Entries from July 2009 ↓

There’s an excellent post over at  Fake Steve Jobs about what, I expect, we all consciously or instinctively know about our culture right now. Fake Steve’s rant is inspired by this great comparison of the fears of Aldous Huxley vs George Orwell in comic form, the words of which were taken from the book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Stuart McMillen, which will definitely be going on my must-read list.

Brave New World is still one of the most amazing books I’ve ever read.

I recently finished Feed by M.T. Anderson, which was an incredibly adept, modern take on Brave New World and highly recommended.

Now then, I’m off to play Risk on my iPhone. And did I mention it’s efffking hot here?

WTF? I live in Portland! The city will drown in a sea of heat wave.

The people of Edmonton, Canada, voting in the Bike Shorts Film Festival, chose Levin’s Bicycle as their favorite film!:

After a successful evening in Edmonton the People chose a movie by Levin Schersvanaskitty.

Read the full post: Bike Shorts Film Festival

I am so happy and Edmonton, I love you too! You can watch our film here:

Levin’s Bicycle

A few years ago a handsome, charming young couple from North Carolina answered a craigslist ad we posted for a house sitter – something about: “must love chickens and cats, like to read, etc”. We were on an east coast family tour and decided to trust the internets to take care of our house.

Theirs was one of the many responses to the craigslist ad, but they answered most charmingly and explained they were going to play around in Portland for a few weeks and maybe play a gig  or two, and yes, they loved chickens.

Beth and Phil turned out to be The Bowerbirds – and they’ve since become one of my favorite bands, as well as the favorite band of many others, I imagine, as they’ve done quite well for themselves.

Last I’d heard they were building a log cabin – here’s Beth flexing her impressive, accordion-playing muscles:

And Yesterday they released a new album: Upper Air

Nice work!

See The Bowerbirds here: http://bowerbirds.org or check out their music on iTunes

Very nice review by Phil Sandick in the Fiction Writers Review.

“Couch is an ambitious novel, particularly in its good-hearted search for deeper meanings: faith, politics, and the nature of existence all receive some sort of attention here. By asking readers to readjust expectations of what the novel can look and sound like, Parzybok might very well be previewing a kind of literary-adventure hybrid niche that may be back in fashion.”

Thanks, Phil!

I don’t think it’s curable.

A couple of videos of Darth and I annoying our subordinates.