Random stuff read online last month:
- The story of the guys who created Superman (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster) is … dramatic (also, Superman as initially conceived, was actually a villain).
- There’s a lot of crap on YouTube, but also a lot of gold — in this case, the first ever recording of Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” (as in, he sits down, says “I’m gonna sing another new one now … I know these new songs, maybe that’s kind of weird”). Five minutes or so, and totally worth it.
- Bonus: if you like that, here is the equivalent one for “Old Man”. Also, there are no background singers or dancers, or a music video to go along, or special effects of any sort; it’s just him, a guitar and mic. Just saying.
- File this under the irony or stranger than fiction category; the headline says it all: “Man dies under his six-ton pile of porn magazines”
- Someone has to remind us that this is the 100th year anniversary of something, so the New York Times does it.
- The picture at the top is something that randomly popped up because I have a Chrome extension that shows stuff like this.
- Someone followed an unusually large rabbit hole and found a Templar’s cave. Seriously.
- I finished slowly re-reading Moby Dick and this piece (”The endless depths of Moby Dick symbolism”) perfectly captures my bewildered mix of feelings (what the **** did I just read?)
The book is nearly impossible to place, to categorize, to hold without feeling the vertiginous swell of its creation. More than any other book, it fills me with awe and dread.
Moby-Dick is about everything, a bible written in scrimshaw, an adventure spun in allegory, a taxonomy tripping on acid. It seems to exist outside its own time … It is so broad and so deep as to accept any interpretation while also staring back and mocking this man-made desire toward interpretation.
What does it mean? There are so many symbols as to render symbols meaningless.
- There are survivalists, and then there are survivalists who want to do it in style. I present to you the future of luxury underground living (no, seriously, click on it and scroll down; you have to see it to believe it).
- Another headline that writes itself: “Found: A Colossal Statue of Ramses II Hiding Under a Cairo Street”
- Finally, if you care for this sort of thing: it turns out that Carl Jung wrote a critical essay on ”Ulysses” when he read it, and then sent a letter praising it, to James Joyce.
Well, I just try to recommend my little essay to you, as an amusing attempt of a perfect stranger that went astray in the labyrinth of your Ulysses and happened to get out of it again by sheer good luck. At all events you may gather from my article what Ulysses has done to a supposedly balanced psychologist.
Abacus Noir 