Bullfighting, bull slinging and bullshitting. (Just becuase I agree with Zelda, doesn’t mean I don’t love this novel.) A textual history of The Sun Also Rises. I got a little nosy for the first time, and started looking up who the characters were based on. I wanted to see a picture of Duff Twysden (Brett) and Kitty Cannell (Francis Clyne), though it makes me feel a bit dirty and faintly embarrassed to read about this stuff. It’s really no less prurient or absorbing than Star Magazine or TheSkinnyWebsite. (I read until googlebooks slammed the thing shut on my fingers.) It’s also always a bit annoying to be reminded of the hand of the author in the work, who, as a person, shares a certain sort of desperate pathos with a lot of other good writers (Truman Capote). Shoo Hemmingway, enough with the protests and justifications– let me read in peace.

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The Finnish Bitches Jewelry show. Especially see Janna Syvanoja.

And how about Mia Pearlman installing things?

There is a good interview with Chris Ware and Jerry Moriarty in The Believer, though the whole thing is not online. The Comics Bureau suggests the audio interviews 1 and 2 at Inkstuds as background. I just started the first.

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I think it’s time to take one way friendships seriously. I was reading something about Julia Child and how once she was on TV everyone loved her and felt like they had a special relationship with her. People would write her letters, at first a little self conscious about claiming a relationship, and then go on to call her by her first name, tell her intimate details of their lives, and ask for help choosing appliances. This has always been regarded as mildly aberrant, but I think if they were really honest, most people would admit to a few unidirectional friendships. (I call most of my favorite cookbook authors by their first names and take them to bed with me.) The internet is perfect for devoted unidirectional friendships. I have long term imaginary friendships with a few people. I even periodically get angry at them and swear never to have anything to do with them again, but eventually I go back to reading them. I have actually even come close to sending a couple of emails over the years. Anyhow, the media in which we communicate changes more and more to support these genuinely meaningful connections, so why are they still faintly weird? Maybe because there isn’t yet an etiquette? Twitter goes a long way in legitimizing what would have been stalking a few years ago. You there, study this.