S1.15 She who must not be named
Collings Guitars
With its exceptional balance and clarity, the mid-sized OM2H is one of our most versatile acoustic offerings, lending itself to a variety playing styles and scenarios. East Indian rosewood back and sides and a full 15” lower bout provide ample volume and low-end response for ensemble playing, while the curvature of the waist imparts beautiful note separation for solo fingerstyle and chord melodies. Add in a cutaway for unhindered access to the upper fretboard and there is no limit to the musical possibilities that await.
Not exactly Jim’s New Guitar but close.
Uprooted
“Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.”
Recommended by Jim
Percy Jackson and the Olympians #1: The Lightning Thief
by Rick Riordan
Percy Jackson is a good kid, but he can't seem to focus on his schoolwork or control his temper. And lately, being away at boarding school is only getting worse - Percy could have sworn his pre-algebra teacher turned into a monster and tried to kill him. When Percy's mom finds out, she knows it's time that he knew the truth about where he came from, and that he go to the one place he'll be safe. She sends Percy to Camp Half Blood, a summer camp for demigods (on Long Island), where he learns that the father he never knew is Poseidon, God of the Sea. Soon a mystery unfolds and together with his friends—one a satyr and the other the demigod daughter of Athena - Percy sets out on a quest across the United States to reach the gates of the Underworld (located in a recording studio in Hollywood) and prevent a catastrophic war between the gods.
Recommended by Jim
Milarepa
Later he felt sorrow about his deeds, and became student of Marpa the Translator. Before Marpa would teach Milarepa, he had him undergo abuse and trials, such as letting him build and then demolish three towers in turn. Milarepa was asked to build one final multi-story tower by Marpa at Lhodrag, which still stands. Eventually, Marpa accepted him, explaining that the trials were a means to purify Milarepa's negative karma. Marpa transmitted Tantric initiations and instructions to Milarepa, including tummo ("yogic heat"), the "aural transmissions" (Wylie: snyan rgyud), and mahamudra. Marpa told Milarepa to practice solitary meditation in caves and mountain retreats, which, according to the biography, after many years of practice resulted in "a deep experiential realization about the true nature of reality." In some other sources, it is said that Milarepa and Marpa both came to India to seek one most important thing for ultimate realisation from Marpa's guru, but even he didn't know about it. Later on he tried for many years and finally attained enlightenment. Thereafter he lived as a fully realized yogi, and eventually even forgave his aunt, who caused his family's misfortune.
Mentioned by Jim
The Library at Mount Char
A missing God.
A library with the secrets to the universe.
A woman too busy to notice her heart slipping away.
Carolyn's not so different from the other people around her. She likes guacamole and cigarettes and steak. She knows how to use a phone. Clothes are a bit tricky, but everyone says nice things about her outfit with the Christmas sweater over the gold bicycle shorts. After all, she was a normal American herself once.
Recommended highly by Jim and Lionel
Anathem
by Neal Stephenson
Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside "saecular" world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent's walls. Three times during history's darkest epochs violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community. Yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe, becoming out of necessity even more austere and less dependent on technology and material things. And Erasmas has no fear of the outside—the Extramuros—for the last of the terrible times was long, long ago.
Recommended by Jim
Snow Crash
by Neal Stephenson
In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous… you'll recognize it immediately.
Wreck-It Ralph
A video game villain wants to be a hero and sets out to fulfill his dream, but his quest brings havoc to the whole arcade where he lives.
Recommended by Lionel
Steven Universe
A team of intergalactic warriors fights to protect the Earth, but the combination of three highly trained beings and one quirky young boy leaves the team struggling to overcome the dangerous scenarios that are put in front of them.
Created by Rebecca Sugar
Recommended by Jim
{ feuilleton }
Launched in February 2006 as a place to write about art, film, music and my work, I ended up writing a post almost every day for the next 10 years. New entries were less frequent after February 2016, and so too was the readership, thanks to social media. Between those two dates my writings were the subject of a feature in Eye magazine, and my post about designer Barney Bubbles (and all the interest it generated) led to my being mentioned in the New York Times. Not bad going for something started on a whim.
JOHN COULTHART is a World Fantasy Award-winning artist, a designer and writer. His illustration and design work has been exhibited worldwide, and includes commissions for Abrams, Aconyte, Angry Robot, Barnes & Noble, Editorial Alma, Granta, Harper Collins, Savoy, Strange Attractor, Tachyon, Tor and many others.
craphound: repository by Cory Doctorow
I’ve got a old-fashioned link-blog, Pluralistic, where I post a daily list of links with commentary and analysis. If you’d prefer to get it as a newsletter, you can subcribe to the Plura-list. Both are free from surveillance and advertising.
The Shock of the New
Mechanical Paradise - How the development of technology influenced art between 1880 and end of WWI.
Not the video Lionel references - just the first in the series.
Chris Burden
His best-known work from that time is perhaps the 1971 performance piece Shoot, in which he was shot in his left arm by an assistant from a distance of about sixteen feet (5 m) with a .22 rifle. Other performances from the 1970s included Deadman (1972), in which Burden lay on the ground covered with a canvas sheet and a set of road flares until bystanders assumed he was dead and called emergency services.
Chris Burden and ‘The Other Vietnam Memorial’
The Other Vietnam Memorial
Steel, aluminum, and etched anodized copper plates
Installed: 176 x 119 x 119 in. (447.0 x 302.3 x 302.3 cm)
Gift of Lannan Foundation
