I understand about 67% of this but it's still worth reading

Adam Kempa (of groovy Blvr. piece fame) on "The Case of the Audiosonic Identiglyph"

“Greetings from the World Wide Web is a bold experiment in 21st century consumer outreach protocol by Brand Labs of Rochester, Michigan. By utilizing the Audiosonic Identiglyph (AI), the modern businessperson is no longer limited by the archaic constraints of print and digital media when the time comes to seek out new markets. Using the AI allows the businessperson in question to access as yet unreached customers by promulgating the most critical information about their operation in an easy-to-use, algorithmically encoded audio file that is ready-made for broadcast over the public airwaves – ripe to be captured, decoded and interpreted by any clients within range of the transmission. When you think next level ecommerce, think Brand Labs.”

...with an assist from Erasing's Scott!

On the road

This is adorable! Erasing-meister (and Ouroboros-hunter) Scott and wife sing Neko Case...try not to smile while watching!


Set Out Running from SDH on Vimeo.

Edible Ouroboros

The Cobra Dog logo is about to munch its own tail.

(Via Scott, who's reading The Recognitions now—Ouroboros lit!)

An interview and a game

I. The mighty Ed Champion interviewed me last week for his Bat Segundo Show—and it's online now! We met at the Metro Diner on 100th Street, where I ate half a stack of blueberry pancakes. Ed had a bagel.

Topics discussed: Personal Days, my unpublished novels (The Diet of Worms and Dementia Americana!), B.S. Johnson, Harry Stephen Keeler, Mark Moskowitz, The PTSNBN, and much more!

II. The mighty Scott David Herman has devised a game using the cover of Personal Days!

Syllabary

I love this juxtaposition of quotes over at the Ouroboric Erasing:

Borges, talking to the Paris Review, 1967:

You know, English is a beautiful language, but the older languages are even more beautiful: they had vowels. Vowels in modern English have lost their value, their color. My hope for English — for the English language — is America. Americans speak clearly. When I go to the movies now, I can’t see much, but in the American movies, I understand every word.

Lorrie Moore, mercilessly, in her short story “How to Become a Writer”:

Insist you are not very interested in any one subject at all, that you are interested in the music of language, that you are interested in — in — syllables, because they are the atoms of poetry, the cells of the mind, the breath of the soul. Begin to feel woozy. Stare into your plastic wine cup.

“Syllables?” you will hear someone ask, voice trailing off, as they glide slowly toward the reassuring white of the dip.

Can I add two from my personal stash?

Clem came from Buffalo and spoke in the neutral American accent that sends dictionary makers there. His pronunciation was clear and colorless.
—John Updike, "I Am Dying, Egypt, Dying"

Could mortal lip divine
The undeveloped Freight
Of a delivered syllable
'Twould crumble with the weight.
—Emily Dickinson

An eternal golden braid

Your daily dose of genius!

Table-talk of Parkus Grammaticus for February 3

I. Great post over at Driftwood Singers Present (plus some Nada Surf):

Anyway, it gets real Raymond Carver, he needed to get to the UPS place, which was right where we were, but he insisted he didn't want to call the police or get an ambulance or go to the hospital or anything...

II. Over at Moistworks, Ben Greenman reminisces about the Black Album and elections and the store we think was called Rhymes Records...

III. Your weekend Ouroboros, courtesy Erasing—an Escher triple-ourobori/Moebius strip:



IV. Two kind of brilliant things in one sentence (emphasis added):

Every day a few hundred people dialed that mainframe for an alien signal — the then-unfamiliar squeal and crash of information transmission — and fit their receivers into acoustic couplers, like people in kayaks. —Virginia Heffernan, NYT Magazine

V. Devin's baffling Beatles trivia over at Hey Dullblog.

VI. Levi's double-jointed review: Wodehouse and Highsmith. (I highly approve of Lord Emsworth and Others, a completely satisfying grab-bag...)

VI. Weekend wisdom: Do not rent the movie Hot Rod.

First paragraph as short story

The first paragraph of the fourth chapter of Annie Dillard's latest novel is like a Lydia Davis–y storyette unto itself (via Erasing.org):

After they married she learned to feel their skin as double-sided. They felt a pause. Theirs was too much feeling to push through the crack that led down to the dim world of time and stuff. That world was gone. They held themselves alert only in those few million cells where they touched. She learned from those cells his awareness and his courtesy. Love so sprang at her, she honestly thought no one had ever looked into it. Where was it in literature? Someone would have written something. She must not have recognized it. Time to read everything again.