June 2006 Archives
In the 1950s, a 50-year-old New Zealander named Tom Neale moved to a tiny island called Suwarrow (AKA Suvarov) in the Cook Islands. He was the only human inhabitant, and his story of survival is absolutely fascinating. I read Robinson Crusoe and was disappointed; An Island to Oneself is the real deal.
Neale eked subsistence out of a garden and by fishing, and carefully used his supplies of spices and tea (he used the leaves over and over again). He had zero contact with the outside world, and since Suwarrow wasn't in a shipping lane, visitors were very rare.
I wish the book had been longer -- I loved every word of it. $24.95 on Amazon or read An Island to Oneself online for free.
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Photo collage is an easy way to make a good-looking illustration. But without creativity and dedication, you can't use photo collage to make art. Lou Beach is the king of collage artists, because his work is clever, thought-provoking, and good-looking. As Steven Heller says in the introduction, Beach first decides what he wants to do, then finds the photo elements that will work for his idea. In other words, he is painting with cut-up pictures. The results are amazing. $16.97 on Amazon
Is it worth paying $130 to get the newest version of the Nintendo DS, called the Lite? I say yes, for one reason -- the screen is so much clearer and brighter than the first generation DS that when you compare them side-by-side you will never want to use the old one again. The screen alone is worth shelling out the money, but you also get a much smaller, sleeker device and a chunkier stylus. $128.99 on Amazon
Monte Beauchamp, editor of the wonderful comic book, Blab!, has compiled over 500 vintage matchbook covers for Striking Images. Lovingly categorized seven different chapters, the artwork is charming, funny, and inspiring. I imagine the illustrators had a terrific time drawing these covers. $11.02 on Amazon
As much as I love the classic Moleskine hardbound black journals, the newer, cheaper, cahier [kaa yáy] version is even more lovable. The raw brown cover begs to be gocco'd, silkscreened, stamped, and stickered, and the last 16 sheets of each book are detachable. They come in sets of three, and are much more affordable than the hard cover versions. $9.50 on Amazon
Like a lot of people, I became aware of the Church of the SubGenius around 1985 when Robert Crumb reproduced some of the Church's pamphlets in Weirdo #1.
I immediately felt an affinity for the sacred teachings of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, which were a playful mockery of Discordianism, Hassan-i-Sabah, Gurdjieff, Aliester Crowley, and secret societies like the Rosicrucians, the Golden Dawn, the O.T.O, and the Shriners.
The church appealed to fans (like me) of Robert Anton Wilson's conspiracy parody novels and non-fiction writings that forever bounced back and forth between facing mirrors, one labeled BULLSHIT, the other DEEP TRUTH. Hidden in all the wild jokes and insanely detailed illustrations (contributed by wonderful underground comic book artists) is a healthy skepticism for the status quo.
About 15 years ago I interviewed Peter Lambhorn Wilson (AKA Hakim Bey), the author of T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonmous Zone and he told me that the Church of the SubGenius was a real religion, and that the joke element was a smokescreen to befuddle the pinks and glorps (SubG speak for rubes and authoritarian personalities). I think he was right. The Church of the SubGenius comes as close to a religion as I'll ever have. $11.02 on Amazon
German documentary filmmaker Lutz Dammbeck came to the US in 2001 and 2002 to make a documentary about Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who is serving a life sentence for murdering people with home made letter bombs.
Dammbeck interviewed book agent John Brockman (one of his authors, David Gerlentner, lost his hand opening one of Kaczynski's letter bombs), Whole Earth Review and Well creator Stewart Brand, and cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster.
Dammbeck attempts to find a connection between the techno-hippies who embraced both computers and the back-to-nature movement and the scientists who developed computers and the forerunners of the Internet under military contracts. He finds plenty of interesting connections. He also strikes up a written correspondence with Kaczynski (who is as self-absorbed and unrepentant as you might expect a murderous zealot to be).
Brockman is happy to talk about his early days with the likes of Warhol and John Cage, but when the subject of Kaczynski comes up, he only says Kaczynski was a bad writer who had to kill people to get his manifesto published (Kaczynski promised he would stop killing if the New York Times and the Washington Post would publish his 50-page manifesto, which they did). Brockman then says Kaczynski doesn't merit further discussion, and asks to change the subject.
I agree with Brockman. I have nothing but contempt for Kaczynski. I read his manifesto when it was first published and I thought it was inarticulate, poorly-thought-out junk. He's no Neil Postman.
Nevertheless, The Net is a fascinating documentary, especially the interview with 90-year-old von Foerster, who delivers an entertaining riff on the nature of reality and humans' futile but interesting attempts to explain ontological questions. $26.99 on Amazon
(Click on thumbnails for enlargement) My highschool pal, Blind Lightnin' Pete, who lives overseas, sent me some Agarwood / Oud specimens. It's an astonishingly addictive incense that will make you swear off the sticks of foul-smelling junk sold at head shops and health food stores.
Agarwood has the added bonus of requiring the use of gunpowder-impregnated carbon pucks to release the aromatic oils. Pete gave me some of the real natural variety (which costs $30/gram and up; according to Wikipedia, it's the most expensive wood in the world.) and some "fluffed-up-for-the-suburbs type, which has been perfumed with something." The real stuff, as you might guess, is much better. You only need a matchhead-sized piece to make the whole room smell like oud.
Again, quoting Wikipedia: "Formation of agarwood occurs in the trunk and roots of trees that have been infected by a fungus. As a response, the tree produces a resin high in volatile organic compounds that aids in suppressing or retarding fungal growth. While the unaffected wood of the tree is relatively light in colour, the resin dramatically increases the mass and density of the affected wood, changing its colour from a pale beige to dark brown or black."
I can't begin to describe how it smells, because there's really nothing else quite like it. Wikipedia says "The odour of agarwood is complex and pleasing, with few or no similar natural analogues." Chandler Burr, author of one of my favorite books, The Emperor of Scent, describes it this way:
It knocks you over, clubs you like a falling stone. Its vast dimension is what astonishes: a huge smell, spatially immense and incredibly complex, a buttery layer as deep as a quarry, entirely animalic in impact, and yet the oudh itself is not actually an animalic, spicy without being a spice. The fungi - the tiny organic bugs that have eaten, digested and defecated this sensual wood - have left behind their fragrance and oudh is the smell of this rotten, priceless wood and billions of tiny dead animals.
I don't know where you can buy real agarwood. Of course, plenty of websites sell "pure," "unadulterated" agarwood, but who knows? I'm sticking with my source, Blind Lightnin' Pete.
First published in 1959, this is the kind of chemistry book you dream of as kid - purple smoke bombs, explosions, color-changing liquids, expanding foams, spontaneous flames. I remember reading this book as a kid and wanting to try the experiments, but didn't know where to get (and couldn't afford) the required chemicals. The gov't has made it harder to get some chemicals and galssware, thanks to Timothy McVeigh and speed lab morons, but you can get a lot of the stuff you need on eBay. $6.95 on Amazon
The I-Sight is a mini LED flashlight that fits comfortably on your ear. It throws a fairly powerful beam, given that it's so small. I have been using it to read books at night. I usually read books on my Palm handheld when I wake up with insomnia and can't get back to sleep (which seems to happen almost every night for the last decade) but I'm having so much fun re-reading all the Philip Jose Farmer books I read as a teenager, that I'm willing to put up with real books and a flashlight to read them. I've tried book mounted night-lights, but this is better. $12.95 on Amazon
I don't draw as much as I'd like to, but I still love getting a new copy of Draw! in the mail. The self described "professional 'how-to' magazine on comics and cartooning" is a fun mix of how to's (the Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop tutorials are excellent) and interviews with well-known pros. If you find you like it, you can order all the back issues, too. Amazon sells the Best of Draw for $14.97 Subscribe here: $24 for four quarterly issues.
Simon Quellen Field's Gonzo Gizmos is probably my favorite science experiment book, because he shows you how to make exciting things that spark, float, explode, make noise, and jump, like Van de Graaff generators and working radios out of stuff you can find in your house.
Even the projects that require more exotic materials (such as bismuth and pyrolytic graphite) are easy to make and have a high bang for the buck ratio. You can find out more about Field's experiments (and buy supplies and materials) at his website, scitoys.com. $11.53 on Amazon.com
After buying a chainsaw last week, my yard is now filled with huge piles of branches and cut stalks of bamboo. I knew I could pick up the phone and hire a crew with a gigantic gas-powered wood chipper to come out and make short work of the piles, but for some idiotic reason, I decided I wanted to do it myself, even though the temperature here in the San Fernando Valley has been over 100 degrees for the last several days.
I went on Amazon and looked for chippers. They're pretty expensive, as I expected they would be, but I found one model for under $200: the Cummins Industrial Tools Chipper Shredder. It was $149.99, and the shipping was about $45. For that price I was willing to take a chance.
When it arrived, I was disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that I had to bolt the legs on it. It wasn't that hard to do, especially after I realized that the printed instructions were crappy and wrong and that I could simply look at the hardware and figure out what to do with it.
Within 20 minutes I was shoving branches into the wood chipper's whining gullet. I'd been nervous about how well it would be able to deal with the bamboo, because the stuff is as hard as iron, but the chipper happily sliced the bamboo into discs that were so wafer thin they would make a Benihana chef envious.
The maximum rated branch size of the machine is 1.25 inches, and that dimension is enforced by the blue plastic funnel on top of the shredder, which has a hole that limits the diameter of the stuff you can shove into it. Being both naturally curious and recklessly stupid, I removed the tamper-proof screws securing the funnel to the chipper and tried sticking larger branches into it. It accepted them greedily, as the blades are designed in such a way to pull branches into the machine. It was dangerous business -- I imagined my hands getting caught in some branch twigs and then watching in horror as the machine devoured my arms in a scene reminiscent of Fargo. I put the funnel back on and intend to leave it there. All in all, I'm pleased with my purchase. There are a few branches that are too big for the chipper. These will taste the oiled blade of my new chain saw. Sme of the drier, larger branches can jam the machine, which irks me to no end. But I refuse to call out the professionals, no matter how long it takes. $149.99 on Amazon
This thumb sized gadget contains a piezoelectric crystal, which emits a high voltage (low amperage) spark. You hold it against a mosquito bite and click several times. The theory is that the electricity breaks up or inhibits the histamines that cause the itching and swelling.
I've been doing a lot of yardwork and the bugs are biting like crazy, so my hide has plenty of itchy bumps on which to try this thing out. And it really works. I zap my bites when they itch about 20 times, and the itching goes away completely for several hours. This is my new magic talisman. 8.95 at International Health Care Products
But it's so much fun making coffee with the Aeropress, that it's worth it, if you ask me. If you can't have a little fun once in a while, why live? Link
Dan DeCarlo was best known for his sexy renditions of Betty and Veronica from Archie comics, but he also had a full career as a pinup and gag cartoonist. This giant-sized, lovingly designed homage to DeCarlo has gorgeous reproductions from every phase of DeCarlo's career, including great watercolors that he painted on envelopes while he was stationed overseas. One of the most imitated cartoonists in the world, it's a treat to see all this previously hidden material from the real McCoy.
$22.02 on Amazon. (More DeCarlo on Mad Professor here.)
I've been dipping my toes into podcasting, and today I wanted to use Skype to interview Scott Sigler, author of EarthCore. Skype has decided not to include a call recording feature, which is silly if you ask me, but I found a plug in for $12.95, called Call Recorder, which adds recording capability to Skype for the Mac.
You can set up your preferences in the Skype preferences window to record calls automatically or manually. It saves files as QuickTime movies, with your voice on one track and the other person's voice on the other track. You can convert the MOV file to an MP3 by dragging it onto the included "Convert to MP3" icon (I don't know why they made the converter a separate application. It would have been nice to have them integrated.)
The recorder interface shows up as a small separate window with a big red button to push when you want to start recording. A blinking light lets you know when it is recording. When you are done, click the magnifying glass to go straight to the file in the finder. The name of the caller and the time and date of the call are stored in the metadata tags of the recorded file.
You can download a 7-day trial version for free to test it out. Link
