Notes

1. There's an octopus that will stuff six of its tentacles into a hole in the ground and extend the two remaining tentacles as far as they will go, giving the illusion that it's a poisonous banded sea snake.

2. I never read Pierre Bayard's How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, but I clipped a review from the TLS. I uncovered this review last night, while looking for something else. I realized I never read the review, either. (This was about three years ago.) Should I just throw it out? Or is it telling me something?

3. Andrew Leland, member of a Dance to the Music of Time book club (!), has some thoughts on Powell and Powellians:

Who now reads Cowley? If he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;
Forgot his epic, nay Pindaric art,
But still I love the language of his heart.

“But,” our narrator adds, “surely the pointed wit was just what did survive?” And who now reads Powell? A weirdly vocal and large group, it seems. The pleasure of Powell is in his humor, and his humor is entirely social. “Wit was just the quality he brought to bear with such remarkable effect.”

4. Paul Collins on Barbara Follett, in Lapham's Quarterly. This is how you write a lede!:

In a New Hampshire apartment during the winter of 1923, this typewritten notice was fastened squarely against a closed door:

NOBODY MAY COME INTO THIS ROOM IF THE DOOR IS SHUT TIGHT (IF IT IS SHUT NOT QUITE LATCHED IT IS ALL RIGHT) WITHOUT KNOCKING. THE PERSON IN THIS ROOM IF HE AGREES THAT ONE SHALL COME IN WILL SAY “COME IN,” OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT AND IF HE DOES NOT AGREE TO IT HE WILL SAY “NOT YET, PLEASE,” OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. THE DOOR MAY BE SHUT IF NOBODY IS IN THE ROOM BUT IF A PERSON WANTS TO COME IN, KNOCKS AND HEARS NO ANSWER THAT MEANS THERE IS NO ONE IN THE ROOM AND HE MUST NOT GO IN.

REASON. IF THE DOOR IS SHUT TIGHT AND A PERSON IS IN THE ROOM THE SHUT DOOR MEANS THAT THE PERSON IN THE ROOM WISHES TO BE LEFT ALONE.

5. Richard Nash talks about William Poundstone's Priceless in his "Year of Reading" roundup at The Millions.

6. Two more pieces to write...

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh coco'nut fhtagn

After turning the shells so the open side faces upwards, the octopuses blow jets of mud out of the bowl before extending their arms around the shell - or if they have two halves, stacking them first, one inside the other - before stiffening their legs and tip-toeing away.

Dr Norman said: "I think it is amazing that those arms of pure muscle get turned into rigid rods so that they can run along a bit like a high-speed spider.

"It comes down to amazing dexterity and co-ordination of eight arms and several hundred suckers." —BBC News

Rage in a cage — Lucid writing — "That's very Singerian!"

Ask the photograph. It says science. It says spoon. It says you will not remember how black the sky was over the parking lot when you held her wrist as if it were sand. You can't "capture" a moment. All that light. A cage.

—From Sampson Starkweather's "The Photograph," in Octopus Magazine

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An interview with the great Christian Bök (via Harriet):

Crystallography (my first book of poetry) attempts to put into practice some of my theoretical suppositions about 'pataphysics. Inspired by the etymology of the word "crystallography," such a work represents an act of "lucid writing," which uses the lexicon of geological science to misread the poetics of rhetorical figures.

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Team Dizzies member Matt has posted the second half of his interview with David Wain, Paul Rudd, and Ken Marino. HILARIOUS!