Asterios Polyp

Strongly recommend this new graphic novel, David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp.  It’s being hailed as a landmark of the genre, and I agree — it strikes me as among the best graphic novels I’ve read, along with the likes of Maus, Charles Burns’ Black Hole, Ghost World, Persepolis, Jimmy Corrigan, and I’m not sure what else [...]

Creepy Farmers’ Market Simulacrum

Sarah snapped these pics of this extremely creepy Farmers Market simulacrum on display in the entrance to the Kroger’s near us.
“Hey, people seem to really like these ‘farmers’ markets.’  Let’s arrange our sterile fruits and veggies imported from South America, Australia, etc and present it all as the produce raised by a disturbing robot/Cylon ‘farmer’!  [...]

Music Roundup: Franco, Jay Reatard, Pains of Being Pure at Heart…

A few things I’ve been listening to…
Modest Mouse, “3rd Planet.”  This is from Modest Mouse’s major-label debut The Moon and Antarctica (2000), their third album, which didn’t really make too big of a splash at the time — their commercial breakthrough came with the next album and the big Pixies-ish hit “Float On.”  One thing [...]

How to Make a Fruit-fly Trap

Take a glass and put some fruit-fly bait in the bottom.  A piece of tomato or banana works well.
Cover the top with saran wrap and poke some decent-sized small holes in the top [just realized my holes have been too big -- they should be tiny, made with a pencil tip or some such].  Use [...]

Free Boxwoods/ New England Mental Institution Look

We dug up the boxwood bushes in front of the house.  Waiting to see if we get any takers.  Sarah commented that the house no longer has that “New England mental institution, Brick n’ Boxwoods look.”

Drain Pipe Ditches

When we came home after over a month away we found a very damp basement.  No actual puddles or leaks but a kind of miasmic moldy atmosphere and, we discovered, some actual mold in some cabinets.
We went out and bought a new energy-efficient dehumidifier (we had one that looks like it dated from the 1980s).  [...]

Perfect Game Paintings

In all the to-do about Mark Buehle of the White Sox’s perfect game (assisted by Dewayne Wise’s amazing 9th-inning catch), I was amused by one detail.  It’s apparently traditional for the pitcher of a perfect game to treat or honor his teammates in some way:
Buehrle is ordering special wine bottles for all of the White [...]