Dr. Seuss's Wife

Helen Palmer Geisel, the wife of the famous Dr. Seuss, had a bad run through a series of illnesses, including cancer. Dr. Seuss began a relationship with another woman, which broke Helen down even further. Distraught, she decided on an overdose of barbiturates.

This is her suicide note:

Dear Ted, What has happened to us? I don't know. I feel myself in a spiral, going down down down, into a black hole from which there is no escape, no brightness. And loud in my ears from every side I hear, 'failure, failure, failure...' I love you so much ... I am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you ... My going will leave quite a rumor but you can say I was overworked and overwrought. Your reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed ... Sometimes think of the fun we had all thru the years ...

I just found this out today an needed to share the despair it made blossom inside me.

Although, as I am happy and in love, the very existence of that dedication and passion for someone can be seen as a celebration of the human spirit - if you ignore the horror of the situation. :/

Star Wars Blueprints: DO WANT

Bad news? Limited to 5000 copies, $500 pricetag. Starts shipping in September, so get on the stick if you want one at their website.

Disintegration of Society

This is the bed we made. Burn it and rebuild.



If I had a kid like that: hey, guess what? You read your fucking book - right now! - or I'll set the Wii on fire!

Get Your Iron On, Krofft Supershow, c. 1977

One of my favorite political and variety blogs is Monkey Muck. Check it out and see why for yourself.

But this isn't just a shameless "I love you, man!" I'd be remiss if I did not link to Monkey as the inspiration for the following online fun I found. Monkey does retro ...everything like no one else.



I'm guessing anyone under 25 is probably missing the reference to what an iron-on is. Anyone under 18 may not even know what an iron is. But that crazy Krofft Supershow; that's a class act.

Pirate Bay Sends the Big Middle Finger Flag Up the Gov't Arse

Hells yeah. Pirate Bay was founded in Sweden and it was there that they got a media spanking. From The Telegraph:

Four men behind a file-sharing website that has hundreds of thousands of British users were sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay £2.5 million in damages yesterday for helping internet users to download music, films and computer games.

In a big victory for the entertainment industries, Fredrik Neij, 30, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, 24, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, 30, and Carl Lundström, 49, were found guilty of breaching copyright law in Sweden, where The Pirate Bay site was founded.

The court ordered a payment of £900,000 in compensation for 21st Century Fox and £500,000 each for MGM and Columbia Pictures.

Despite the verdicts, the four announced that The Pirate Bay, which is used by 25 million people, would continue to operate from computers based in various countries around the world. The men, who plan to appeal, will not begin their sentences or have to pay compensation until the end of the legal process.

Yes, there are plenty of douchebags that just download content and use it as a substitute for purchases. But there is a large faction that would never have seen a certain movie or heard a certain album except that it was there to download. And that didn't cost the industry anything. If it wasn't there, it wouldn't have been seen. And they wouldn't have gotten that exposure.

There are also many others who download to get a taste of artists and then, if they like them, they purchase the album in a show of support. Perhaps if movie machines and cookie-cutter artists weren't churning out an absurd slurry of shit on a regular basis and the radio industry hadn't collapsed into centralized pimps for that crap then, just maybe, consumers would have a little more trust in the system and a little more reason to shuck out fucking $15 for a goddamned CD - the same price we payed 15 years ago when discs weren't $0.02 to produce.

My advice is research bands on MySpace and their main websites. If they have samples, download the album from Mininova.org or like sites. If you like the album and plan on listening to it for a while, buy a copy to support the artist.

I read a couple months ago one of the most brilliant, obvious insights: The greatest fear of almost every artist is not that they will have their novel or music or indie movie downloaded for free thousands of times, but that no one will ever hear of them.

Download. Support. And long live Pirate Bay.

Oh, and fuck you Sweden (that is, not the people but the government entities that fold to corporate pressures like so many bendy straws; it could've been just as easily our elected douchebags here in the US).

Chapter 15 of Life, The Universe, and Everything

One of my favorite quotes in every sense is "A magician wandered along the beach, but no one needed him."

Brilliant.

Douglas Adams.

But that comes from whence?

Here. Chapter 15 of Life, The Universe, and Everything.

Two months later, Zipo Bibrok 5 / 108 had cut the bottoms off his Galactic State jeans, and was spending part of the enormous fee his judgments commanded lying on a jewelled beach having Essence of Qualactin rubbed into his back by the same rather nice member of the jury. She was a Soolfinian girl from beyond the Cloudworlds of Yaga. She had skin like lemon silk and was very interested in legal bodies.

"Did you hear the news?" she said.

"Weeeeelaaaaah!" said Zipo Bibrok 5 / 108, and you would have had to have been there to know exactly why he said this. None of this was on the tape of Informational Illusions, and is all based on hearsay.

"No," he added, when the thing that had made him say "Weeeeelaaaaah" had stopped happening. He moved his body round slightly to catch the first rays of the third and greatest of primeval Vod's three suns which was now creeping over the ludicrously beautiful horizon, and the sky now glittered with some of the greatest tanning power ever known.

A fragrant breeze wandered up from the quiet sea, trailed along the beach, and drifted back to sea again, wondering where to go next. On a mad impulse it went up to the beach again. It drifted back to sea.

"I hope it isn't good news," muttered Zipo Bibrok 5 / 108, "'cos I don't think I could bear it."

"Your Krikkit judgment was carried out today," said the girl sumptuously. There was no need to say such a straightforward thing sumptuously, but she went ahead and did it anyway because it was that sort of day. "I heard it on the radio," she said, "when I went back to the ship for the oil."

"Uhuh," muttered Zipo and rested his head back on the jewelled sand.

"Something happened," she said.

"Mmmm?"

"Just after the Slo-Time envelope was locked," she said, and paused a moment from rubbing in the Essence of Qualactin, "a Krikkit warship which had been missing presumed destroyed turned out to be just missing after all. It appeared and tried to seize the Key."

Zipo sat up sharply.

"Hey, what?" he said.

"it's all right," she said in a voice which would have calmed the Big Bang down. "Apparently there was a short battle. The Key and the warship were disintegrated and blasted into the space-time continuum. Apparently they are lost for ever."

She smiled, and ran a little more Essence of Qualactin on to her fingertips. He relaxed and lay back down.

"Do what you did a moment or two ago," he murmured.

"That?" she said.

"No, no," he said, "that."

She tried again.

"That?" she asked.

"Weeeeelaaaaah!"

Again, you had to be there.

The fragrant breeze drifted up from the sea again.

A magician wandered along the beach, but no one needed him.

Lorem Ipsum, Catullus, Bukowski

The traditional filler text of graphic designers and web developers does have meaning. Love it.

Neither is there anyone who loves grief itself since it is grief and thus wants to obtain it

What the fuck was Cicero talking about?

I prefer Catullus:

Advice: to himself

Sad Catullus, stop playing the fool,
and let what you know leads you to ruin, end.
Once, bright days shone for you,
when you came often drawn to the girl
loved as no other will be loved by you.
Then there were many pleasures with her,
that you wished, and the girl not unwilling,
truly the bright days shone for you.
And now she no longer wants you: and you
weak man, be unwilling to chase what flees,
or live in misery: be strong-minded, stand firm.
Goodbye girl, now Catullus is firm,
he doesn’t search for you, won’t ask unwillingly.
But you’ll grieve, when nobody asks.
Woe to you, wicked girl, what life’s left for you?
Who’ll submit to you now? Who’ll see your beauty?
Who now will you love? Whose will they say you’ll be?
Who will you kiss? Whose lips will you bite?
But you, Catullus, be resolved to be firm.

...which leads me to Bukowski:

one thirty-six a.m.

I laugh sometimes when I think about
say
Céline at a typewriter
or Dostoevsky...
or Hamsun...
ordinary men with feet, ears, eyes,
ordinary men with hair on their heads
sitting there typing words
while having difficulties with life
while being puzzled almost to madness.

Dostoevsky gets up
he leaves the machine to piss,
comes back
drinks a glass of milk and thinks about
the casino and
the roulette wheel.

Céline stops, gets up, walks to the
window, looks out, thinks, my last patient
died today, I won't have to make any more
visits there.
when I saw him last
he paid his doctor bill;
it's those who don't pay their bills,
they live on and on.
Céline walks back, sits down at the
machine
is still for a good two minutes
then begins to type.

Hamsun stands over his machine thinking,
I wonder if they are going to believe
all these things I write?
he sits down, begins to type.
he doesn't know what a writer's block
is:
he's a prolific son-of-a-bitch
damn near as magnificent as
the sun.
he types away.

and I laugh
not out loud
but all up and down these walls, these
dirty yellow and blue walls
my white cat asleep on the
table
hiding his eyes from the
light.

he's not alone tonight
and neither am
I.

We're gonna need a bigger beer.

What I'm Reading Now - Perdido Street Station

One of my close friends told me, 5 or 6 years ago, that I needed to read Perdido Street Station. 4 years ago, he hunted down China Miéville, from whom he purchased a copy, who wrote on the title page:

To [Ricky],

For God's sake, man,
listen to your friend,

Imploringly,
China Miéville

If only I'd known.

    What are you doing here, so far from home? thought Isaac with wonder. Look at the color of you: you're from the desert! You must have come miles and miles, from the Cymek. What the spit are you doing here, you impressive fucker?
    He almost shook his head with awe at the great predator before he cleared his throat and spoke.
    "Can I help you?"

Tasty, in all it's flavors. I should've done this long ago.

36 pages, and I can't wait for the next 10 minutes of free time.

China: Amen.

What I Just Read - Siddhartha

Maybe not done yet tonight...

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.

Beauty in truth. I'm a little late to the ball on this one, but: read it.

Dumbledore!

I saw this months ago and didn't realize I should share it with you. Harry Potter Puppet Pals:

The Time Traveler's Wife

In one of those crazy incidences of synchronicity, this past Saturday night saw me at the home of some of my favorite people. Let's call them Art and Music, for as I am Writer, they eat their names with savor.

Saturday evening, after many a libation, we were visually walking the bookshelf and Art told me about a book she'd been given but never read: The Time Traveler's Wife. The next morning, mildly foggy from the aforementioned evening, I appeared back at my parents' house. Before I went home, without mentioning the previous conversation, I was handed The Time Traveler's Wife and told to read it.



So now I must.

But I don't just spill trivial bullshit on a regular basis, so here's the crux: I've barely begun the book (working on Harry Potter 6 right now as well), but caught this poem in the opening pages. It's called "Love After Love" but is more appropriately entitled "Love During Love." Because we need it. We forget, sometimes, during a relationship and especially during a marriage, that we are solitary figures, that we have an individual personality. We forget to know ourselves, our desires, our dreams. And sometimes we need to give ourselves a giant fucking hug.

(note: I realize this punches in the face the Zen Buddhist parts of my idealistic life, but I'm an admitted walking dichotomy, so get the hell over it.)

I almost cried the first time I read it. I cry now reading it again and again. Because I've forgotten.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.


Derek Walcott