The Junk Drawer

I’ve only read his THE FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS, but that was enough for me to recognize Lem as a fabulously inventive writer. The Tarkovsky film is quite good as well. But very long. I’ve yet to see the Soderbergh version.

Polish author Stanislaw Lem, most famous for science fiction works including Solaris, has died aged 84, after suffering from heart disease. He sold more than 27 million copies of his works, translated into about 40 languages, and a number were filmed. His 1961 novel Solaris was made into a movie by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky in 1971 and again by American Steven Soderbergh in 2002.Soderbergh’s version starred George Clooney and Natascha McElhone.

Lem was born in 1921 in Lviv in Ukraine and studied medicine there before World War II. He moved to Krakow in 1946. He concentrated on science fiction writing, a genre regarded by the Polish socialist government as fairly harmless in terms of censorship. However, his first major novel, Hospital of the Transfiguration, went unpublished for eight years until the ideological thaw that followed Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s death in 1956. Other key works included The Cyberiad in 1965. After the collapse of communism in eastern Europe, Lem turned to writing reports on future trends, including computer crime and the ethical problems of the internet.

THE 18th-century man of letters Samuel Johnson famously remarked that a woman’s preaching was like a dog walking on its hind legs. “It is not done well,” he told James Boswell. “But you are surprised to find it done at all.”So he would be doubly shocked to learn that a contender for a £30,000 book prize in his name is not only female, but a diarist who publishes her writing on a device known as the internet.

Baghdad Burning is a visceral first-hand account of how the war has destroyed the lives of ordinary Iraqi citizens. The author, a 20-something university graduate who writes under the pseudonym Riverbend, chronicles the “three years of occupation and bloodshed” the city has endured and calls for the withdrawal of US troops. (Read on …)

During my random research into the cultural detritus of the early eighties, I came across this bit of musical kitsch.

In 1980, Jon Bon Jovi made his first recording of a song, and it happened to be for a Star Wars Christmas album, Christmas in the Stars.

Thanks to the glories of Wikipedia, which I am only now starting to appreciate, I can make this excellent bit of garish eighties nostalgia available to you, so long as this link works.

R2-D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas

If anyone ever sees this album at a thrift store, you’ve got to buy it for me. I will repay you whatever sum you desire. It is of the utmost importance that I have this album.

It is perhaps a sign of how far I have fallen from my days as a serious student of Literature that when I read the headline, Scenes From Homer Found in Cyprus ‘Warrior Tomb,’ I immediately think that the article is Simpsons-related.

(Read on …)

Just read this on the NY Review of Books. I think it nicely summarizes some of the more obvious problems with the Narnia books. The article also deals somewhat with the nature of Aslan which I think is crucial when it comes to understanding what God asks from us. Aslan does look a lot like what I would call a worldly, ie, reductive power figure. There is, in other words, no paradox, no confusion in God’s being, that would allow us freedom and possibility. Its theology for sunday school, not serious readers.

A Lebowski fest short from 2006 (we’ll be there in a few months, hopefully!). And, for Matt, this real-life recreation of the opening of The Simpsons.

In Googling for “squirrel taxidermy” to gain greater insight into a character I’m developing for a story, I happened upon some totally bizarre yet incredibly fascinating (ok, maybe just to me) sites, including a woman who creates freaks (think frankensquirrels, jackalopes, feejee mermaids).

“Bless the Beasts and Road Kill” The article that first caught my attention
Custom Creature Taxidermy “She [Sarina Brewer] calls it art…you can call it whatever you want.” My favorite section? Click on “fantasy.”
Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists Brewer’s cofounder of this group. (I just love the 3-eyed deer mascot!)

On the radio this morning, I heard about this website called Don’t Date Him Girl. It’s a site that allows women to post warnings, and photographs, of men that women should not date. This is a pretty ingenious site, even if it is probably prone to fraud.

The entries are what you might call the reverse of a personal ad. Take poor Jonathan Clark. From his picture, he looks like a handsome college dude. Read the description, and you soon come to believe the guy is a real sociopath:

You’re dating this guy? DON’T. About 99% of everything this guy has ever told you is a lie. Everything he claims to be and do is fabricated by his own overactive imagination. He says that he played football at Virginia Tech. Never happened. He never even went there—or to any real college. He gets girls by telling them that he is going to be a superstar NFL Punter soon, but until then, you’re just gonna have to buy him everything his little heart desires.

Ultimately, there is no way to verify whether this information is true, but it seems to me the real point of this website is not only to identify players, but to give women a forum on which to vent. Also, one cannot discount the fun factor in reading these hatchet jobs. It’s a humorous way to pass a few minutes on your lunch hour.

I hope none of you singles find a man you’re currently dating listed on this site.

I am tired of looking at those empty links in the header of the Junk Drawer blog.  Let’s hold a poll, right here and now, and determine what links we want to feature in our Header menu.

Once we decide what links we want to display, Dhalgren or I can add them to the Header template.

Besides “Home,” I would suggest a link to our “About Sodsbrood” page, which most people don’t even know exists.

Should we also have a “Contact” page?