Some publisher could make a killing by reviving these hidden poison cabinets in the shape of books that were popular in the 17th century.
The pitch-perfect SNL commercial (below) featuring Kate McKinnon & Billie Eilish advertises the ubiquitous, bland, budget hotel that can be found all across North America. I’ve stayed in way too many over the years.
Our rooms provide every comfort required by law: tiny soap in plastic, phone that blinks, Band-Aid-colored blanket, chair for suitcase, black & white photo of Ferris wheel, blow dryer that goes oooooooh, short glass wearing little hat, and small stain in place you have to touch.
And be sure to enjoy our hot tub; it’s always occupied by an eight-year-old boy in goggles staring at your breasts. He’s been in there for hours and he’s not getting out until you do.
NB: If the video does not play or appear in your email, please click on the short url link below.
This is a comic series about all those weird things we readers do.
Script by The Wild Detectives
Illustrations by Laura Pacheco
I was recently surprised and intrigued to read that the estate of George Orwell has approved a feminist retelling of Nineteen Eighty-Four, which reimagines the story from the perspective of Winston Smith’s lover Julia. In the iconic dystopian novel, Smith works at The Ministry of Truth, rewriting history to suit Big Brother’s party line. He begins a forbidden sexual affair with Julia – who works on the novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department – until both are captured and sent for re-education.
In Sandra Newman’s novel Julia , the incidents of Nineteen Eighty-Four are seen through the woman’s eyes. The publisher Granta has said that Julia understands the world of Oceania “far better than Winston and is essentially happy with her life”. As Orwell puts it in Nineteen Eighty-Four, “in some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far less susceptible to Party propaganda … She also stirred a sort of envy in him by telling him that during the Two Minutes Hate her great difficulty was to avoid bursting out laughing. But she only questioned the teachings of the Party when they in some way touched upon her own life. Often she was ready to accept the official mythology, simply because the difference between truth and falsehood did not seem important to her.”
Newman’s book will address some of the unanswered questions from the original novel. such as why Julia is interested in Winston, and how she has navigated her way through Big Brother’s party hierarchy. The re-telling of Nineteen Eighty-Four approved by Orwell’s estate and to be published in time for the 75th anniversary of the original, although it has no firm publication date yet.
Miller High Life’s Gingerbread Dive Bar Kit brings the best of the holiday season together : arts & crafts, gingerbread, dive bars and beer. Almost everyone loves a good gingerbread house and building one is a wonderful seasonal activity. But maybe it’s time that traditional concept gets shaken up a bit.
The popular North American beer brand Miller High Life has created a novel twist on the traditional gingerbread house with their ironic and fun Gingerbread Dive Bar Kit.
It’s been quite a few years since I spent any time hanging out in a good dive bar, but I have some fond memories of the ones that feel cozy and unpretentious. Now we can build our own dive bar, including gumdrop lamps, peppermint bar stools, and a cheerful, mustachioed bartender. Supposedly the gingerbread itself is baked with beer, to give the whole kit a more bar-like feel.
I’m sure there’s that special arts&craftsy someone on your holiday list who would treasure this unique kit.
(Friday, June 11, 1920)
It’s only in my dreams that I am so sinister.
Recently I had another dream about you,
it was a big dream, but I hardly remember a thing.
I was in Vienna, I don’t recall anything about that,
next I went to Prague and had forgotten your address,
not only the street but also the city, everything,
one the name Schreiber kept somehow appearing,
but I didn’t know what to make of that.
So I had lost you completely.
In my despair I made various very clever attempts,
which were nevertheless not carried out –
I don’t know why –
I just remember one of them.
I wrote on an envelope: M. Jesenski and underneath
“Request delivery of this letter,
because otherwise the Ministry of Finance will suffer terrible loss.”
With this threat I hoped to engage the entire government in my search for you.
Clever?
Don’t let this way you against me.
It’s only in my dreams that I am so sinister.
Is Superman Circumcised? faced some stiff competion but it won the 2021 Diagram Prize for Oddest Book of the Year after garnering a 51% share of the public vote. The book—an academic study on the Jewish origins of the iconic DC Comics character—outlasted the other nominees to win the annual honor.
Is Superman Circumcised? beat out the second-place title, The Life Cycle of Russian Things: From Fish Guts to Fabergé by 28 percent. Just over 11,000 members of the reading public cast a vote for the prize. The book won even after a a concerted effort by Kremlin-backed troll farms to swing the vote to The Life Cycle of Russian Things.
Although the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book of the Year is all about humor, Schwartz’s book is a serious study of the Jewish influences on the iconic character, from Superman’s creation by immigrant teens Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, who based the superhero’s origin story on Moses, his strength on Samson, his mission on the golem, and his nebbish secret identity on themselves. Schwartz also documents that in the decades after Siegel and Schuster sold the rights, Superman’s primarily Jewish writers, artists and editors continued to borrow Jewish motifs, such as basing Krypton’s society on Jewish culture and a trial of Lex Luthor on Adolf Eichmann’s.
This is the remaining shortlist for 2021:
23%
The Life Cycle of Russian Things: From Fish Guts to Fabergé
Despite strong support from countries previously within Soviet sphere of influence, this look at Russian material culture over the last four centuries—including an essential examination of how the Red Army’s T-34 tank was a microcosm of socialism—had to settle for second.
10%
Miss, I Don’t Give a Shit
Adele Bates’ guide for teachers, which includes tips on how to get through a lesson “without a desk flying at you or a blazer being set alight”, had to settle for third place. Not good enough, but a gold star for effort.
7%
Curves for the Mathematically Curious
A bookies’ early favorite, Julian Havil’s look at the beauty and elegance of mathematical curves proved too erotically charged for mainstream Diagram voters.
6%
Handbook of Research on Health and Environmental Benefits of Camel Products
That this essential guide to the latest academic data on alternative agricultural commodities produced by the Ship of the Desert slumped (or humped?) to a distant fifth place suggests not enough people are familiar with the bold, musky brew that is fermented camel’s milk.
5%
Hats: A Very Unnatural History
Malcolm Smith’s look at the impact that hats made of birds and other mammals have had on wildlife throughout history may have finished dead last, but making the shortlist at all can be deemed a crowning achievement.
“Last Stop For Lost Property” (below) is a short film by Peruvian filmmaker Vincente Cueto that offers a sentimental look at items that were lost in the New York City subway and bus system and found at a later time. The film is narrated by Sonny Drayton, who seems to have a unique perspective on the MTA’s lost and found department. While Drayton wants to ensure that the folks visiting the lost and found office have positive results, he’s actually a volunteer of sorts, and not a MTA employee.
If you are looking for a holiday gift for the bibliophiles in your life the Everyman’s Library recently published a splendid new volume in its Pocket Poets series, Books and Libraries: Poems. The 272-page anthology, with gorgeous jacket art, includes such poets as Stevens,Horace, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Borges, Angelou, and others, all paying homage to books and libraries. The book’s editor, Andrew Scrimgeour, is the Archivist Emeritus of the Society of Biblical Literature and the Dean of Libraries Emeritus of Drew University.
The poems are sorted into meaningful categories including the love of books, readers, the reading experience, discovering reading as a child, celebrating individual books and authors, libraries, librarians, writing books, and the future of books and reading, and “Marginalia.”
The lead poem in the book is “The House was Quiet and the World Was Calm” by Wallace Stevens. Stevens captures the experience of reading alone at night in a quiet house on a summer evening and becoming sublimely lost in the book.
Travel Between The Pages 