This came out pretty well.
Ohhhhhh-BAMA!
[Name removed] is regretting sleeping with A. last night, given that A. is a petri dish full of germs, many of which appeared to jump ship during the night.
Not what it sounds like.
Harper’s Magazine, as a tribute to the late David Foster Wallace (he was a contributing editor or some such to the magazine), has posted an archive of what I take to be all his pieces that they ever published, all apparently free for download. If you have A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, you already have some of these pieces in longer form, but not all.
The July 1994 issue, containing Wallace’s essay on the Illinois State Fair (also represented here by a video of a live reading) was the first issue of Harper’s I ever read and the first DFW piece I ever read too. It made me a lifetime fan of both.
Just a wee little 4.0 centered in the East Bay near Walnut Creek. It felt like sitting in a boat when a couple of small waves pass beneath you.
At 2:05 p.m. yesterday, Pacific Daylight Time, a terrible mob of zombies struck downtown San Francisco. Starting in the vicinity of Yerba Buena Gardens, the throngs of undead maimed and killed their way through SOMA, the Financial District, and Chinatown, turning unlucky victims into more zombies as they went, as zombies will. I was fortunate enough to survive (translation: I’d only heard about it the day before and hadn’t had time to plan, dammit) and got away with some great photographic evidence. Just a few of my pictures are posted below; lots more at my photo site or on Flickr.
Best chant: “What do we want?” “BRAAAAINS!” “When do we want ‘em?” “BRAAAAAINS!”
Best overheard question from a passerby: “Is this, like, National Zombie Day?”
Second worst overheard question: “Excuse me? What’s this for? Excuse me?”
Worst overheard question: “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?” (arguably a good question actually)
Here’s a zombie dog getting a nice treat near the start of the rampage and really going to town on it. This might have been the funniest thing I saw all day.
At one point, a guy stopped at a light asked me what was going on. I told him, “Well, I mean, they’re zombies, right? They’re doing what zombies do, you know, looking for brains and stuff. I wouldn’t get out of your car if I were you.” This is what happened to one unfortunate driver.
At the Transamerica building, in an great case of serendipity, the zombie mob ran into a rocking anti-Scientology protest with a great bass beat. The result, of course: instant zombie jamboree!
And of course, what zombie rampage would be complete without the requisite bad pun?
Again, lots more where these came from, at my photo site or on Flickr. And a lot of them are good. (As I’m sure will be the other 850 million photos other people have no doubt already put up on Flickr. In the early stages, there had to have been at least two photographers for every zombie.)
Sad news for native west-coasters, I guess, but happy news for me. I never did get used to Walgreens.
The sale of Longs Drugs Stores Corp., the 70-year-old chain based in Walnut Creek, to the East Coast’s giant CVS Caremark Corp., spells the end for the last major regional chain drugstore in the country. After the transaction closes at the end of the year, CVS will slowly start converting the stores, and the Longs name will fade into retail history.
(via Medialoper)
The good folks at the science-fiction blog io9 have posted a story about artist Mona Caron’s murals in San Francisco, focusing on a pair of nearly-completed paintings adorning the parking lot where the Noe Valley Farmer’s Market goes up every Saturday. I was a little startled to see the post, because that happens to be only a couple blocks down 24th St. from me. (The Google Maps folks were good enough to get their aerial pics while the market was in session.) I’ve seen the not-quite-finished murals and they’re amazing.
George Saunders on experimental fiction:
Here is an example of non-innovative use of language: “As Bill arrived at the store to buy milk, it started to rain.” What a snore! Anyone can write that! That is not innovative. That does not open our eyes to the hypocrisy of our society. Try this: “Went buy to arrived as he rain started it Bill Bill Bill the milk, Bill the milk!”… Whereas a boring realist writer might write, “Lillian sat at the black table,” an experimental writer says, “Lillian sat at the flat plane of ebony, the night-shaded planar surface, the non-white spatial expanse on which one can put things, such as ashtrays, if one smokes.” See how that is more innovative, because not just anyone could have written it, just the nerdy kids in school or your friends’ smart-ass son, who rolls his eyes when you say what bands you like?…
The ending of an experimental story is very important. It should make no sense, thus disrupting the reader’s dominant paradigm. You, the reader, should just sit there, stunned, asking yourself, “Wait, am I missing the last page?”
But guess what? You’re not.
David Foster Wallace, I believe you have just been called out. (via Harper’s Magazine)
My first attempt at making American chop suey was a resounding success. Genius chef I may not be, but I can mix up noodles and ground beef like nobody’s business.
One of my favorite blog sites lately is The Big Picture, on boston.com. Its mission: to bring you big pictures. Big gorgeous pictures of awesome.
Three recent updates, all with a science-y bent, have especially caught my attention lately. They’re all worth a few minutes, as is everything they post
Views of Jupiter, “as seen by various probes and telescopes over the past 30 years.” Includes mindblowing views of the planet, several of its moons, and its rings revealed by an eclipse.
Volcanoes!! Truly awesome (in both senses) pictures of volcanic activity taken from earth, air, and space.
The Large Hadron Collidor at CERN in the late stages of assembly. The pictures are amazing, not least because of the sheer scale (a 27-kilometer circumference), but also because they’re the most science-fictiony pictures of actual science I think I’ve ever seen. You could totally believe they’re installing a Stargate or preparing a fully operational battle station.