Okay, so I’m pretty almost kinda yeah okay absolutely certain that I did not come up with the whole “weird and wonderful” thing.
Still, now that I’ve latched on to it, I see it everywhere! To wit:
Baltimore On Film
By Alyssa Rosenberg on Oct 11, 2011 at 5:48 pm
The Raven looks like a profoundly silly movie, but it continues the proud tradition of weird and wonderful cinematic things happening in Charm City:
Right on, sister. RIGHT. ON.
Greil Marcus:
4) Townes van Zandt, “Coo Coo,” on Acoustic Blue (Tomato) A 1994 concert version from the late country songwriter: Never has “Coo Coo”–or “The Cuckoo,” or “The Coo Coo Bird,” or “Jack o’ Diamonds”–taken on such detail, such melodrama. Two minutes in and it’s not a song at all, it’s a western.
Real Life Rock Top 10, City Pages, February 11, 2004.
_____
Suzy Becker, All I Need To Know I Learned From My Cat
More Marlys!
An inspiration:
Lunch!
Multi-grain bread, olive oil, spicy mustard, extra sharp cheddar, fontina, and seasonings, all smashed waaaaay down.
Delicious.
Okay, so that’s not really the line, but Ms. Barry is wise and weird and her work is weird and wonderful and now I am ON A CAMPAIGN to bring weird wonder to us all:
Who do you know who is weird and wonderful? What brings out the weird wonder in you?
Nominations, people, nominations! THIS IS A CAMPAIGN!
As Marlys and Arna and Maybonne and Freddie would say: Right on!
Question: How many of the pundits honoring Steve Jobs by praising his 2005 Stanford address, in which he recalls—
So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it.
—would extend a similar praise to regular ol’ drop-outs, hipsters, hippies, and assorted other losers for simply doing what they love?
There would, of course, be no pundit-love for Jobs had not
much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.
This is no knock on Jobs; he noted that
you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Dropping out and dropping acid worked for Jobs—good for him.
But all of those pundits who praise his vision, his courage, his fearlessness, what of those who fearlessly follow their visions into failure, mediocrity, or the abyss? What of those who crash on friends’ floors and dumpster dive for furniture and food and take classes just because and who have no impact on anyone beyond those friends?
Jobs was an eccentric obsessive who parleyed his obsessions into technological and financial success; had there been no success, there would be no praise for his unconventionality.
He ended the speech by citing the final issue of the Whole Earth Catalog:
On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Marvelous advice, but recognize that without success you will simply be thought a hungry fool.
_____
h/t to Andrew Sullivan, for his round-up of reactions, with Robin Hanson one of the skeptics
I have no hope.
The reasons for this are entirely personal, and entirely related to events in and leading to a couple of stays in a psych ward way back yonder. It was a relief to shed all hope, and gave me some much needed breathing room, and I can’t say that I miss it.
Still, that hope is gone for me has created some awkward moments: I hesitate to use the term hope in even the most banal of circumstances (hope you feel better!) and I don’t always know how to respond to people who do hope. I don’t think they’re wrong to hope—that hopeless-ness is better than hopeful-ness—but I what does someone for whom hope was a burden say to those for whom it’s a blessing?
It’s also an impediment to political action. Most political action is a bother, requires enormous effort for incremental payoffs, and often takes place in inconvenient or uncomfortable locations, so if you’re going to get off your ass to do anything, it helps to have hope that you can, indeed, make a difference. I have rallied and knocked and doors and waved signs since I ditched hope, but more out of a sense of grim absurdity (why the hell not?) than anything else.
And so it was when I joined the Occupy Wall Street rally-and-march today. I no longer have the heart for direct political action, but my head is able to direct me toward action: given my political beliefs, does it not make sense act as if things could change? Shorter version: quitcherbitchin’ and get moving!
It was a big—tens of thousands, I’d guess—and included a nice cross-section of New York City. I marched under the banner of the PSC (the CUNY union) and fell in with a math professor from another campus. We talked of our reluctance to be there, and why we came anyway. We talked about what these protests meant, and what they could mean. We talked about marches in other cities, in other states, and why this movement, that of the 99 percent, contains possibilities not found in the Tea Party.
Possibility, yes, I still hold to that. I may have no hope that anything may change, but the possibility, well, that’s still there.
Over the hill. Pulled the plug but not yet circling the drain. Old broad. Over half a life gone.
No, I’m not old, nor do I feel old, but I ain’t young, either.
When I was young, I wanted everything. I wanted California and mountains and oceans and Hollywood and a cabin in the woods and nature and cities and people and space and I wanted to sing and dance and act and write and draw and paint and ride dirt bikes and horses and swim and sled and oh if only I could fly, wouldn’t it be lovely to fly?
Now, I am a ma’am with a Ph.D. and I don’t know what I want, don’t even know how to think about what I want. I was so open, then, to everything; how could I not want it?
And now? Ha: you know the answer.
But I still wonder.
“Dancing” from One! Hundred! Demons! By Lynda Barry
“Dancing” from One! Hundred! Demons! By Lynda Barry p. 2
Do you know Lynda J. Barry?
I started reading Ernie Pook’s Comeek in The Isthmus, the Madison alt-weekly, when I was in college. Marlys and Maybonne and Freddie and everyone in that weird little world made me laugh and wonder and sometimes, sometimes, they pierced me clean through.
I found Marlys Magazine again online, then it got stripped way bare, and now it’s back, in full splendor.
Lynda J. Barry draws what she wants, writes what she wants, lives how she wants.
I don’t know if she knows what she wants, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
Cat issues. Jasper-cat issues.
That’s why I haven’t posted.
Well, that and other (more mundane) issues.
I gots me some dem ideers, I do, but but but. . . excuses are easier than effort.
Oh, and the kitty-boy might be improving, so may be able to avoid vet.
Might. May. The night will tell.
AbsurdBeats 