The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
Cuba’s progressing fast when it comes to recognizing the rights of transgendered peoples. First the ban was lifted on sex-change operations in 2007, and now not only are the surgeries being performed in Cuba, they’re being paid for under the government’s universal health care plan.
...moreThe first weeks of 2010 are inevitably flooded with top ten lists of 2009, because people apparently can’t live without them.
But maybe instead of reading the same top ten lists, we could have interesting lists of overlooked, underrated, left behind things. Yeah, we know that Inglorious Basterds is probably on most top 10 film lists, but what about those films that we missed? Here’s a list of the ten great movies of 2009 that may have passed you by.
...moreHarper’s has a condensed, slightly humorous (not funny haha) and downright offputting review of 2009. From “Scientists in San Diego made a robot head study itself in a mirror until it learned to smile” to learning that the actual Man in the Mirror died, 2009 was a rough go.
...moreIt seems that people will only grow to love David Foster Wallace more as the years go on. It’s what usually happens when you can’t get someone anymore.
Here’s a great link to more DFW morsels from Lincoln Michel over at The Faster Times, from the anticipation of Wallace’s unfinished novel, Pale King (due to be released this year), to a great video of him drinking from an empty glass while talking about getting irritated with people who make him parse unnecessarily.
...moreRon Rosenbaum over at Slate, has been chronicling catchphrases for a while, and now at the dawn of 2010, he picks the catchphrase of the decade, and also does away with the awful ones by “throwing them under the bus.”
For example, who doesn’t hate “it is what it is”?
...moreLaura Miller, staff writer at Salon as well as a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, has come out with a new feature called What to Read.
Salon’s not doing away with it’s exceptional book coverage, from reviews to interviews – rather it’s just adding to it. How? Well, in Miller’s words:
...moreRumpus contributor Zak Smith has made known his top three books of the year over at HTMLGIANT.
Smith’s picks are a delightfully eclectic mix: The Original of Laura by Nabokov (a fragmented, not meant to be published, unfinished novel), Ugly Man by Dennis Cooper, and Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave.
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“Why should only famous people be famous? Fuck that! Fame for all! Even if it’s just the tiniest bit (which turns out to be the perfect amount).”
If you haven’t caught a whiff of the hubbub surrounding Werner Herzog’s latest film Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, that might be because you’re not much of a cinephile, which it turns out, neither is Herzog.
His latest movie starring Nicholas Cage is essentially, maybe, sort-of, a very slight non-remake remake of Abel Ferrera’s 1992 movie Bad Lieutenant.
...moreSeriously.
Time Magazine originally started out selecting a “Man of the Year” as a way to sell magazines in the down holiday season, which then turned into “Person of the Year”. Now they’re thinking of naming Twitter as 2009′s Person of the Year. It seems we’ve thrown out the concept of words having meanings.
...moreRates of PTSD for Iraq war veterans have been estimated as up to 35% in a Stanford University study. The Army has reached out to alternative therapies from yoga to reiki to holding and petting an animal, and now a South Carolina psychiatrist is trying to bring Ecstasy into the mix.
...moreI’m not sure why Philip Roth seems so concerned about the future of the novel; perhaps because he’s about to die, he thinks the novel should go with him? Or maybe he’s talking about it because he has a new book just out, The Humbling.
...moreI remember all the nights I spent tucked into bed with my other sisters and our mother perched on the end of the bed reading Goodnight Moon to us. Those were the days; now I just stay up late at night reading to myself.
...moreYou saw it coming.
Your grandma has a blog and your friend’s tweets are invading whatever small sliver of silent privacy you had left. We’re all becoming authors. Is this trend inevitable?
...moreThis week in the New York Times, Google co-founder Sergey Brin wrote an op-ed about Google’s efforts in the realm of digitizing so-called orphan books. Despite ongoing legal drama, Brin insists that their efforts are for the good of everyone, and for all important texts that would otherwise be lost.
...moreJonathan Ames has a great blog about his HBO TV series Bored to Death. In this post he talks about the irony of engaging in an S&M session with his former student and then the very next evening being part of a presentation on torture put on by the PEN American Center and the ACLU.
...moreThe popular software Pl@giarism used to detect cheating students by comparing their papers against published texts was recently used by Sir Brian Vickers, an authority on Shakespeare, to determine whether or not Shakespeare collaborated with Thomas Kyd on The Reign of King Edward III.
...moreIf you thought having sex was complicated, try defining it.
Lexicographer and language expert Jesse Sheidlower, author of the famed F-Word, and currently serving as Editor at Large (North America) of the Oxford English Dictionary, writes about the challenges of defining sex in all its various manifestations in the dictionary.
...moreSherman Alexie, whose novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was banned in some school districts, is no stranger to controversy.
He’s recently come out with a new collection of stories and poetry called War Dances. In this latest Mother Jones interview, he talks about the weight of being American’s most famous Native American Indian author: ”I’m going to get grief from certain people about not having likable characters,” he says.
...moreThe Atlantic covers Leak & Sons Funeral Home in Chicago’s South Side. Business is up, and that’s not a good thing, especially when the average age of the deceased is getting younger and younger, and they’re not dying of natural causes.
In related news, here’s a story about the activist priest Rev.
...moreIf you look up the New Deal on Wikipedia you’ll hardly see Frances Perkins‘ name mentioned. Yet, as the first female cabinet member, serving as FDR’s Secretary of Labor, she was the major force behind such revolutionary acts like minimum wage, unemployment, pensions, welfare, and also crafted laws to ban child labor.
...moreThe Jonathan Ames you may love and know is not only out with a new book but also a new series on HBO which is a spin-off from his real life, featuring Jason Schwartzman as Jonathan Ames (how’s that for awesome casting), a writer who has just been dumped by his girlfriend and is unable to crack into his second novel.
...moreAs you may already know, Google has been spending the last seven years scanning their hearts out, digitizing more than two million books that are old enough to be part of the public domain. They turn them into searchable documents, making many rare and hard to find books accessible for anyone with access to the Internet.
...moreWriters are always lamenting the lonely journey of being in a room by oneself armed with just words and coffee. Other artists seem to enjoy the benefits of collaboration, why not us?
Enter The Owls, a self-described “site for collaborative writing projects.” One such project was created by the poet Sean Hill.
...moreI remember when my dog Rusty disappeared, and we spent a day looking for him. When I went to bed that night, I imagined he was at the park smoking cigars and playing poker, because that’s what dogs do when you’re sleeping; the next day, of course he came home, without any indication on his face that he had even been gone.
...moreThe authorities at Cushing Academy, a New England prep school in Ashburnham, Massachusetts have decided to do away with their traditional library. Meaning, nothing between two covers.
...moreA little snapshot of love stories from around the web.
One of my all-time favorite love stories told at the Moth podcast: Mike Destefano recalling his love for Franny in Franny’s Last Ride.
Calvin Trillin, who always wrote about his wife, remembers her life in this incredible essay “Alice Off the Page” which you can read here (if you have a subscription to the New Yorker) or here.
...moreWhat is believed to maybe be the last significant trunkload of Bloomsbury letters is about to be auctioned off on September 3rd. The collection, containing about 700 letters were all sent to Helen Anrep, a friend and supporter of many artists and writers (though not one herself); they showcase correspondence from many people including Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, and Virginia Woolf. Woolf’s letters exhibit her famed sharp tongue with lines like “The female oaf is utterly intolerable.”
...moreSharing is caring on the Internet. The idea is that magazines and newspapers, struggling for survival, want one thing: more distribution. So why not make it easier for bloggers and writers to embed posts on their sites, rather than having to waste their time fussing with copy and paste?
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