Pinback Tour EPs

The Chameleon Transmission was Blake's show. As a green trainee I was assigned to learn from him the intricacies of broadcasting eclectic music over hopeless airwaves. He had listeners, a few, and the show was even during a prime slot on a weeknight, but our station was in the middle of being shuffled around campus and interest had waned. He and I and Jello J, my co-trainee, would spend two hours once a week raiding the ridiculously large stacks of new music and the station's nearly incomprehensibly huge library of CDs and vinyl and pumping out awesome and unlistenable music to anyone who would listen.

We were terrible, and nothing could stop us.

After a few weeks Blake began to get a sense of my taste in music, and began recommending albums. One of the very first tracks he played for me instantly became my new favorite song, and the performers my new favorite artist. That track was 'Penelope' from the album Blue Screen Life by Pinback. I fell in love, and fell hard. Since then I've done everything in my power to familiarize myself with Pinback's music, and the various winding tentacles of Rob Crow's other musical projects.

Back then Tucson was still overshot more often than not by touring indie bands. They'd hit Modified Gallery in Phoenix or some dump in Albuquerque and then speed through town on the 10. Slowly, though, a couple of venues established relationships, reputations, and the local scene grew strong. Before all that, though, Pinback was a regular. I saw them every single time they came to town, and I never failed to hit up their merch table.

Being a poor boy (some things change; some things stay the same) I couldn't load up on all the swag, but I had a sharp eye for what was worth my dough and what was just another band t-shirt. So every year, when Pinback rocked my world live, I'd pick up that year's tour EP. The first three are sleeves, thick folded stock stitched up with colorful thread. They got fancy with the fourth, though, so Too Many Shadows comes in a bare-bones digipak. This came out just as they were signed to Touch-and-Go records, who put out their album Summer in Abaddon.

I've been in a lot of great music stores, and never once have I seen one of these CDs up for grabs. I know for a fact that the first, Live in Donny's Garage, is a reprint of a tour CD originally distributed on their "first real european tour" ('cause it says so on the little blue insert), but as far as I know the other three are originals, issued each year the band went out on the road here in the U.S.
Update: I haven't been in enough great record stores, apparently. All four of these discs are available for purchase at the Pinback store. Please support a great band and harbor the good taste to own these fine discs for yourself. They're cheap!

So, with great pleasure (now I have great pleasure; putting these together digitally all at once was a bitch and froze my computer innumerable times) I present to you four Pinback tour EPs, in chronological order, complete with scans of the covers (front and back [.jpg]) and the CDs [.gif, so I could crop out the corners and the center hole =o)]. (The scans are included in the archive folders.)

Please enjoy.

Download Pinback - Live in Donny's Garage (Aug. 2000)
(Slight water damage on the back of the sleeve — goddamn cats!)




Download Pinback - More or Less Live in a Few Different Places (2002)
(My copy is signed on the back, "Rob C.")




Download Pinback - Arrive Having Eaten (2003)
(More water damage — STRAIGHT TO HELL, CATS!)




Download Pinback - Too Many Shadows (2004)

Prop. 8 Shaming

From Ballotpedia.org:

Proposition 8 will appear on the November 2008 ballot in California. It is variously known as the Protect Marriage Act, the Same-Sex Marriage Ban or the Limit on Marriage Amendment. If it passes, it will add a new constitutional amendment to the California Constitution that will have the following text: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." The ballot title for the measure says that Prop. 8 "eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry".

As is the case with so many things political these days, the money counts. People are voting with their wallets because personal beliefs aren't enough anymore; a person needs to pay someone they trust to put an advocacy up on TV so they know what to believe. Brad Pitt just donated some absurd amount to the 'against' folks. Mormons are being encouraged to donate 'for.' Millions are going towards this proposition, one way or the other.

Perhaps I am so disgusted by this $ituation only because I have no money to give.

Anyhow, if you'd like to see which way the people in your neighborhood swing (whether you're in CA or not; plenty of out-of-state money is coming in) and exactly how wide they open their wallet-maws, check this LA Times page.


So far everyone who has donated from 90026 has been opposed. I love Echo Park.

Fractals

Perhaps my favorite form.

It is easy to lose myself, staring at a fractal. Or thinking of an endless coast, a mountain's infinite altitude, and then Zeno's paradox. They are like a calendar of days, each piece of a week the same part of a whole, itself a part of a whole composed of like bits, and on into the infinity of time. But each day (supposedly) has its own rough edge, a unique swirl that is potentially repeated forever—identical one and all save time. Fractals to me represent individual experience, the infinity and continuity of perspectives on this one rather large universe.

Figures for impossible fractals

An impossible fern (balanced 30° Pythagorean tree).

Mystery of the REAL 3D Mandelbrot Fractal


I have these two images layered on my desktop:



click for larger

Shorthand for the Liberal Boogeyman

"I’m getting a little worn out on hearing the Ivy League implicated as shorthand for the liberal boogeyman.

"Firstly, I’m not sure how many people even know what the Ivy League is – it’s an athletic conference, made up of only eight schools: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale. The linked article does an excellent job of how we ended up lumping them together – they are the oldest schools in America, they generally have Protestant origins, they have been playing one another in sports for hundreds of years (though the conference was only formalized in the 50s), they are all academically selective, they are all well endowed and wealthy, and they are all in the East. Historically, West Point and the Naval Academy have been lumped in with the Ivies, sharing many of their characteristics. Also equivalent to them in many respects are other highly selective private colleges: Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, MIT, University of Chicago, Notre Dame, Stanford, Georgetown, Washington & Lee, and many more.

"If you think of Ivy League as "educated at any elite, selective, moneyed, private institution of higher learning," then it certainly takes in a large swath of our public servants, most of whom find that an advanced degree is necessary to gain the education and make the connections that will allow them to get and understand policy jobs.

"But even if you think it’s the eight colleges in the Ivy League themeselves that are poisoning the public with softheaded, communist ideas, and that we need to rid government of their graduates and their thinking, you’re still not going to be able to vote Republican. Both the Bush Administration and the McCain campaign are lousy with the graduates of these supposed hotbeds of unAmericanism.

"I’ve been having a look around, and with the help of others have compiled this list of Ivy League graduates, and graduates of other elite non-public institutions, in the Administration and the campaign. It looks as though it’s not only Democratic leaders, but both Bush and McCain as well, who rely upon the kind of thorough, world-class scholarship this institutions provide. McCain, in particular, is drawing upon the knowledge of a great many advisors currently in the academy in these very institutions.

"I wonder what it’s like when they get together for roundtables? When they compare college rings and ties, and discuss who was in what honor society and who had who for constitutional law, laughing about old times on the ol’ campus, and then watch their candidates malign "Ivy Leaguers" and "elitists?" to the public? I guess they laugh it off, letting Republican Party leaders badmouth them and their alma maters, knowing that it’s all a show for the dimwitted public. Anything to stay in power! If takes misreprenting yourself and your advisory teams, letting voters think you’re a lot less well-off, privileged, well-educated and well-connected than you really are, then so be it. At the Faculty Club victory party it’ll all be behind you. All’s fair in politics, right?

"So the list has found a home on this website, thanks to the generous support of the host. Please note that this is just a sampling, not a comprehensive list of advisors or appointees. Information has been taken from public sources such as WikiPedia, WhiteHouse.gov, the personal and company websites of the individuals, and news outlets. We welcome additional submissions."

- The About page at
Ivy League Elitists
via Projects

Saturday Night at the Atomic Speedway

click for larger



Download 30 Amp Fuse - Saturday Night at the Atomic Speedway
Stephen Thomas Erlewine says: ...an entertaining but lightweight collection of roaring punk-pop in the vein of the Buzzcocks, but without the clever hooks or lyrics of Pete Shelly. While the record is plagued with inconsistent songwriting, it nevertheless has enough moments to make the record appealing to genre specialists.
RIYL
The Get Up Kids, Kerplunk!, Fountains of Wayne, dancing
Recommended Tracks
02. Love Is A Catch-22 ♠♠♠
08. Tilt-A-Whirl ♠♠♠
11. Blastin' Room ♠♠♠♠♠
15. Sound On Sound ♠♠♠

BLOG/LINK

867-5309

Jenny, Are You There?
JennyScan
8675309 Wiki
More at Spyder's Random Things

Paul Avril

From Wikipedia: "Édouard-Henri Avril...was a French painter and commercial artist. Under the pseudonym Paul Avril, he was an illustrator of erotic literature.

"Avril studied art in various Paris salons. From 1874 to 1878 he was at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Having been commissioned to illustrate Théophile Gautier's novel Fortunio, he adopted the pseudonym Paul Avril.

"His reputation was soon established and he received many commissions to illustrate both major authors and the so-called "galante literature" of the day, a form of erotica."
Galleries: 1, 2
via cosias do arco da velha

A Puzzling Weekend

These two games work similarly; your goal is to power up, gain strength/armor, and open doors to the next room. You do this by solving the riddle of the room you're in. How do you get there? What clues are there? What's under that rock/behind that wall/above you/below you, etc.

Dwarf Complete

Use your arrow keys to move around, push things, and go up and down stairs. When you collect items from treasure chests, go to the spellbook, click the red buttons, and use your newly crafted tools to further your quest. If you've ever played the first Zelda game, you'll love this.


An Untitled Story

You begin as a little bouncy egg, and the sky's the limit from there. This is a game you download to your computer and play. It's free, charmingly designed, mind-bogglingly huge, and very challenging.

Connection made at AskMe

Loving Cinema Lovers

Early Visual Media
"[A]n online Media_Museum explaining intriguing and mostly forgotten Early Vintage Visual Media and their history. The aim is not to bring a complete overview of the history of Visual Media but rather a personal selection."


The History of the Discovery of Cinema

This chronology is presented in fifteen chapters, and represents an exhaustive and historical overview on the subject of cinematography. It encompasses among others, the works of Layard, Sophocles, Herodotus, Empodocles, Mo Ti, Plato, Aristotle, Democritus, Euclid, Archimedes, Shao Ong, Vitruvius, Lucretius, Pablius Statius, Pliny, Seneca, Heron, Ptolemy, Ting Huan, Galen, Boethius, Geber, Chao-Lung, Kuang-Hsien, Alhazen, Avicena, Shen Kua, Averroes, Grosseteste, Bacon, Magnus, Witelo, Peckham, Saint-Cloud, Villeneuve, Gershon, Fontana, Alberti, Gainsborough, Vinci, Maurolycus, Caesariano, Durer, Reinhold, Gemma-Frisius, Cardano, Porta, Barbaro, Fabricius, Diggs, Risner, Danti, Benedetti, Casciorolo, Kepler, Scheiner, Sala, Snell, D'Aguilon, Drebbel, Gassendro, Schwenter, Leurechon, Bate, Kircher, Descartes, Horrocks, Herigone, Martini, De Chales, Zahn, Niceron, Huygens, Schott, Walgensten, Vermeer, Reeves, Hooke, Boyle, D'Orleans, Balduin, Kohlans, Cellio, Homberg, Molyneux, Sturm, John Harris, Van Gravensande, Van Musschenbroek, Schulze, Bion, Cheselden, Guyot, Smith, Cuff, Caneletto, Costa, Nollet, Parrat, Dollond, De la Roche , Ledermuller, Martin, Van Loo , Brander, Sheraton, Schropfer, Priestley, Seraphin, Lambert, Boulton, Scheele, Joseph Harris, Storer, Charles, Wedgewood, Balsamo, Chretien, Guinard, Harrup, Robertson, Hare, Davy, Philipsthal, Wollaston, Niepce, Brewster, Chevalier, Talbot, Herschel, Dageurre, Gurney, Birckbeck, Roget, Ritchie, Fitton, Paris, Drummond, Barker, Farraday, Wheatstone, Plateau, Stampfer, Marey, Janssen, Anschutz, Muybridge, Horner, Donisthorpe, Lumiere's, Goodwin, Eastman, Dickson, Casler, Friese-Greene, Carbutt, LePrince, Edison and others.

Why do we spend so many precious hours of our lives watching films? What is it about cinema that it should occupy a place of such prominence in our lives? And why do we even need movies? It is as though we are trying to fill a gap in our lives - a void, an emptiness within ourselves. So to even begin on the path of our Truth Quest, we have to see the broader picture of how film correlates to life, and life to film. To find this higher perspective, it is helpful to look towards the other arts, as well as philosophy.

Cinema Seekers: Searching for truth in cinema and in life.

"Crazy Song"

via blort

Marilyn Monroe Screen Test For Something's Gotta Give

On repeat.

An Open Letter to Pitchfork from the Airborne Toxic Event (Literary Music #2?)

Over the past few years a number of my co-alumni Dorados have distinguished themselves on the national level. Certain sporting types I'll avoid mentioning because deep, irrational resentment is so easy to cull from those four long years. However, plenty others have hit it big on the musical stage. I was a total fanboy for my friend Jeremy's band, The Actual (sadly, 2001-2007) and now I've transferred that blind love to another bass player friend's band, The Airborne Toxic Event (myspace). (Should this be another Literary Music post? That's a Delillo reference, if I'm not mistaken.)

Anyway, their new album just came out (buy it!) and received quite a burn review from all-holy Pitchfork. 1.6, ouch. The band has issued an open letter to the review's author in response:

Dear Ian,

Thanks for your review of our record. It's clear that you are a good writer and it's clear that you took a lot of time giving us a thorough slagging on the site. We are fans of Pitchfork. And it's fun to slag off bands. It's like a sport -- kind of part of the deal when you decide to be in a rock band. (That review of Jet where the monkey pees in his own mouth was about the funniest piece of band-slagging we've ever seen.)

We decided a long time ago not to take reviews too seriously. For one, they tend to involve a whole lot of projection, generally saying more about the writer than the band. Sort of a musical Rorschach test. And for another, reading them makes you too damned self-conscious, like the world is looking over your shoulder when the truth is you're not a genius or a moron. You're just a person in a band.

Plus, the variation of opinions on our record has bordered on absurd. 80 percent of what's been said has been positive, a few reviews have remained on the fence and a few (such as yours) have been aggressively harsh. We tend not to put a lot of stock in this stuff, but the sheer disagreement of opinion makes for fascinating (if not a bit narcissistic) reading.

And anyway we have to admit that we found ourselves oddly flattered by your review. I mean, 1.6? That is not faint praise. That is not a humdrum slagging. That is serious fist-pounding, shoe-stomping anger. Many publications said this was among the best records of the year. You seem to think it's among the worst. That is so much better than faint praise.

You compare us to a lot of really great bands (Arcade Fire, the National, Bright Eyes, Bruce Springsteen) and even if your intention was to cut us down, you end up describing us as: "lyrically moody, musically sumptuous and dramatic." One is left only to conclude that you must think those things are bad.

We love indie rock and we know full well that Pitchfork doesn't so much critique bands as critique a band's ability to match a certain indie rock aesthetic. We don't match it. It's true that the events described in these songs really happened. It's true we wrote about them in ways that make us look bad. (Sometimes in life you are the hero, and sometimes, you are the limp-dicked cuckold. Sometimes you're screaming about your worst fears, your most vicious jealousies and failures. Such is life.) It's also true that the record isn't ironic or quirky or fey or disinterested or buried beneath mountains of guitar noodling.

As writers, we admire your tenacity and commitment to your tone (even though you do go too far with your assumptions about us). You're wrong about our intentions, you're wrong about how this band came together, you don't seem to get the storytelling or the catharsis or the humor in the songs, and you clearly have some misconceptions about who we are as a band and who we are as people.

But it also seems to have very little to do with us. Much of your piece reads less like a record review and more like a diatribe against a set of ill-considered and borderline offensive preconceptions about Los Angeles. Los Angeles has an extremely vibrant blogging community, Silver Lake is a very close-knit rock scene. We are just one band among many. (And by the way, L.A. does have a flagship indie rock band: they're called Silversun Pickups). We cut our teeth at Spaceland and the Echo and have nothing to do with whatever wayward ideas you have about the Sunset Strip. That's just bad journalism.

But that is the nature of this sort of thing. It's always based on incomplete information. Pitchfork has slagged many, many bands we admire (Dr. Dog, the Flaming Lips, Silversun Pickups, Cold War Kids, Black Kids, Bright Eyes [ironic, no?] just to name a few), so now we're among them. Great.

This band was borne of some very very dark days and the truth is that there is something exciting about just being part of this kind of thing. There's this long history of dialogue between bands and writers so it's a bit of a thrill that you have such a strong opinion about us.

We hear you live in Los Angeles. We'd love for you to come to a show sometime and see what we're doing with these lyrically moody and dramatic songs. You seem like a true believer when it comes to music and writing so we honestly think we can't be too far apart. In any case, it would make for a good story.

all our best--

Mikel, Steven, Anna, Daren, Noah
the Airborne Toxic Event

I think it's a pretty good response, measured and honest. TATE is keeping things interesting for me in other ways, too. In the month or so before their album release they uploaded live acoustic versions of each of the album tracks filmed in unexpected places. The musical renditions are awesome—I almost favor them over the album versions—and the videos themselves are charming. Here they are in the order they were released:

Wishing Well


Papillon


Gasoline


Happiness Is Overrated


Does This Mean You're Moving On? [My favorite!]


This Is Nowhere


Sometime Around Midnight


Something New


Missy


Innocence


Yep, they're good! I saw them perform on the set of the Carson Daly show, which was surreal to say the least. They were also on Conan recently, and tore it up. Here's hoping a Pitchfork pan won't hold this band back. Enjoy!

Open Up Your Heart and Let The Patrick Swayze Blog Post In

Best wishes for a full recovery and courage to a good man and a great actor, Standing Up 2 Cancer.

Personality Comics Presents...
PATRICK SWAYZE




























LLPS!

"I think it's kinda hot to be wearing these scarves in here."
via

Literary Music #1 - Gitanjali/Get The Fuck On Jolly

Let's see. I'm having trouble starting on this whole writing stuff out and stringing ideas together concept. Didn't do it so well in college, and I haven't gotten any better since. So bear with me, please.

The temptation to attempt some arch, deep, formal writing about this is strong. I feel like because it's literature and poetry and interpretive musical performance there's a standard of tone and form that I must abide by. It's those perceived constraints that keep me from even beginning. So here it is, here I am, using too much first-person singular and going way too many words before even getting to the subject.

Aha!

Get The Fuck On Jolly then serves triple purpose: A vicious cheer from you, the audience; a nonsensical homophone for a great work of literature; and the profane title to this album I offer you. I am fucking on it.

So first, the literature. Gitanjali is a beautiful collection of poetry, translated by the author into English at the behest of one W.B. Yeats. The song-poems of Rabindranath Tagore are well known and loved throughout India, and his translations garnered a Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.

My song has put off her adornments. She has no pride of dress and decoration. Ornaments would mar our union; they would come between thee and me; their jingling would drown thy whispers.

My poet's vanity dies in shame before thy sight. O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.

VII Nice, eh? Sexy too, yeah!

This stuff, being all poetic and literary and beautiful and shit, prompted Bonnie 'Prince' Billy—a heady fellow— & The Marquis de Tren (commonly known as Mick Turner, guitarist for the Dirty Three, artist, and no lightweight himself) to pick out a bunch of these poems and set them to music. The studio EP Get On Jolly homophonized 'Gitanjali' and came out sounding alright, a little dry. However! However, the duo also recorded a live set of the same songs, changing the song titles from Arabic numbers to Roman numerals and adding a brutal 'The Fuck' to the title. If you're not familiar with Will Oldham's voice, it's not for everyone. But this performance is fiery and emotive, soaked in all the spittle and sweat missing from the studio set, and he just wails the emotion of Tagore's words.


Bonnie 'Prince' Billy & The Marquis de Tren - Get The Fuck On Jolly

Update: I just wanted to make sure and point out this totally awesome Will Oldham fan site. It's got lyrics, tabs, and—thank god—mp3s. It's linked above, 'cause that's where I nabbed the cover art for GTFOJ, but not as explicitly as the site deserves. Oh yeah, nearly forgot, Mick Turner (with Jim White as Tren Brothers) has some cool music/painting videos on YouTube:

Tren Brothers - Crow


Tren Brothers - Swim

Flash Games & YouTube

Two flash games:
Rotation Riddle

Align the red dots so they match the pattern shown before each level. Fairly easy through the first few levels. The keyboard controls are a little wonky.

light-Bot

"Artificial Intelligence is hard to program. Not every bot ever created can maneuver and function on its own. Rather, some bots run along a path that the programmer presets for them for various situations. Your job is to light up all the blue tiles in the factory by the commands you issue to the light-Bot. Good luck."
Fun little diversion. The challenge lies in completing each level with the fewest commands possible. Otherwise fairly straightforward. My low score is 174.
Update: I understand level 10 is giving people fits. Here's my solution.
Update 2: lupus_yonderboy posted his solution over at MeFi. It'll get you the lower score with 6 empty boxes (opposed to my 1 empty box), but the little robot looks like a Roomba^TM. The game makes it clear that efficiency is desirable over appearance by the score, but I'm not convinced.

Two music/video channels that classy people listen to/watch:

Trumpet Kings
and the corresponding YouTube channel present a blow-out of hot jazz trumpeters. Makes my cheeks tingle!


Dizzie Gillespie - Trumpet Battle 1958

HERstory (nevermind the silly trope) details the history of women in Rock and Soul music over the course of 50 songs from 1958 to 1981. I'm enjoying the essays that accompany each video.

Lorrie & Larry Collins - Mercy

Rockabilly scorcher!

The Collins Kids were the actual thing. While the new music called Rock'n'Roll was mostly sung by adults for young people, these teens walked the talk. Their big break was as regulars on the TV show "Town Hall Party" starting in 1954. Lorrie was 12 and Larry, 10! This Country showcase put them beside June Carter, Tex Ritter, and Larry's guitar mentor, the astounding Joe Maphis. The highlight was watching the elder dueling with his whirling dervish sidekick on double Mosrite guitars.

When Rock hit in '55, the kids were right on it. They pumped out many great singles into the early 60's. This blazing little number runs a two minute mile. Lorrie puts so much gusto into her performance it's startling to realize she's not even 16 yet. But that was the heart of it; the Collins' were the new Rock'n'Roll youth incarnate, on fire and rarin' to go. It's all punk music, and this is where it starts.

Good stuff.

Dictionaries!

In no particular order:

1736 Canting Dictionary
A Collection of the Canting Words and Terms, both ancient and modern, used by Beggars, Gypsies, Cheats, House-Breakers, Shop-Lifters, Foot-Pads, Highway-Men, &c. Taken from The Universal Etymological English Dictionary, by N. Bailey, London, 1737, Vol. II, and transcrib'd into XML Most Diligently by Liam Quin.

The ABCs of Diplomacy (PDF!)
Compiled by The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA)

ASCII Art Dictionary

Ballet Dictionary
Dover Publications has graciously allowed the use of 170 terms from the Technical Manual and Dictionary of Classical Ballet, which are then demonstrated by ABT Company dancers.

The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.

Dictionary of All-Consonant Words
Dictionary of All-Vowel Words

Dictionary of Difficult Words
Do you aim to become a member of the literati, or do you wish to be a savant? Do you want to avoid being verbigerative and be succinct instead?

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (Google Book!)
I knew that the work in which I engaged is generally considered as drudgery for the blind, as the proper toil of artless industry; a task that requires neither the light of learning, nor the activity of genius, but may be successfully performed without any higher quality than that of bearing burdens with dull patience, and beating the track of the alphabet with sluggish resolution. From The Plan of an English Dictionary

Bartleby's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable
...over 18,000 entries that reveal the etymologies, trace the origins and otherwise catalog "words with a tale to tell."

Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas
DICTIONARY Say of it: 'It's only for ignoramuses!' A rhyming dictionary?-- 'I'd rather die than use one!'

The Difference Dictionary
Dr. Gunn's Organic History Supplement for The Difference Engine, a novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

DoD Dictionary of Military Terms
PEACEMAKING (DOD) The process of diplomacy, mediation, negotiation, or other forms of peaceful settlements that arranges an end to a dispute and resolves issues that led to it.

The Double-Tongued Dictionary
A lexicon of fringe English, focusing on slang, jargon, and new words.

Field Guide to Identifying Unicorns by Sound
Not exactly a dictionary, but definitely a good reference to keep handy.

The Foolish Dictionary
An exhausting work of reference to un-certain English words, their origin, meaning, legitimate and illegitimate use, confused by A FEW PICTURES

The Grandiloquent Dictionary
This is the result of an ongoing project to collect and distribute the most obscure and rare words in the English language. It also contains a few words which do not have equivalent words in English.

Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary
Some six years ago I compiled the first glossary of words, expressions, and the general patois employed by musicians and entertainers in New York’s teeming Harlem. That the general public agreed with me is amply evidenced by the fact that the present issue is the sixth edition since 1938 and is the official jive language reference book of the New York Public Library.

The Nonverbal Dictionary of Gestures, Signs, & Body Language Cues
From Adam's-Apple-Jump to Zygomatic Smile

The Not-So-Correct Dictionary

OEDILF - The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form

The Online Etymology Dictionary
...a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English.

Online Dictionary of Symbolism
This symbolism dictionary endeavors to provide some possible cultural significances of various symbols, and suggest ways in which those symbols may have been used in context.

Kate Monk's Onomastikon
(Dictionary of Names)

Rededication

My bookmarks are filling up.

One time I accidentally left my navbar in a screencap I posted to MetaFilter. Folks were curious what I kept in my "Cool Shit" folder.

And so.

Plus, if this gets going with the linking and such, I suppose the writing can't be far behind. Wish me luck. And perseverance. And freedom from despair.

London Transport Museum's Online Poster Collection

I went to post this to MetaFilter today only to find I'd been beaten...by 9 months. Damn!

PLEASE PASS RIGHT DOWN THE CAR
The London Transport Museum's online poster colletion spans 100 years of art, entertainment, information, and admonishment, from Frank Pick's initial grasp of the power of graphic design to Paul Catherall's latest linotype. Browse by date, artist, or theme, and make sure to read up on the twined histories of posters and public transportation in London.

Had to put it somewhere. Maybe I'll cross-post with MySpace. Ugh.

Golden Bond

For Your Brown-Eye Only

Goldsphincter

Diarrhea Another Day

From Russia With Lube

Pooraker

In Her Majesty's Secret Orifice

Thunderbowl

The Can With the Golden Dung

Dr. No. 2

Diamonds Arse Forever

Squirt And Let Dry

Proctopussy

You Only Wipe Once

The Bowl Is Not Enough

Never Play Nether Again

Stolen directly and with no compunction from the geniuses in this shitstorm honeypot.