“Sip in the nectar from between the lips of your love”
The Art of Kissing: A 1936 Guide for Lovers
by Maria Popova
“Like a bee that settles on the fragrant pistils of a flower, and sips in the nectar for honey, so should you sip in the nectar from between the lips of your love.”
Between Edison’s scandalous footage of the first kiss in cinema in 1896 and Bill Plympton’s quirky animated guide to kissing a century later, the public image of lip-locking underwent some radical transformations.
In 1936, the year my grandmother was born, a man named Hugh Morris penned a small illustrated pamphlet titled The Art of Kissing (public library), in which he guided young lovers through the techniques, tricks, and “approved methods of kissing,” including such varieties as “the spiritual kiss,” “the nip kiss,” “the pain kiss,” “the surprise kiss,” “the eyelash kiss,” and “the French soul kiss,” as well as tips on how to prepare for a kiss and how to approach a girl.
Delightfully dated in its assumptions about love, heterosexuality, and marriage, it’s as much a charming time-capsule of a bygone era as it is a sure source of a good chuckle.
Follow, Follow Reverso
Follow Follow: A Book of Reverso Poems
by Marilyn Singer, illus. by Josee Masse
In Marilyn Singer’s fun, thoughtful and beautifully written collection, each of her 14 reverso poems spins a familiar fairy tale in a new direction.Singer introduced the reverso in Mirror Mirror. On one side of the page is a free-verse poem composed of short, simple lines and phrases; the same poem appears on the other side of the page, but with the lines reversed from top to bottom. Meanings alter, tones shift, and often the poem’s narrator switches. Together, the two form a single reverso. The results range from hilarious to ominous to poignant. Thumbelina declines the mole’s offer of marriage using the exact words he employed to propose; the Pied Piper turns the villagers’ insistence that he receive “no pay” into a dire warning; and although the Little Mermaid’s reverso begins “For love/ give up your voice./ Don’t/ think twice,” an inner voice warns her, “Think twice!/ Don’t/ give up your voice/ for love.”
Singer’s poems are evocative and moving even without the clever twist, but the playful puzzle element of the reverso poems will fascinate and delight children and grownups alike. Josée Masse’s acrylic paintings visually reflect and bolster the duality contained within each reverso, as in the image that accompanies “Will the Real Princess Please Stand Up?,” in which an excessively tall bedpost divides two wannabe-princesses–one sleeping peacefully, one tossing and turning. This versatile collection will appeal to fans of poetry, fairy tales, word puzzles and snarky narrators. —Allie Jane Bruce, children’s librarian, Bank Street College of Education
Discover: Fun, thoughtful, beautifully written poems that employ a poetic form called a reverso to spin a familiar fairy tale in a new direction.
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Pre-Meditated Rage Against The Machine
Shot six months before their debut – Rage Against The Machine burning down the aisle of a Long Beach record store. Outstanding – and Bombkudos to CowProd.
Pentametron – Iambic Pentameter Tilled From Twitter
DeLeon DeMicoli’s “Les Cannibales” launches Project Orange Slice
About Project Orange Slice
It’s like selling fruit at a farmer’s market. Cut up oranges and hand out slices to those willing to try something new. Hopefully, they’ll be back to buy your produce.
The first novel released under Project Orange Slice is “Les Cannibales” by DeLeon DeMicoli.
The first chapter will be posted once we reach 500 twitter followers.
About “Les Cannibales”
During a robbery, Blinky sees police activity down the street. His crew assumes cops have the art gallery surrounded, unaware of their true presence, which is responding to a car accident that has left one man dead. The thieves shoot at the responding officers and take hostages. When Detective Reynolds arrives at the scene, he identifies the dead man involved in the car accident as Carlo Herrera. This becomes his main lead to hunt down the thieves’ true identities and work out a peaceful resolution before S.W.A.T moves in.
Each thief has a story explaining why he chose to take the job. Inky is a con artist repaying an old debt, Blinky is a stuntman in need of quick cash, Pinky is an enforcer that’s looking to move up in the ranks and Clyde is a sociopath / art aficionado that was recently released from prison. When S.W.A.T teams get the “go-ahead” to overtake the gallery, it’s dog-eat-dog as thieves plan their escape.
About the Author
DeLeon DeMicoli lives in East Bay, CA. He writes a monthly blog called “This Fighting Life” for mixedmartialarts.com.
Follow Project Orange Slice on Twitter to know when chapters for “Les Cannibales” will be posted.
Suck on this, LeBron!
Why We Write – Thursday Night @ The Center For Fiction
Why We Write
Thursday February 21, 2013
07:00 pm
To celebrate the publication of WHY WE WRITE: 20 Acclaimed Authors On How and Why They Do What They Do we’re hosting a panel with contributors James Frey,Kathryn Harrison, and editor Meredith Maran.
About the book:
Any writer, aspiring or established, knows how difficult the creative process can be. There are more than one million manuscripts currently is search of a publisher and only one percent of those will get a nod, and of the books that actually get published, only thirty percent turn a profit. With occupational hazards like self-doubt, writer’s block, countless rejections, minimal pay for maximum effort, and bad reviews what keeps writers tapping away at their keyboards?
James Frey is from Cleveland. He has written four books. His work is published in 41 languages and 110 countries.
Kathryn Harrison has written the novels Thicker Than Water, Exposure, Poison, The Binding Chair, The Seal Wife, and Envy. Her autobiographical work includes The Kiss, Seeking Rapture, The Road to Santiago, and The Mother Knot. She has also written a biography, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and, most recently, a book of true crime,While They Slept: An Inquiry into the Murder of a Family. She lives in New York with her husband, the novelist Colin Harrison, and their three children.
Meredith Maran is the author of nine nonfiction books and the acclaimed novel A Theory of Small Earthquakes. She’s been writer-in-residence at UCLA and the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, and a fellow at Yaddo and MacDowell, among other artist colonies. Her writing appears regularly in the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle and People.
Banksy Mural Hack
Banksy robbers
Mural hacked off wall set to sell for £450k
Hit … Banksy’s Slave Labour mural on wall
By ADAM FAULKNER and CHRIS POLLARD
Banksy Slave Labour (Bunting Boy) was stolen at night last week.
A BANKSY painting is set to fetch up to £450,000 after it was mysteriously hacked off a shop wall and put on a US auction website.
Banksy Slave Labour (Bunting Boy) was stolen at night last week.
The mural — which shows a young boy hunched over a sewing machine making Union Jack bunting — then appeared on the US-based Fine Art Auctions Miami site.
The “unique street work”, which had been stencilled on to Poundland in Wood Green, North London, last year, is up for £250,000 but is expected to sell for nearly double that.
They’ll Rise Again Like A Led Zeppelin
Robert Plant Hints He’d Be Open to Led Zeppelin Reunion
‘I’ve got nothing to do in 2014,’ says singer
After their tantalizing one-off gig in 2007, Robert Plant has hinted that he’s open to a Led Zeppelin reunion next year. Speaking to Australia’s version of 60 Minutes, the singer deflected the notion that he’s the reason for Zeppelin’s dormancy. “[Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones] are Capricorns. They don’t say a word. They’re quite contained in their own worlds and they leave it to me,” said Plant. “I’m not the bad guy . . . You need to see the Capricorns – I’ve got nothing to do in 2014.”
La Planète sauvage
I Woke Up This Morning and My Penis Was Missing Again
Sea slug’s ‘disposable penis’ surprises
By Rebecca Morelle
A sea slug that is able to detach, re-grow and then re-use its penis has surprised scientists.
Japanese researchers observed the bizarre mating behaviour in a species called Chromodoris reticulata, which is found in the Pacific Ocean.
They believe this is the first creature known that can repeatedly copulate with what they describe as a “disposable penis”.
The study is published in the Royal Society’s journal Biology Letters.
Male and female
The sex life of the sea slug is complicated even before detachable organs come into play.
Almost all of these creatures, which are also known as nudibranchs, are thought to be “simultaneous hermaphrodites”. This means they have both male and female sexual organs and can use them both at the same time.
We were almost killed by an asteroid today. Almost….
Danger of death!
How you are unlikely to die
This Is An Egg On Drugs
You So F†cking Valentine! @
‘You So Fucking Hot’ Lets You Tweet Anonymous Valentines to Your Internet Crushes
By Jessica Roy
It’s Valentine’s Day, and whether you’re in a steady relationship or planning to cap off the night watching porn and eating ice cream, you’re probably having a lot of feels. With no desire to express them in a mature adult fashion, why not unleash anonymous Internet compliments on unsuspecting semi-strangers?
You So Fucking Hot lets you tweet anonymously at people you have Internet crushes on, just in time for Valentine’s Day. It’s basically a modern way to send a secret Valentine, minus the construction paper and glue. “Be Nice…” instructs the site, and so far it has been. “You’re hotter than NSYNC live in concert. Happy Valentines Day!” reads one tweet. Aw.
Transmogrified Cat Wins Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show
No Ordinary Affenpinscher, Banana Joe Is Named Best in Show
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Banana Joe, a black [alleged – Ed.] dog with a monkeylike face, became the first affenpinscher to win Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on Tuesday night. He defeated six dogs, one a Portuguese water dog on the same night that Bo, who is the same breed, watched his master, President Obama, deliver the State of the Union address.
“He’s won a lot of big, big shows, but none like this one,” said his handler, Ernesto Lara, who held onto Joey, as he calls him, during a postshow news conference.
Joey sat calmly, as if he could have gone back onto the floor of Madison Square Garden and taken on his challengers again. He stuck his tongue out as Lara answered questions. He didn’t appear to need any celebratory drinks or snacks.
Asteroid Definitely
Finally confirmed: An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs
A team of American and European researchers have confirmed that the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction — the event that wiped out roughly 75% of the planet’s species, including almost every dinosaur — was caused by an asteroid impact in Mexico 66 million years ago. The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction was the last great extinction event to occur on Earth, and is most notable for causing the diversification of mammals that eventually resulted in Homo sapiens.
66 million years ago an asteroid roughly 15 kilometers (9 miles) wide hurtled into Chicxulub, Mexico. The collision, which left behind a 180-kilometer (110-mile) crater, released 420 zettajoules of energy — 100 teratonnes of TNT, or roughly two million times stronger than the largest thermonuclear device ever used (the Russian Tsar Bomba). The impact created a huge dust cloud that blocked out the Sun, starting the extinction ball rolling by killing off much of the world’s plants, and thus the herbivores soon after. Due to high levels of oxygen in the Cretaceous atmosphere, the impact may also have caused intense, global firestorms that killed off many other species. Because the asteroid landed in the ocean, megatsunamis would’ve swept the world’s coasts, too.
Until now, though, there hasn’t been enough evidence that the Chicxulub impact actuallycaused the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction.
Happy Birthday FT
With a Focus on Its Future, Financial Times Turns 125
By ERIC PFANNER
It was a time when the financial markets were growing and globalizing rapidly. Gossip, speculation and misinformation abounded. There was a need for a “friend to the honest financier and the respectable broker.” From 1888, when it began publishing under that motto, The Financial Times has seen continuity in its mission.
On Wednesday, The F.T. is celebrating its 125th birthday. The newspaper’s London headquarters along the south bank of the Thames will be lit up in pink, the color of the paper on which it has been printed since shortly after it was founded. There will be a few parties — understated, of course, for these are straitened times in the City of London, and challenging ones for the newspaper industry.
Ben & Jerry’s Flavor Graveyard
So Ben & Jerry’s has an actual Graveyard for their Discontinued Flavours
Surrounded by a white picket fence on a grassy knoll, lie the headstones of especially beloved flavours or particularly despised flavours, some that were introduced as early as the late 1970s when the ice cream company was founded, but sadly met their untimely fate.
The folks at Ben & Jerry’s are pretty good at word play and each flavour has its own poetic epitaph.
Richard Artschwager Gone
Richard Artschwager, Whose Multifarious Work Defied Categorization, Dies at 89
Richard Artschwager, who crafted a protean and enigmatic body of work over the course of more than half a century, has died. He was 89. David Nolan Gallery and Gagosian Gallery, which both presented his work in New York, confirmed his death.
Given Mr. Artschwager’s thrillingly diverse output, it’s difficult to pin his fame to any particular series. He made haunting grayscale paintings, often of domestic scenes and architecture, on textured Celotex and sculptures with Formica—“the great ugly material,” he said of the stuff—and wood that often resembled functional objects like pianos, chairs and tables, betraying the artist’s work as a furniture maker in the 1950s. But he also made curious little pieces that he called “blps,” knockwurst-shaped works that he sometimes installed throughout the city. All the while, he handily sidestepped the reigning art movements of the day, indulging elements of Minimalism (in his sculptures) and Pop art (in his paintings) while playfully ignoring their strictures.
Just a week ago, a major retrospective of his work—titled “Richard Artschwager!”—ended its run at the Whitney Museum. As part of the show, “blps” were installed throughout West Chelsea, where the Whitney will open its new museum in 2015. The show was his second career-spanning show at the museum, and will travel to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles later this year.
Justin Bieber vs. God
Skrillex Retires – Books Vegas Run with Cirque du Soleil
Skrillex Pairs with Cirque du Soleil for Las Vegas Club Residency
Zedd, Sebastian Ingrosso also sign deals with new dance spot
By STEVE BALTIN
Cirque du Soleil has staged its acrobatic spectacles to the music of the Beatles, Elvis and other rock legends. Now the famed performance troupe is entering the electronic dance music world with LIGHT, a new club that will open at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas on April 26th.
As is typical with the Vegas scene, the club has signed residency deals with several big-name DJs, the biggest of whom is Skrillex. The dubstep star tells Rolling Stone that he is hoping to create a unique environment in the new dance spot (which has yet to announce start dates for each artist residency).
“The LIGHT Skrillex show is gonna be only in Vegas,” he says. “I want it be distinct to the LIGHT club because the configuration is so customizable, it’s fucking crazy. That’s the thing about the club, too: they can do anything, so it’s how you maximize the dynamic of a great show with all their fucking bells and whistles and all of their budgets and resources to do anything.”
“I have set my life upon a cast”
Richard III’s Bones: Should One of History’s Losers Be Redeemed?
These are royal bones. Researchers from the U.K.’s University of Leicester confirmed today that the remains of a skeleton discovered in September beneath a parking lot in the British Midlands were that of Richard III, a monarch who ruled for a brief, bloody two years before being slain in battle in 1485.
But now that we have — or at least, believe we have — established the identity of the remains, what of the historical figure that once gave them life? Richard III perished at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 when his army was decisively defeated by the forces of Henry Tudor, a rival claimant to the throne who would go on to become King Henry VII.
More than a century later, William Shakespeare would immortalize the cornered Richard’s final moments in Richard III as he fights grimly on foot after losing his steed — “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.” Sensing his doom a few lines before, Richard intones: “I have set my life upon a cast,/ And I will stand the hazard of the die.”
Pork Bone Broth for a Chinese hot pot
Pork Bone Broth for a Chinese hot pot
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, peeled and chopped
8 cloves garlic, peeled
Pork bone shoulder, plus 4 or 5 smaller pork bones
Cold water (enough to fill stockpot 3 / 4 full)
1 pinch goji berry
1 pinch dong quai
1 pinch longan berry
2 slices peeled ginger
2 to 3 green onions
Salt, to taste
In a large stockpot, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. When hot, add onions and garlic and saute until softened, about 5 minutes. Add pork bones and fill the pot three-quarters full with cold water. Add goji, dong quai, longan berry, ginger, green onions and salt. Reduce heat and gently simmer broth for 5 hours, stirring occasionally. Carefully strain stock through a mesh strainer. Return to pot and keep hot until ready to serve.
Avenge Of The Nerds
Geeks are the New Guardians of Our Civil Liberties
Recent events have highlighted the fact that hackers, coders, and geeks are behind a vibrant political culture.
A decade-plus of anthropological fieldwork among hackers and like-minded geeks has led me to the firm conviction that these people are building one of the most vibrant civil liberties movements we’ve ever seen. It is a culture committed to freeing information, insisting on privacy, and fighting censorship, which in turn propels wide-ranging political activity. In the last year alone, hackers have been behind some of the most powerful political currents out there.
Before I elaborate, a brief word on the term “hacker” is probably in order. Even among hackers, it provokes debate. For instance, on the technical front, a hacker might program, administer a network, or tinker with hardware. Ethically and politically, the variability is just as prominent. Some hackers are part of a transgressive, law-breaking tradition, their activities opaque and below the radar. Other hackers write open-source software and pride themselves on access and transparency. While many steer clear of political activity, an increasingly important subset rise up to defend their productive autonomy, or engage in broader social justice and human rights campaigns.
Despite their differences, there are certain websites and conferences that bring the various hacker clans together. Like any political movement, it is internally diverse but, under the right conditions, individuals with distinct abilities will work in unison toward a cause.
Dawn Of The Real Undead
Raging (Again) Against the Robots
THE robots are coming! Word is they want your job, your life and probably your little dog, too.
Robots have once again gripped the nation’s imagination, stoking fears of displaced jobs and perhaps even a displaced human race. An alarmist segment on “60 Minutes” was only the most vivid of a recent series of pieces in respected magazines and news outlets warning about widespread worker displacement. Professors at Cambridge University and a co-founder of Skype are creating a new Center for the Study of Existential Risk, which would research a “Terminator”-like scenario in which supercomputers rise up and destroy their human overlords, presumably plotting the whole caper in zeros and ones.
In New York alone, there are four plays running this month with themes of cybernetics run amok. One is a revival of “R.U.R.,” a 1920 Czech play that was the granddaddy of the cybernetic revolt genre and that originated the current meaning of the word “robot.”
Such android anxiety has a long history. John Maynard Keynes wrote about “technological unemployment” during the Great Depression. In the Industrial Revolution, disgruntled laborers — including the original Luddites — smashed automated looms and threshing machines that “stole” their jobs. In the 15th century, scribes protested the printing press, with a futile zeal rivaled perhaps only by that of modern journalists.
Hizzoner Ed Koch Gone
Ed Koch was fearless, priceless and loyal — a combination not found in today’s politicians
He took heat for his bipartisan efforts, but he forged relationships and did what was necessary to make New York City a better place. That’s what Ed was all about.
BY ALFONSE D’AMATO / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
WILLIE ANDERSON/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Loyalty, loyalty, loyalty — that was Ed Koch. He never gave up and he never let partisanship stand in the way of doing the right thing. I think a lot of people underestimated the brilliance of Ed Koch, the legal mind that he had, the ability to cut through things and understand.
He was fearless and priceless. And what you saw is what you got. That’s not what you get today in politics and in too many political leaders. They want to be all things to all people and they’ll promise them anything with little substance behind it.
Not Koch. When you were his friend, you couldn’t have a better friend. I never had a better friend.
Google-walk the Grand Canyon
First Digital Image Ever Created Was Of A Hot Chick, Of Course
The Never-Before-Told Story of the World’s First Computer Art (It’s a Sexy Dame)
In the late 1950s, an anonymous IBM employee made a lady from the pages of Esquire come to life on the screen of a $238 million military computer.
During a time when computing power was so scarce that it required a government-defense budget to finance it, a young man used a $238 million military computer, the largest such machine ever built, to render an image of a curvy woman on a glowing cathode ray tube screen. The year was 1956, and the creation was a landmark moment in computer graphics and cultural history that has gone unnoticed until now.
Using equipment designed to guard against the apocalypse, a pin-up girl had been drawn.
She was quite probably the first human likeness to ever appear on a computer screen.
She glowed.
[T]he pin-up program likely dates from 1956 to 1958. The upper end of the year range, 1958, can easily be established because multiple eyewitnesses claim that the diagnostic was present when the first non-test SAGE site went live in New Jersey in early 1958. The lower end of the range, 1956, comes from a compelling piece of cultural evidence.
In 1955, famed pin-up artist George Petty resumed a relationship with Esquire magazine just before his retirement. He illustrated two calendars for the publication, one for 1955 and one for 1956. Each month’s page came accompanied by a lushly illustrated and extremely scantily clad Petty pin-up.
Petty had a way of painting a woman by which she almost appeared nude if not for a sheer, skin-hugging fabric that obscured almost nothing. Such is the case in the December 1956 calendar pin-up, which leaves little besides the woman’s mysteriously absent nipples to the imagination.
Shazam! Private Pyle Relieves Himself of Closet Duty
‘Gomer Pyle’ actor Jim Nabors marries longtime partner, Stan Cadwallader, in Seattle
82-year-old actor had been dating former Honolulu firefighter since 1975
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
HONOLULU — Jim Nabors, the actor best known for playing Gomer Pyle on TV in the 1960s, has married his longtime male partner.
Hawaii News Now reports Nabors, 82, and Stan Cadwallader, 64, traveled from their Honolulu home to Seattle to be married Jan. 15. Gay marriage became legal in Washington state last month.
The couple met in 1975 when Cadwallader was a Honolulu firefighter.
“I’m 82 and he’s in his 60s and so we’ve been together for 38 years and I’m not ashamed of people knowing, it’s just that it was such a personal thing, I didn’t tell anybody,” Nabors said. “I’m very happy that I’ve had a partner of 38 years and I feel very blessed. And, what can I tell you, I’m just very happy.”