local college or university. Students have money and throw a lot of cans away when they're drunk.


• Watch out for cops. Just because you're not doing anything wrong doesn't mean they won't hassle you. It's so boring and you lose valuable time.


• Cruise the malls and look in dumpsters out back. You won't be sorry.


• Stash 40 oz bottles for later pick-up: Those things are so damn heavy and you don't want to be lugging them around if you don't have to. They should be worth like 20 cents at least but they're not.


• Redeem your cans at an automatic processor so you won't have to be humiliated at your local gas station or convenience store. They hate people who bring in bunches of cans and bottles because they think they're better than you are.


• Don't touch your hands to your face after digging through rancid garbage. This one is so obvious don't even ask.


• Avoid public humiliation by carrying a backpack or other common device. Lugging around plastic bags full of dirty cans is not elegant.

"With women, you keep bumping against them, because they want different things, they're a different race. Either they give, like a plant, or scrape, like a stone. In all the green world nothing feels as good as a woman's good nature."

—excerpt from Rabbit, Run by John Updike

Everybody wants to Blog the World

I could spend a lot of time reading other blogs, and I do, but I wonder how long it will be before we hit the 100 million blog threshhold. Ha! Most of us don't have that much to say that is new or different, but the urge to put content out there where it could be read by almost anybody seems irresistable. All in all I consider it a pretty harmless activity and would rather people do that than hang out on street corners drinking tallboys and trying to look cool. That would be pathetic, not like blogging, which is noble and at all times worthwhile.

This is a really interesting blog that I haven't added to my roll for some reason, but I think you should check it out because it's real and it's well written.

If you are looking for some interesting blog templates you can find some nice ones at migraine design featuring popular TV shows and others pop culture icons. Check it out.

He pulls up his trousers and buckles the belt. "Why else do you like me?"
She looks at him. "Shall I tell you?"
"Tell me."
" 'Cause you haven't given up. In your stupid way you're still fighting."

—excerpt from Rabbit, Run by John Updike

HA HA HA

"It may be possible to make Ethereal crash or run arbitrary code by injecting a purposefully malformed packet onto the wire, or by convincing someone to read a malformed packet trace file."

Found while doing a search for Ethereal Code.

Sorry I haven't been doing much in the way of posting but I'm working on various templates for the blog, leaving little time or interest for actual blogging. It's interesting that I have visitors from all over the world, and I'm thinking that quite a few of them are probably looking for this.

"Do you realize, Harry, that a young woman has hair on every part of her body?"
"I hadn't thought about it." Distaste stains his throat.
"Do," Tothero says. "Do think about it. They are monkeys, Harry. Women are monkeys."
He says it so solemn, Rabbit has to laugh.

—excerpt from Rabbit, Run by John Updike


Clutch Cargo
The new website of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission is interesting. Do you want to convert a long URL to a short one? Go to tiny url and they will make it happen. Link via giant ant. Galleries of old pictures of Paris via information junk. And Flickr keeps coming out with new features and here is a new one called Linkr. It displays the website links of all your friends on flickr after you sign in. I've set the link to open in a new window.

"Their alert colorless eyes, little dark smears like their mouths, feed on the strange sight of him and send acid impressions down to be digested in their disgusting big beer-tough stomachs. Rabbit sees that Tothero is a fool to them, and is ashamed of his friend and of himself. He hides in the lavatory."

—excerpt from Rabbit, Run by John Updike

The newest feature from flickr. I can't really run it on this page because blogger doesn't seem to allow javascripts in posts, but I made a quick page so you can see my new flickr zeitgeist in action.

Just click on the photo to be taken to it's location. They are all from my collection.

"The only way to get somewhere, you know, is to figure out where you're going before you go there."
Rabbit catches a whiff of whisky. He says in a level way, "I don't think so." The lips and spectacles and black hairs poking out of the man's tear-shaped nostrils show no surprise. Rabbit pulls out, going straight. Everybody who tells you how to act has whisky on their breath.

—excerpt from Rabbit, Run by John Updike



1924-2004

Yesterday was the official launch of our new micro-fiction e-zine rumble. Response has been pretty positive and we are hoping to maintain a monthly publishing schedule depending on number and quality of submissions. Why don't you go and read the July issue? You really should.

A new ethereal code link archive page here.