Ourobourdain

Scott writes:

I just had a celebrity ouroboros sighting — Anthony Bourdain got an ouroboros tattoo in Malaysia on one of his No Reservations episodes a few years ago. It's on YouTube here.

He adds that for his specific ouroboros design, the tattoo artist is "incorporating Iban features into what might otherwise have been suspiciously hippie." (An ouroboros is considered suspiciously hippie?! Alas, he's probably right.)

Bourdain later appeared on the tattoo show Miami Ink (video here) to get a skull tattoo from tattooist Chris Garver. He shows the ouroboros tattoo and waggishly says for the camera that "it's supposedly about death and regeneration. It's a little too optimistic for me. I'm looking kinda for an antidote to that."

"Ouroboros Antidote" would be a good title for something. Or maybe the more literary-sounding "Antidote For An Ouroboros"…

Surely there must be some subconscious significance to Bourdain's choice of the ouroboros design, given that his career is based around both creating food and eating food, and that he decides to adorn his own flesh with a symbol involving an endlessly (self-) devouring mouth.

Lazy Literary Musings™

I liked that Levi appreciated The Dog of the South last year, but felt that...well, his appreciation of Charles Portis was a touch restrained. So it's fun watching him rave over Portis's Masters of Atlantis—in two posts (and counting?)!

And it's also great to see him enjoying Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes.

I will just say that I finished Barry Gifford's Wild at Heart last night. What a book! I was reading a few other things and suddenly Wild at Heart overtook them. (I'm hoping Levi will read it and write something about it.) It's the first in the single-volume Sailor and Lula: The Complete Novels, which Seven Stories put out last year.

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I like this fake book cover by Scott at Erasing:

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!

TNCOM, #13

1. Ah, who am I kidding. I can’t hate the internet. The internet is just salt. A flavor enhancer for real life. Makes everything taste more flavorful, intenser, more like itself. This is my brilliant metaphor. The internet makes my boredom more boring, my short attention span shorter, and my vanity more desperate for affirmation. Also, too much of it and it’s gross and makes you crave a refreshing beverage.
—Scott David Herman, erasing.org