Friday Autofunday 2-27-2009

Autoportrait 2.0 is in the works. Meanwhile, let's have some cheap sharp fun. What kind of fun? Auto-fun. Everyone likes fun, if you don't like fun then next time we wanna have massive amounts of kickass fun, we won't invite you. This isn't fun so far? Well I'm listening to the Classical Masterpieces Channel on Time Warner Cable. These channels are TW's hidden gift. What if I was like, bought out by someone you knew I hated and I had to promote them all the time. If one day I woke up and was like "Top Ten Ideas for Max's Baby Shower (so excitant for Season Six)!!!"

Firstly some bizness. I've decided to change the book club book because I realize I'll never read our current selection because it is too heavy to carry in my bag and I can't afford to give one away and I like to give one away and have a contest. So I picked another book. Because I want to read it and hopefully you will want to read it too? Susan Sontag's journals, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963. Okays. I'll give you lots of time 'cause I just started The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I'll talk more about Reborn in the next "Stuff I've Been Reading." Don't be mad promise.

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Quote: "My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them still." (from Frank O'Hara's "Meditations on an Emergency" from poetry magazine via achtung baby !)

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Links:
[let me just say these are real gems.]
- I am so excited to bring you the auto-fun today, I'm doing it so I can make you read this article in The New York Times about living with monkeys !
- Tao Lin, my financial idol, shares his secrets at UrbanElitist . E.g., "I have had part-time jobs almost continuously since college (I am 25), I think, except for maybe one year when I shoplifted batteries and Moleskine journals to sell on eBay ... since [selling my next novel's royalties] my money has come from selling pre-orders and lifetime subscriptions to books ... Christmas and Chinese New Year’s money from my parents and brother; and selling drawings, drafts of things, and various “piles of shit” from my room on eBay."
- AM Homes has a new short story at The New Yorker: "Brother on Sunday. "
- Emily Gould has a dysfunctional relationship with her old laptop. MIT's Sherry Turkle has "spent several decades studying and writing about the way mechanical objects construct and complete the self." This is really interesting stuff, you must read it. It even quotes a Meghan Daum essay I once used to teach middle school kids in rural Northern Michigan to write personal essays. The Technology Review.
- Firstly - there is a magazine called Obit. Secondly, read this: Laughing Past the Grave .
- The Unrecognizable Internet of 1996 at Slate: "People still refer to the new medium by its full name—the World Wide Web—and although you sometimes find interesting stuff here, you're constantly struck by how little there is to do. You rarely linger on the Web; your computer takes about 30 seconds to load each page, and, hey, you're paying for the Internet by the hour. Plus, you're tying up the phone line. Ten minutes after you log in, you shut down your modem. You've got other things to do—after all, a new episode of Seinfeld is on."
- Leonardo da Vinci was a serious procrastinator too .
- NPR's intriguing essay on "the art of language, Obama style ."
- This is the part where it officially becomes cool. I think it's the counter-backlash. Yoko Ono's 25 Things .

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Last week I became briefly addicted to hunting for celebrity photographs. I have no idea why, this has never been a thing that interested me before, nor could I refer to this compulsion as anything resembling "interesting." I was not being intellectually or creatively stimulated, I was not interacting with other people, I was not learning anything, or accomplishing any of my daily or life goals. Yet. One more page. One more ELLEN PAGE! Anyhow way too late in the game I discovered fanpop which incited a whole new round of gazing at celebrity photos when I had other things to do.

I've been off the sauce for four days now, I'm going to go back to Trivia Machine as my insomnia obsession. Like if I was advertising an insomnia obsession I'd say: "You know those things you do when your brain's too quick for sleep and too slow to be awake?" So. I have some holdovers from Autowin Surrenders week obsession that I will share with you, and therefore I'll feel accomplished and therefore not feel guilty anymore. See how we help each other?

"Here, let me help you, then you me, otherwise we'll die." (Stephen Dunn)

Shanyn Sossamon Good Tie Thursday
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Shanyn Sossamon -Whoodie Wednesday
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Nelly Furtado - Good Tie Thursday
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Liv Tyler - Boyshorts Tuesday
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Drew Barrymore - Finnneeee Friday
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Ellen Page - Whoodie Wednesday
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Angelina Jolie Saturday & Sunday
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My favorite hoodie of all time - Shane for Whoodie Wednesday Wax
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DJ Carlytron for Good Tie Tuesday
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TTYS!