Nami Mun is a winner

The 2009 Whiting Awards have been announced, which means a bunch of poets and writers got $50,000, a prize that basically drops into their laps from heaven.

Most exciting is that my friend Nami Mun is one of the recipients. Her novel Miles from Nowhere was hands down the best novel I've read this year. I am very proud. If you haven't read her book already, you're doing yourself a disservice.

Poets who snagged an award: Jericho Brown, Jay Hopler, and Joan Kane. I am not familiar with any of the work, but extend my congratulations anyway, as I always like when good things happen to poets.

Chimp grief

Xeni Jarden posted this National Geographic photo on Boing Boing as proof that chimps grieve. I'm already a believer, but this helps reinforce that.

I think some of the comments on Boing Boing are quite funny ("I too would like to be pushed past my mourners in a wheelbarrow" and, "Grief, or animal curiosity? Don't anthropomorphise these creatures, they hate that"), but some are quite callous, and also very telling, I think. Perhaps chimps have more heart than humans.

The full story behind the photo is on the National Geographic blog.

Thanks, Laura, for the tip.

Ain't no homage like a pumpkin homage...

No doubt William S. Burroughs would be touched.

Via Boing Boing.

Thanks, Laura, for the tip.

The acrostic poetry of Arnold Schwarzenegger

It's hard to write an acrostic poem that doesn't sound forced. After all, the goal of an acrostic poem is to spell something out with the first letter of each line, which means the poet sometimes has to stretch things a bit and use language that ends up sounding a little off.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's little acrostic contained in a veto letter to lawmakers is no exception. Each line is arranged in order to spell out the oh, so subtle "Fuck you."


Nice.

Read the whole story at the Huffington Post.

Thanks, Laura, for the tip.

"Band" rhymes with many things but cool is not one of them

If only all local commercials were like this.



You can nominate your favorite local business for the chance to get these guys to make a commercial for them. Rhett and Link explain it all in a video on their web site. And, proving that poetry and monkeys are forever converged, Link is wearing a Planet of the Apes shirt in the video.

Via Videogum.

C'mon ride the train, and ride it...

I'm not exactly a Precious Moments connoisseur, so I never knew they made anything other than those creepy tear drop-eyed children with the Bible quotes inscribed on them. But apparently they do.

Behold the wonder that is the Precious Moments Birthday Train. From birth all the way up until age 16, you can buy that special child in your life something they'll eventually have to dust.

Number 15 is a gorilla.

Because I can't think of anything a 15-year-old would like more than an addition to the Precious Moments Birthday Train their grandma started for them before they were even conscious and that they were probably forbidden to play with until, oh, now, at which point they'd rather be sexting their friends.

Retro ed videos proof of evolution

Now out on DVD: How To Be A Man, a collection of short educational and instructional videos from the 1940s through the 1970s.

As John Thompson writes in Metro Times, "Looking at these shorts, it's quite obvious men developed from primates."

There's also one for the ladies.

Now go buy them for me, please.

Heath care costs, 19th century German poetry, and you

This American Life's "More Is Less," an episode on America's health care system and its rising costs, features 19th century German poetry. Really. (It's a small part, granted, but it's a part).

Pond scum for brains

A confluence of events today. As I walked through the diag at the University of Michigan on my way to teach my class, I passed by a small anti-animal testing protest which consisted of a few students, a dog crate that some guy was trying to squeeze into, and a poster with a monkey on it. A student handed me a flyer which I accepted but, admittedly, did not read.

At the same time, all three of my classes were turning in their rough drafts today. Rhetorical analysis. Fun stuff (actually, I really think that. It's an essential skill for any literate person). For their essay they were to choose from three Frontline documentaries, including one called My Father, My Brother and Me, which is about Parkinson's disease and includes a scene of monkeys in a lab of researchers trying to find a cure.

And then I get home and read in Wired about optigenetics, a type of gene therapy using algae and light, that shows promise for treating Parkinson's. In the article, researches do testing on rhesus monkeys.

I am, in principle, against animal testing. I love animals. I don't eat them. I hate to see them harmed. I am part of the anti-cruelty set. But, man, I am also super against Parkinson's. And if a cure can come from all of this, let's just say I'm not going to crawl into a dog cage over it.

"Craft" and "crap" share a lot of the same letters

I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. I'm talking laugh so hard you almost start crying and for a second think you might throw up and then wonder whether or not you're actually laughing or having a psychotic episode. Regretsy is a compilation of terrible handmade goods and art offered for sale on Etsy.com alongside hilarious commentary. Keep in mind, I like Etsy very much, but I am in love with Regretsy.

And what do you know, I found poetry and monkeys. There's the Michael Jackson sock monkey, blue jeans with verse written on the inside so you're never without reading material in the john, and a couple of other items that reference poetry in the commentary.

Searching for other monkey and poetry related Etsy tragedies to submit to Regretsy should keep me busy for quite awhile.

Chick or treat

Well I know what I'm handing out to Trick-or-Treaters this Halloween. Nothing says, "Happy Halloween" like Chick Bible tracts!

"Big Daddy?" is about how evolution isn't true and how anyone who believes in it is a condescending prick and all it takes is a little Biblical wisdom to dismantle scientific knowledge. And then your fellow college classmates ask you to help them get into Heaven. Happens all the time.

I remember getting these in my bag while trick-or-treating when I was a kid. They were the equivalent of getting pennies or Starlite mints. Worse than Smarties, even. But now I think they're kind of cool. They're like little fanatic artifacts. (In fact, I have the"One Way!" tract around my house somewhere. It's a strange story about personal hygiene and "God's love gift"). And I don't care if people give them out at Halloween. After all, if you're going door to door asking people to give you stuff, you can't really control what people give you (which is why the police station scans candy for razor blades).

On the Chick site (and they're called "Chick" tracts because the guy who writes and illustrates them is Jack Chick. Sorry, nothing to do with the ladies) there is a list of "Halloween Chick Tract Usage Ideas," many of which are funny in a sad way. For instance: "Leave Chick tracts at Costume shops." Yes, slip a few into the Naughty Nurse outfits or some packages of Sexy French Maid stockings.

They also suggest you "Hit the streets, shouting, 'Free comic books!' You'll be swarmed with requests." I think there should be more instructions with this suggestion. For example, are they saying to just do this on Halloween or every day? Should you wear a costume? What do you do when the swarm realizes you aren't actually handing out comic books? And "the streets" is a pretty broad term. Do they mean just your street? Maybe a busy street in a public place? Or maybe by "the streets" they mean somewhere rough, like the inner city. If so, how do you deal with panhandlers and crackheads who don't accept tract currency? I don't really feel like the Chick people thought this one through.

Of course, while it's easy to dismiss the tracts marketed to children as harmless propaganda, some of their tracts are really hateful, like the rabidly anti-gay "Doom Town" and "Sin City" or the anti-Muslim "Who Is Allah"?" (one of several tracts created just for black people), the anti-Jew pro-Israel "Somebody Angry?" and the anti-Catholic "Evil Eyes" and "The Death Cookie." The way Chick draws Jews and Arabs, with exaggerated facial features and ugly expressions, is an especially nice touch.

Happy Halloween!

"Don't look now, there's a monkey on your [face]"

Step away from the face paint. This guy has dozens of these videos. About a half dozen are monkey related. I can't explain it. I guess it'd be best to just let the artist (his term) speak -- or, not speak, I guess -- for himself.


But wait, there's more! Monkey with Cymbals! Flying Monkey! Planet of the Apes! King Kong! Sea Monkeys!

And I assure you, the monkey-related ones are the least frightening.

Via Videogum.

Small Paul snow suit model

Hey Paul Frank, maybe we could get a sponsorship?

Lethally inject first, ask questions later in Texas

Ever wonder if the justice system in this country has ever put an innocent man to death? After you read "Trial By Fire" by David Grann in The New Yorker you won't have to wonder any more.

Todd Willingham was sentenced to death for the supposed arson death of his three little girls. It turns out, he didn't do it, but junk science and egos made sure he was put to death any way.

While in prison he wrote poems (because poetry is the respite of the desperate)

"Willingham was held in isolation in a sixty-square-foot cell, twenty-three hours a day," Grann writes. "He tried to distract himself by drawing--'amateur stuff,' as he put it--and writing poems. In a poem about his children, he wrote, 'There is nothing more beautiful than you on this earth.' When [a friend] once suggested some possible revisions to his poems, he explained that he wrote them simply as expressions, however crude, of his feelings. 'So to me to cut them up and try to improve on them just for creative-writing purposes would be to destroy what I was doing to start with,' he said."

UPDATE: Is Texas Gov. Rick Perry trying to cover up the current investigation into Willingham's execution? It sure seems like it.

"Never More" by Married to the Sea

marriedtothesea.com