A skull a day...

Like the new font in this blog's header? Check it: Skull-A-Day is a blog anybody can support. You don't have to be a goth or a rocker or a ninja to appreciate the aesthetics of cool skulls; you might be a Buddhist.

Despite a new skull everyday there are two things Skull-A-Day is not:



nor



Wouldn't it be cool though for Damien Hirst to create a diamond encrusted DeathKnight?

Back Room Live and Sorry 4 Snake 3

Back Room Live is Live tomorrow!

Valyntina Grenier has been running a terrific reading series at a local pub for a year or so now and decided to publish an anthology of all those who read last year. The anthology is as V. puts it, a "polyphony of voices," and as such there will be poly readings here and there in the East Bay over the next couple of months--the first of which is tomorrow at McNally's.

...

Sorry 4 Snake 3 is out and is ready for mass consumption. Yours truly is humbly sharing space with such awesomeness as:

Mathew Rohrer
Feliz Molina
Jared White
Mark Cunningham
Gillian Hamel
K. Silem Mohammad
Juliet Cook
Erika Staiti

Check out more info at Stormy Petrel Press.

Classic Japanese Culture, or Ninjas! Ninjas! Ninjas!

A friend recently brought my attention to this:



Passengers dressed in ninja costumes will be given free travel along the Iga Tetsudo line from April 1 to May 6 to mark the city's popular ninja festival.

Man, I wish I was in Japan for that... Anybody, if you are in Japan, along the Iga Tetsudo line, please take pictures and let me know. I really want to see a whole family, grandma and grandpa too, all dressed in the mysterious black garb of the ninja. That would be sugoii.

AACR2 The Movie

Maybe it's that I am taking a cataloging class this semester, and am learning to stop worrying and love the AACR2, but this movie is awesome! Not sure if you have to be a cataloger to love it though...



See--I post librarian stuff, and what have you...

Ensorcelled!

A future perhaps fraudulent
pulls poor Punch
far flung to a meeting
with himself! Perpetually clever he
introduces himself en francais
as Punch and sips
an absinthe cocktail.
"I hate the future"
thinks our friendish fiend
and unsheathes a knife
from his oft-stabbed back.
"Dying is easy" he laughs
making a mask of his face
in the likeness
and the not-likeness
of Fantomas!
Riots ensue, string
theories cut, and several
foundations go missing.

:)

Rest well Gary Gygax

I learned today that Gary Gygax, inventor of Dungeons and Dragons, died on March 4, 2008. D&D very much informed me growing up and I didn't really realize how grateful I am for the game until I heard today of its creator's death.

In honor of Mr. Gygax, a poem by Cesar Vallejo (translated by Clayton Eshleman):

The Eternal Dice

My God, I am crying over the being I live;
it grieves me to have taken your bread;
but this poor thinking clay
is no scab from your side:
you do not have Marys who leave you!

My God, had you been a man,
today you would know how to be God;
but you, who were always fine,
feel nothing for your own creation.
Indeed, man suffers you; God is he!

Today there are candles in my sorcerer eyes,
as in those of a condemned man--
my God, you will light all of your candles
and we will play with the old die...
Perhaps, oh gambler, throwing for the fate of
the whole universe,
Death's dark-circled eyes will come up,
like two funeral snake eyes of mud.

My God, and this deaf, gloomy night,
you will not be able to gamble, for the Earth
is a worn die now rounded from
rolling at random,
it cannot stop but in a hollow,
the hollow of an immense tomb.