K urt Vonnegut library offers pupils free copies of banned book

The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library is asking interested pupils at Republic High School in Missouri to drop it an email requesting a free copy of Slaughterhouse-Five after an anonymous donor provided it with 150 copies of the book. "We think it's important for everyone to have their First Amendment rights. We're not telling you to like the book ... we just want you to read it and decide for yourself," said Julia Whitehead, the library's executive director, in a note on its website entitled "stop the madness".
Last month the school's board voted to ban Slaughterhouse-Five and Sarah Ockler's young adult novel Twenty Boy Summer from its curriculum and library following a Missouri professor's complaints about their content... (Alison flood, Guardian, more)

everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven." - Mark Twain

(Author portrait from the first set of Bent Books bookmarks, 2004)


You don't need to click on this link unless you're in a browsing mood. It's just a random thing that happens to suit my agenda for today. A doctor here uses his memory of reading the Inside Woody Allen comic strip to unlock metaphysics. I think the problem at hand is to do with dieting: "It’s not that they are not dealing with metaphysical problems. The problem is that they are looking for metaphysical solutions. For example, you have heard the phrase, “Laughter is the best medicine.” It isn’t “Humor is the best medicine.” Humor is a metaphysical concept, laughter is an active physical behavior, and that’s where solutions lie."


He must have studied under the great Professor Bean.


In other news (since we are now looking forwrd to going to Italy, as of yesterday):

ROME (Reuters) – Two Swedes expecting the golden beaches of the Italian island of Capri got a shock when tourist officials told them they were 650 km (400 miles) off course in the northern town of Carpi, after mistyping the name in their GPS.

of the innumerable books and pamphlets that have overflowed the nation, scarce one has made any addition to real knowledge, or contained more than a transposition of common sentiments and a repetition of common phrases."- Samuel Johnson

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I read and enjoyed The Women's Room back in the day, a couple of years after it first appeared. It was certainly an addition to the pool of human wisdom. But like most books that thump you over the head with their message, I found myself resenting it afterwards. The interview with its author, Marilyn French, who died in May, in the current issue of Bookslut, fascinates me. It fuels my persistent curiosity about the state of profound disgruntlement that seems to be the inevitable fate of creative people of any significant worth. Brittany Shoot is the interviewer:
A (FAILED) INTERVIEW WITH MARILYN FRENCH

Roughly a week after sending them off, I received her pithy answers to my interview questions and went into a bit of shock. A number of my writer friends have had similar experiences; so far, I'd avoided them. Occasionally, you have the misfortune to catch a subject on a bad day, an off week, or maybe you are to blame. Do your questions seem trite without the framework in which they will be placed, without knowledge of the audience that will digest the answers? Did I manage to offend in some way, or is this person simply an uncooperative interviewee?

there are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie."- Franz Kafka

from the third set of Bent Books bookmarks, 2006

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in other news:
I just had lunch with my pal Daren White who mentioned that, after the whole rigmarole of starting school and explaining the days of the week and weekends and all that to his two wee'uns, he now has to explain why Wednesday Comics doesn't come out till Thursday. It's not even about shipping and distances any more, it's just that it's Thursday here when it's still Wednesday there. This is the first major comics confusion since the lads announced that the three leading members of the Justice League are Superman, Batman and Womany-man. Ever after, in our circle, Wonder Woman has been known as 'womanyman'.

baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended." - George Bernard Shaw

Author portrait from the third set of Bent Books bookmarks, 2006

anais NIn in 1946, in an American suburb, longing for France; "Everybody was at home with bottles from which they hoped to extract a gaiety bottled elsewhere."
The line from her published diary (or letters?) stuck in my mind while I was working in a factory in 1979, working out what I was supposed to be doing with my life. That year I got arrested on a French beach while 'in my cups'* and was locked up for the afternoon. And with the wisdom of thirty years between then and now, I would arrest me too. Drawing the incident in The King Canute Crowd six years after, I recalled the line and dropped it into the text.

*And now I'm wondering where that one comes from. A quick google.:

IN HIS CUPS - "Drunk. Long ago the phrase meant both drunk and participating in a drunken bout. It appears in one of the Apocyrphal books of the Bible (I Esdras 3:22): 'And when they are in their cups, they forget their loue(love) both to friends and brethren.' The Romans had similar expressions, such as Cicero's 'in thy cups, in the midst of thy revels' (in ipsis tuis immanibus poculis), suggesting the great age of the association of 'cup' (poculum) and 'carousal.'" "The Dictionary of Cliches" by James Rogers (Ballantine Books, New York, 1985).

I'm not sure why some drunks have the power to amuse me, and I won't take the liberty of saying 'us', since I have met many who are impervious to their humorosity, indeed to the whole sphere of the absurd in general. And God knows there are some violent ones out there, or idiots who get behind a driving wheel, and I condemn them with all the vitriol I can round up. But leaving those out of it, I think what appeals to me indeed, is that the drunk, where he is harmless, reflects back at us the absurdity of our notions of order. Take this young loony, who thought it would be a great jape to get into a suitcase locker at the rail station at Ludwigshafen and close the door.

Author portrait from the second set of Bent Books bookmarks, 2005 (drew this one in pencil for variety)

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in America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are."- Gore Vidal

(He's doing that 'author' thing with the hand on the chin. )


from the third set of Bent Books bookmarks, 2006

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Lawsuit may threaten Hobbit films
Peter Jackson's latest project The Hobbit may be under threat due to a royalties disagreement.
New Zealand film-maker Peter Jackson may have more in common with JRR Tolkien's heirs than he thought - they are also complaining about big studio accounting methods.
Tolkien's family and a British charity they head, the Tolkien Trust, are seeking more than $US220 million ($A276.94 million) in compensation for the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) trilogy Jackson made in New Zealand.
The Tolkien heirs sold movie rights to the LOTR books 40 years ago for 7.5 per cent of future receipts, but say that three films and $US6 billion ($A7.55 billion) later, they have not seen a cent of the proceeds.

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How did NASA end up looking like a bumbling husband taping over his wedding video with the Super Bowl?
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BERLIN (Reuters) – A German who tried to fix his leaky air mattress blew up his apartment instead, the fire brigade in the western city of Duesseldorf said Wednesday

artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. - William S. Burroughs

Another of the first set of the Bent Books bookmarks, 2004.

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Drunk badger disrupts traffic
BERLIN (Reuters) – A badger in Germany got so drunk on over-ripe cherries it staggered into the middle of a road and refused to budge, police said on Wednesday. A motorist called police near the central town of Goslar to report a dead badger on a road -- only for officers to turn up and discover the animal alive and well, but drunk.

any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae." - Kurt Vonnegut

One of the first set of the Bent Books bookmarks, 2004.

once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding."-Jonathan Swift.

I see Mr Bent of Bent Books in Brisbane still hasn't put our 2008 set of bookmarks up with the others, so here's a first showing of this one. I expect he has had more important things to think about, what with the recession. Follow the label below for some more.

i see my pal Sean McKinnon at Bent Books still hasn't put our last set of bookmarks online. From that set, here's my portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer.


I was pleased to meet Baba Brinkman, the Canadian writer/performer who does the rap version of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, at the Brisbane Writers Festival last year while we were both waiting to go onto different panels. He gave an unusual performance on the opening night where he had been requested to thank the festival's eighty sponsors in rap style. I was impressed by his ability to compose a piece of one-off throwaway oratory, though it is probably beyond comprehension outside of the situation for which it was writ. And the naming of sponsors is fraught with complication...

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Product placement?

Judged on face value, Shane Meadows' new film is honest, earthy and affecting. Two lonesome teenagers - one British, one Polish - befriend each other on the streets of London. They hang out, get drunk and lope off in doe-eyed pursuit of a foxy French waitress. Half-an-hour in, the Polish dad has an announcement to make. "Today, I went on a fast train through the tunnel, under the sea," he says. "It only takes a couple of hours either way. Not bad, eh?"
Under normal circumstances this remark would sail by unnoticed, but these are not normal circumstances. When one realises that Meadows' movie is entirely funded by Eurostar, it's hard not to hear the line as a sales pitch - a word from our sponsor. The question is, does it undermine the integrity of the film as a whole?

I usually experience this problem from the other end, in those occasional comic book assignments i pick up where depiction of actual real world things, such as a label on a bottle, is forbidden as i found when I put a bottle of Gordon's gin in a scene in Batman and then had to obliterate the label. Most writers would like to be free to name products or commercial entities in dialogue just as people do in real life. I would like a character in my fiction to order a drink by name, just as I do. I have never ever asked for just 'a beer,' or god forbid, 'a whisky'...

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For many years, there have been a number of unusual webcams to view over the Net - The “Jenny” cam, The “Watch Corn Grow” cam, The “Fridge” cam, The “Watch Paint Dry” cam and The “Ashtray” webcam. Millions of Internet visitors, over the years, have logged onto these highly popular and slightly whacky cams which have given much enjoyment to many online visitors.
Now starting in March 2008, Internet webcam users will be able to view live, one of the worlds most unusual and riveting ever webcams, The “Watch Whisky Mature” cam.
For the next ten years (3,653 days) sit back and watch this live streaming webcam overlooking a cask of X4 whisky, the world’s strongest whisky, maturing live in the Bonding store at the Bruichladdich Distillery.

(if you didn't ask for a Bruichladdich by name, you'd certainly never get it by accident.)

it is funny that the two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son."- Gertrude Stein.

Something about that quote makes me wonder if it is accurate (I found it identical in a printed and online source.) I find myself wanting to add a comma. The picture is from my new set of author portrait bookmarks for Bent Books of which this is the third shown here. Mr. Bent doesn't have them online yet but you can see the previous sets..

they sicken of the calm, who know the storm" - Dorothy Parker.

CLASH OF THE TIGHTEST!
History's Greatest Drunks square off!
"This month we pit dark horse Dorothy Parker against booze juggernaut Ernest Hemingway.
Round One
Parker orders two Beefeater Gin martinis.
LO: Parker comes out with her tried and true martini jab. They clink glasses and Hem turns on a boyish smile. I do believe he is attempting to charm the lady.
HC: They casually sip and exchange pleasantries. Hem may be onto something, when it comes to attractive men, Parker is known as a pushover.
Round Two
Hemingway orders two Gordon’s Gin and tonics with a splash of bitters.
HC: No surprises from Hem, either. These two have drank together before, in New York, and I don’t think they’re going to need to feel each other out.
LO: I sit here wondering what manner of trick Parker is going to pull. She cannot attack his palette, as she did so effectively with Welles, and she surely cannot outdrink him. I just had a rather odd thought..."(Modern Drunkard magazine)
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Channel 4 tv in Britain: (thanks, Hayley)

Artful Codgers- C4 Thursday 15 May 2008 9pm
"Cutting Edge tells the story of the audacious pensioners from Lancashire who conned the art world with a series of fakes sold to museums, galleries and collectors all over the world. Masterminded by 84-year-old George Greenhalgh, and aided by his mother, Olive, 83, son Shaun, 47, faked paintings, sculptures and ancient artefacts in the garden shed of their shared council house in Bolton. The Artful Codgers uncovers the secret world of the most unlikely art forgers in history, interviewing the police who uncovered them, the experts they deceived and their friends and neighbours in suburban Bolton."

National Post has the Reuters version of the story from January 29:

"the Artful Codgers, one London newspaper calls them. Testifying in court, Mom claimed her work was purely routine, like making calls for Shaun because he's too shy to talk on the telephone...
In 1997, a certain Mrs. Roscoe (that's Mom's maiden name) sold Shaun's The Faun at Sotheby's in London, claiming she had inherited it from Roderick O'Conor, a friend of Gauguin, who had purchased it from the Paris gallery. (She supplied a bill from the gallery, forged by her boy Shaun.) A firm of London dealers bought it, to their delight, for only £20,700, and later sold it to the Chicago Art Institute for US$125,000. Chicago's sculpture curator dated it to 1886, called it probably Gauguin's first ceramic and said it was among the Art Institute's most important acquisitions of recent years. It was included in a show, Van Gogh and Gauguin, which went on to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It remained on exhibit in Chicago until the call from Scotland Yard last October. It would be there yet, and perhaps for centuries more, if Shaun hadn't messed up the cuneiform.
Shaun has been sentenced to four years and eight months in jail. Mom got off with a year's suspended. Dad came to court in a wheelchair, wearing slippers, with a shawl over his legs; he apologized for being partially deaf, due to his Second World War injury... (lots more)"

i've drawn a new set of bookmarks for Bent Books here in Brisbane. This is my fourth set of six of these little portrait drawings of well known authors. They've printed well, with the subttleties in the greys showing nicely where I've used gouache.These are Truman Capote and Alice Walker. Sean doesn't have the new set online yet, but you can see the previous three sets here, eighteen portraits, and the new set when it goes up will make a total of twenty-four. A couple more rounds and there could be a book in it. (click label below for previous samplings)

"As I grow older and older
And totter toward the tomb
I find that I care less and less
Who goes to bed with whom."

-Dorothy Sayers.

Bookmark This!

The latest set of bookmarks have just gone online at Bent Books of Brisbane Australia, of which the proprietor is my pal Sean Mackinnon. I do a set of six of these towards the end of each year. Actually it used to be the beginning, but well... attrition. Here is Colette from the 2006 selection.

And here's Pam Noles' favorite from last year, H P Lovecraft.
When I drew the first of these I was determined to avoid the 'big head' formula, so well known from old cigarette cards and the like, But there's something about the logistics of that narrow vertical frame that demands an old fashioned enlarged bonce, and if you can figure out a better appraoch, you're a better man than I am, Hayley Campbell. There are eighteen altogether. See how many you can recognize. Sean gives them to customers buying books, but if you're one of them folks from the other side of the world that can't just look at them on your screen but needs to possess them, like Pam Noles, you'll have to email my pal Mackinnon and do a deal I suppose.
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Looks like we've finalized the cover of the first volume of the french Alec series, being The King Canute Crowd. That's the book where I get locked up by the gendarmes on a daytrip to the French coast. Not sure how that will go down. Bloody drunken British fool, or whatever that is in French. Things that happen when you're young and stupid.
If you haven't read them in English, Top Shelf has the whole series.