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Grab bag

In which I am a total fangirl

I’m hanging out in Bryn Mawr’s library waiting to see a panel discussion on "New Frontiers in Cartooning and Graphic Novels". On the roster of speakers: Jessica Abel (a fellow U of Chicago alum, though I don’t think we ever met), Gabrielle Bell, Lauren Weinstein, and my favorite cartoonist of all time, Alison Bechdel. I’m […]

Alternative housing fantasies

The things you find on del.icio.us — today I came across a link to a company that makes yurts, which you can apparently outfit with central heating, plumbing, interior walls and everything. Fantasizing about portable housing, I looked up an old link to a designer of hanging spherical treehouses (originally spotted at scribblingwoman‘s blog); other […]

Eggcorn of the week

Line from an online apartment listing: "These apartments are diamonds in a ruff!" Which is kind of a wonderful image. I bet you’d need a lot of starch in your ruff to get the diamonds to stay in there… (What’s an eggcorn? Here’s a definition.)

Theater review

Last night some friends and I caught the Live Arts Theater’s production of Metamorphoses, Mary Zimmerman’s stage adaptation of Ovid starring an ensemble cast and a pool of water. It’s kind of Ovidian sampler, featuring some of the more famous myths (Midas, Orpheus and Eurydice, Psyche) and some of the lesser-known ones (Erysichthon, which in […]

Shoulda gone to Berkeley

Link of the week: "This page is an electronic archive of images of people proving theorems while wearing sarongs." The Sarong Theorem Archive: quite possibly the definitive proof that no concept is too random, too specialized, or too implausible to have a web page devoted to it. Via Bitch Ph.D., who offers a sarong to […]

Snow day, domesticity, Auden, Freud, Verdi

It’s been snowing all morning, and even though it doesn’t really seem to be accumulating, I think I’ll stay in today enjoying the snow-day vibe. I’m listening to Studio 360 on the radio, and they’re talking about psychoanalysis by way of W. H. Auden’s "In Memory of Sigmund Freud," which I was very pleased to […]

Assorted capsule reviews

The Master, by Colm Tóibín: At times a little inert, at times a little obvious in its efforts to spin together Henry James’s biography into the structure of a novel; nonetheless, it got increasingly absorbing as it went on, and it’s quite moving at the end. Among the best parts are the moments where Tóibín […]

Link-dump post (mostly literary)

Well, Thanksgiving weekend was blessedly slow-paced, and I spent most of it hanging out with my family and being completely unplugged. Now I’m catching up: The Classical Language Instruction Project (via languagehat, and don’t miss the comments on pronunciation). Features people reading bits of Homer, Vergil, Plato, et al. out loud in Greek and Latin. […]

Gratuitous feline cuteness

In case you’re suffering from a deficit of kitten pictures: The Daily Kitten. Because sometimes, one just wants to look at cute fluffy kittens. (Via Feministe.)

This kind of thing is why I’m fascinated by classification

There is, however, a whole universe of easily overlooked and forgotten things that remain unclassified. Once noticed, these Very Small Objects seem to exist in every niche and corner in staggering numbers and varieties. We encounter these objects every day hidden in plain sight. They fill our pockets, cabinets, and corners. They populate our environments […]