Zugenia's Procrastination Salon

Does Olaudah Equiano look familiar?




Yes, friends. That's because he is Jay-Z.



Buy the book here!

It's 5am on a Saturday and I'm watching this.  The internet has made my life so weird.



Thanks for the surreality, Dolly H.

Have you seen the ASL cover of "If U Seek Amy"?



SO MUCH BETTER than that Sia video.

This is a classic Onion article from 2007; apparently, history is repeating itself.

It Only Tuesday

October 16, 2007 | Issue 43•42

WASHINGTON, DC—After running a thousand errands, working hours of overtime, and being stuck in seemingly endless gridlock traffic commuting to and from their jobs, millions of Americans were disheartened to learn that it was, in fact, only Tuesday.

"Tuesday?" San Diego resident Doris Wagner said. "How in the hell is it still Tuesday?"

( Continued... )

Exactly.

Actually, I became such some time ago, I suspect, but I've now created a rolling archive of my own constant archiving in the form of a Tumblog, Luminary Detritus, which comprises links to posts from my three current blogs (the Procrastination Salon, i am daisy mae, and Angels in Machines), my Twitter feed, and whatever random crap happens to catch my attention at any given moment.

Yes, this is what happens when I "work" all day.

Via Earnest Piaster.

I wish I could take some kind of credit for the brilliance that is Use Your Allusion, since the creator technically was a student of mine last fall, but it's pretty obvious that she was a sparkly genius before I ever got my intellectual hooks in her. For the past few weeks, she's been turning out these collage summaries of literary classics (constructed at Blingee—seriously) at an alarming rate, and I can't look away. Some of my favorites:

Does your worship want me to flay my bum?

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

I am sick as a horse

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

That's what they mean by the love that passeth understanding

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

The sunshine does not love you

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I promise that you have nothing better to do today than go check out the entire collection (so far).

Courtesy of BuzzFeed:

Still recovering from a bout with the flu monster; spent the last couple days running a conference I'll tell you more about later, maybe; but for now—

at least I'm not this poor guy:

One of my mom's favorite Valentine's Day stories is about the year (second grade?) she stayed up all night helping me hand-write a pile of Holly Hobby valentines, one to each kid in my class, only to find the next day that I'd forgotten them at home and didn't really care much about it. "I forgot them," I said at the end of the day.

Well, this year I have not forgotten; I give to you a whole bunch of free vintage V-Day cards courtesy of Vintage Holiday Crafts.

In other news, I have decided that Valentine's Day is also Daisy Mae's birthday. Because she is the sweetest sweetheart that ever hearted.

You can see more puppy pics from the past year here.

D shared this student animated short via CartoonBrew. It is fantastic.


Story from North America (FULL VERSION!) from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo.

Your result for The Find Your Philosophical Era! Test...

The Ancient

38% Ancient, 6% Medieval, 38% Modern and 19% Post-Modern!

Take The Find Your Philosophical Era! Test at HelloQuizzy

From GraphJam:


more music charts

You have perhaps noticed that my LJ has turned, well, snippety of late. As usual, I plead busy busy busy-ness. To busy to write complete sentences. But not too busy to procrastinate—it's just that for the past few months my preferred form of internet procrastination is my Google Reader. So if you're starving for online timekills and the Salon is simply not providing, I suggest you follow the link to see what I've been reading.

Also, you should sign up for Google Reader (if you haven't already) and friend me so we can Share Items.

And now, in case you need something RIGHT NOW to get you through your Wednesday, I give you Hamster on a Piano.

Courtesy of my baby sister, a hilarious short film on the political sensibilities of kindergarteners. Some of my favorite lines: in favor of Obama, "because he has the hair"; on McCain, "Who the heck is he?"; and, being torn between the two, "I wish you'd brought Ralph Nader because I like him."

ETA: Sorry, all. There's something wrong with their embed code. You can watch the video here.

Thanks for all the sympathy and virtual hugs and cocktails. My last post actually worried my parents a little bit, so I want to assure everyone that my good humor remains essentially intact. Last night I went home from work and cleaned the bathrooms and the bedroom and today I feel much better.

For all my griping about the Catholic marriage-prep weekend, I did benefit from it in some ways. My favorite lesson was on making "life-giving" choices in marriage rather than "life-draining" ones. Surprisingly, this was not the lesson on Natural Family Planning. It was, rather, about becoming aware of how your choices and actions affect other people, and striving to be a positive rather than negative force in other people's lives. As part of this ongoing process, I have begun to categorize everything in my life as either "life-giving" or "life-draining." A clean bathroom is life-giving; a filthy bathroom is life-draining. Having to navigate Bikes, Blues, and BBQ on your way to work is life-draining, but getting to tell your students funny stories about your runs-in with bikers at the beginning of class is life-giving. Waking up to find that your puppy has pooped on the floor is a little life-draining, but puppy kisses first thing in the morning are very life-giving, so the puppy is overall a life-giving element. You get the idea.

Well, while missing Jenny Lewis's set at the end of a very long and trying day and having to settle for the likes of Conor Oberst is life-draining, Jenny Lewis remains quintessentially life-giving, and so I urge you to follow the link below to watch this beautiful video by Autumn Wilde for Rilo Kiley's track "Silver Lining":


Watch video for "Silver Lining"

D and I are off to St. Louis for a Catholic pre-marriage weekend retreat, which should be interesting. A colleague of mine who did one of these a couple years ago warns me that we may be subjected to a seminar on the wonders of the rhythm method.

While we're gone, you should go check out the Oxford American website. D has been toiling over it for the past few weeks, and it's looking good. See in particular D's article on Katrina documentaries and his friend David's gorgeous piece on teaching in New Orleans, which got a major (and well-deserved) shout out from Sasha Frere-Jones at the New Yorker.

But I'm not too busy to register to vote.

Pass the link on.

Of YearbookYourself.com, that is.




This one really speaks for itself.

For sale from Bloomsbury Auctions:

383. Travelling Commode in form of Large Book. Wooden folio book titled on spine: Historia Universalis. [France]: 18th Century, Oak and calf leather, Folio (Closed: 500 mm high x 90 long (binding) x 380 mm deep. Full calf covers elaborately blind-stamped in geometric design over oak boards, spine with lettering label in red morocco paneled in gilt, 6 raised bands. The folio opens to reveal two oaken boards that can be folded out to form a closed square and one board lifted upward to become the seat, the hole in the middle ready to hold a chamber pot. The box rests on four small wooden pegs, the binding protected by a small brass plate at the foot. Condition: clasps possibly renewed in 19th century, seat cracked, old restorations, minor losses to calf.

An unusual example of the use of the book form to disguise travelling personal furniture, probably for use on the military field. Other examples include a piece of furniture at the Chateau de Lamothe-Fenelon in the Dordogne, consists of a pile of folios on short legs with a lid to open, but is not portable. Other examples listed in Komrij, Kaka fonie, p, 286, and plate V.

est. $1500 – $2500

"Probably for use on the military field"???

I've been doing a bit of interweb housecleaning, because I'm supposed to be writing. I actually was writing yesterday (an essay on Defoe that was due August 15, oops), until I received a frantic call from my father about wedding music, at which point I spent the next 3 hours downloading various movements of Bach and Vivaldi off of iTunes and trying to describe my "aural vision" to some poor violinist. (In case you're wondering: Prelude—Bach's Goldberg Variations; Recessional—Vivaldi's Concerto for Violin in G, Op. 3, No. 3, movement I; and Processional—Bach's Air on a G-String, which, I realize, is kind of like walking down the aisle to the "Thong Song.")

But today, here's what I've done.

THE POP TART has a new podcast website! And a new night! I'll be back on the air MONDAY EVENINGS 6-8pm starting next week, and, presuming the station's podcasting technology is up and running (not a given), podcasts will be available.

My work website has also received a facelift. I'm going to try to be more active on it this year.

And, finally, D has published a piece on documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee over at Senses of Cinema. It's really, really good and you should read it.

D's summertime activities have produced more entertaining fare than my own. To wit:


Space Roke from Derek Jenkins on Vimeo.

In the year 2070, Colonel Blaze Blasterson crash landed on a strange planet. He's been stuck in that fiery wasteland for years, his only company a monkey named Reginald and a beat-up old karaoke machine. Slowly but surely, trudging across the desolate landscape in search of food and water, during their heartfelt duets under the stars, he and Corporal Reginald fell deeply in love. That all ended two years ago when Reginald was swallowed whole by a Flaming Blort. Left with nobody else to duet with, Blaze sings alone and dreams of his lost love. He's the loneliest man in the galaxy. Instead of being one of two "Islands in the Stream," he's found himself deserted.

In space, no one can hear you sing.

(This is what happened after we watched Robinson Crusoe on Mars a couple weeks ago.)

more cat

According to the NYTimes, Jim Davis is a fan of Garfield Minus Garfield:

Jim Davis, the cartoonist who created “Garfield,” calls himself an occasional reader of the site, which he calls “fascinating.” He says he is flattered rather than peeved by the imitation.

“Some of them really work, and some of them work better,” Mr. Davis said in a telephone interview.

...

“I think it’s the body of work that makes me laugh — the more you read of these strips, the funnier it gets,” Mr. Davis said. As for Garfield himself, “this makes a compelling argument that maybe he doesn’t need to be there. Less is more.”

As I've said before, Garfield Minus Garfield is one of the most brilliant things I've come across recently. I read it every day.

In other news, Wired informs us that YouveBeenLeftBehind.com, a website that allows you to send email to your unsaved friends after the Rapture to let them know that they are going to hell and you are not, is For Reals. From YouveBeenLeftBehind.com:

We all have family and friends who have failed to receive the Good News of the Gospel. The unsaved will be "left behind" on earth to go through the "tribulation period" after the "Rapture". You remember how, for a short time, after (9/11/01) people were open to spiritual things and answers. (We are still singing "God Bless America" at baseballs' seventh inning stretch.) Imagine how taken back they will be by the millions of missing Christians and devastation at the rapture. They will know it was true and that they have blown it.

It goes on to say that emails sent from the site are intended to court those left behind during their "small window" of opportunity to join the saved. It seems to this reader, however, that the best use of this service is merely to mock non-believers with an "I told you so," as if enduring the apocalypse and facing eternal damnation were not devastating enough for them. At least that's what I'd use it for ... which is probably why I'll be left behind in the first place.

And yes, I do get ALL of my information from The Morning News.

Sims On Stage Karaoke is about to change my life, and probably not for the better.

Despite the fact that several of his freelance employers are behind in paying him, so that we are lately eking out a living by not spending superfluous cash or, more frequently, feeling guilty when we do, D's quiet infiltration of mainstream culture continues apace. See this piece in the Arkansas Times, which tracks the buzz on his article in last summer's Oxford American on singer Teddy Grace: it received a shout-out from Ben Greenman at the New Yorker website, and may be the source and inspiration of a track on Elvis Costello's new album.

Also, tomorrow we hit the road so D can interview Judge Reinhold at the Little Rock Film Festival. I sense that an episode of Lady Z Gets Drunk with Judge Reinhold and Asks Him Too Many Questions About Fast Times at Ridgemont High is likely, if not inevitable.

It will make excellent material for my future testimonials on "D: The E! True Hollywood Story."

What else? The other night we went to see "Iron Man," and I agree with everything o_jenny said. It was way fun, everything that "Transformers" should have been and was not. Much of that had to do with the presence of one Mr. Robert Downey, Jr. He is at the top of my list of Celebrities I Am Allowed to Go Home With If Ever Given the Opportunity. (Incidentally, I believe the existence of such lists is entirely necessary to a healthy long-term relationship. Some time ago, however, I heard from a friend who experienced a crisis of sorts when the opportunity to go home with a member of her list actually materialized, and she wasn't sure if the list—or, more precisely, its permissions—were "real" or not. I suggest ironing out such details preemptively with one's partner.) The ONLY thing that might have made the movie better is if it had been the movie D and I fantasized about on our way to the movie theater, in which Robert Downey, Jr. actually plays himself hitting rock-bottom in the Hollywood spiral of leisurely self-destruction, checks himself into rehab, and there, fashions himself a flying robot suit and emerges a shiny superhero.

What else? Our house is infested with tiny ants. It is extremely annoying. They are also in my car.

What else? Pretty much all puppy, all the time. See dog blog for further accounts of cuteness and destruction. Life with puppy, today, means waking up at noon on the couch with a wet, snorfling nose in my face—not knowing how long I've been lying here or whether I managed in my early morning somnambulism to feed her, but certain that the moment I sit up I will find evidence of Bad Behavior.

What else? My office iMac completely self-destructed last week, and, armed with only my new MacBook, a firewire cable, and my Googling skills, I managed to diagnose the problem (a "kernel panic" of sorts) and, after three days of strife, to fix it (by doing some fancy footwork with the system folder). It seems my years of procrastinating on Macs have turned me into a semicompetent computer technician. Does that count as a marketable skill?

In another breakthrough on the procrastination front, some absolute genius named Neil Hennessey has devised a Jabberwoky Engine. It works thus:

JABBER produces nonsense words that sound like English words, in the way that the portmanteau words from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky sound like English words.

When a letter comes into contact with another letter or group of letters, a calculation occurs to determine whether they bond according to the likelihood that they would appear contiguously in the English lexicon. Clusters of letters accumulate to form words, which results in a dynamic nonsense word sound poem floating around on the screen with each iteration of the generator.

JABBER realises a linguistic chemistry with letters as atoms and words as molecules.

My initial output:

aveadiac
astrealla
psam
arsidell
indainic
beraptic
bery
chen
gric
endesers
quordrin
draitumpt
ersister
erishomme
enus
ores
kopestin
ionse
essi
tusigie
fing
holo
ruiste

The "astrealla quordrin" sounds like a nice place to go, "indainic" and "draitumpt" sound like moods I've been in, and "fing" is obviously the future profanity derived from our ephemistic "eff-ing." I shall start propagating it.

And now, my code-literate friends, who wants to figure out a Jabberwoky Engine screensaver for me?

Give D a Flip, a MacBook, and a puppy, and voila! an auteur is born.


Also available on i am daisy mae.

Last night D says, "We're going to have to not become insufferable puppy parents."

Apparently I was not listening because today I did this.

And I will keep doing it.

As if things weren't exciting enough around here these days, D and I have gone and got ourselves a puppy. We found Daisy Mae (rap name: Day-Z) at the Rogers Animal Shelter on Wednesday, brought her home on Thursday ... and, 24 hours later, she's already a movie star:

So this past weekend, I'm at the annual ASECS conference—this year in Portland, OR, which is a lovely city with great food and bookstores, which makes up for the fact that it snowed and hailed on my lovely spring wardrobe—and people I don't know keep greeting me as if they know me, and they occasionally refer to conversations we've never had as if we've had them, and it's all quite baffling, until on the second day I find myself riding the elevator with a woman who looks just like me, except distinctly taller, thinner, and better dressed. I have no idea what name my svelte doppelgänger goes by, or what she works on, but I hope she's brilliant and charming and thus giving me a good name.

Back in the NWA¹, I'm back to work, piled in papers, enduring the annual spring onslaught of killer wasps in my office, leaking news of my engagement to D (have you heard? I'm engaged), dreaming of the elusive free hour when I can finally watch last week's episode of Lost. I have made time, however, to read up on Cracked.com's 6 Endangered Species That Aren't Endangered Enough, which boldly suggests that pandas—yes, pandas!—have outstayed their welcome on planet Earth.

"Not the cuddly, wuddly panda!" you exclaim, possibly chewing on a gender-neutral flax-soy bar. Well guess what? The panda is nature's loser, an animal so far gone that it won't even have sex without the aid of several Chinese zookeepers. When a species' sole responsibility is to "get busy" and it still doesn't bother, then we, as people who have to go to goddamn work every day, lose sympathy.

Speaking as men, we can tell you--when an animal has lost interest in its own penis, it wants to die.

Not having a penis to call my own, I have to take the Cracked boys' word for it. But, I admit, they make a compelling case.



The Poor Panda: Would Rather Sleep Than Exist

---

¹That's NorthWest Arkansas, not the other thing.

Just watch, as an unlikely heroine appropriates Mariah Carey to unite the Bulgarian people.

Part I:



Part II:

Because I often wish I were Jenny Davidson, I'm copying her citation of the Times' piece on Oliver Sacks and its delightful photo of its subject:



Oliver Sacks is so invited to my imaginary dinner party. Jenny Davidson, too—though I have hopes of having real dinner with her some day.

This weekend I've been catching up on various humorous internet lists, including Stuff White People Like and the entire backlog of Cracked.com countdowns. And thank god, because how else would I have come across The 25 Most Baffling Toys from Around the World? Obviously, most of the contributions come from Japan; less obviously, many of those Japanese contributions follow the theme of Fun with Feces:









The author comments, "The Japanese have a weird relationship with poop. On the one hand they love it. On the other hand ... there is no other hand. That's why it's weird."

Welcome to Sunday, people.

I am so happy to live in an age that produces such works of utter genius as Garfield Minus Garfield.

Whoever the mastermind behind the stripped strip, I am that person's new biggest fan.

How strange: I seem to have taken an inadvertent hiatus from procrastinating for the second half of February. I have been busy, folks—reviewed a book, finished an article, wrote a conference paper, attended two conferences (one in Auburn, AL, the other in New Orleans), all the while teaching, writing recommendation letters, reviewing applicants to two different graduate programs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now I'm grading a pile of exams, writing more recommendation letters, planning my graduate seminar for tomorrow, and getting to work on both another article and a book chapter.

But that's not what you come here to read about.

So what have I got to say for myself extracurricularly? Auburn was fun; New Orleans was funner. I ate no fewer than two dozen raw oysters in my time there. Half of those were shucked for me, one by one, by the self-proclaimed "Baddest Shucker on Bourbon," who continually yelled, "YOU KNOW ME! I WAS ON CNN!" as he worked. I drank a hurricane. I danced in a jazz club. I ran out of money. Huzzah.

Last night D showed two amazing Jean Renoir films at Girl & a Gun: The River (1951) and The Golden Coach (1953). Stunning, both of them. D and I were the only ones there. People have no idea what's good. Oh well.

I am still totally, completely, and utterly sick of this stupid cast on my stupid arm. It's supposed to come off a week from today, and I plan to bitch about it until it does. I dreamt last night that I figured out how to squeeze out of it and I felt very clever indeed.

That's really all I can muster right now. I realize that I'm not very entertaining when my head's in my work, so I leave you with some poetry and animation culled from the internet and sent my way by a star student:

This Valentine's Day, I don't think I, or anyone, can say it better than the little girl who authored Love Is Embarrassing.

This is the kind of thing that I, as a devotee of both The Cute and The Predator, absolutely love: Cracked.com's 6 Cutest Animals That Can Still Destroy You. For a taste, here's their take on the platypus:

How cute!
God, we don't even know where to begin.

This is an animal so deliriously ridiculous, biologists refused to believe it could possibly be anything but an elaborate hoax when it was first discovered. To put this in perspective, these exact same biologists believed that rotting meat spontaneously generated maggots and saw nothing wrong with pouring liquid heroin down babies' throats. Platypi are that ridiculous.

But seriously, look at it. It's got a thick, furry body with a flat, beaver-like tail and otter-like feet and we're cool with that because he's so damn fuzzy. Then there's the matter of the big, leathery duck bill and it's suddenly more than a little weird, because that's ... that's not really supposed to happen to mammals.

And then there's the further matter of the very high degree of electroreceptivity in that there bill--it helps the platypus find food buried in the silt. Kinda like a hammerhead shark's head, only instead of being terrifying-looking eye protrusions with an awesome name, it's a goofy-looking duck bill. On a mammal. And OK so that's ... pretty weird, but so what? Their babies are called puggles for fuck's sake! Puggles!

Also they lay eggs for some reason.



OH SHIT! RUN!
And, they are poisonous.

Wait, what?

Male platypi have a pair of spurs on their hind legs that they use for defense and dominance duels. They deliver a brutal dose of venom that will put a human being into the emergency room and leave him writhing in muscle-impaired agony for months.

The platypus is mother nature's way of saying, "I made this thing out of spare parts I found on the workshop floor, and it can still fucking cripple you."

Love love love. Thanks to xterminal for the link.