Rosamond Purcell (and Ricky Jay)

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The Athanasius Kircher Society gives us a head-up on a very nice slide show on Slate devoted to the photographs of Rosamond Purcell. I realized while looking at the photographs that I’d seen a couple of the images before, without paying enough attention to the person making the art – I won’t make that mistake again (I hope) w/ Ms. Purcell’s work. One place you can go to see more is the Museum of Jurassic Technology’s exhibit of Ricky Jay’s decaying dice. Enjoy!

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Update – Purcell links abound! Here’s one from the Boston Globe. (via BoingBoing)

Word of the day

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Flopsweat – n. Theater. nervous perspiration caused by fear of failure before an audience. From “Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Volume 1, A-G” by J.E. Lighter, Random House, New York, 1994. This earliest citation in this reference is: 1966 Susann “Valley of the Dolls” 292: The applause had been deafening on her entrance, but after ten minutes the air was heavy with “flop sweat.”

OK, let’s use it in a sentence (this line is what made flopsweat today’s word). Via the apostate Balloon Juice blog,

Unsurprisingly, practically everybody involved with the glorious clusterf*ck in Iraq has switched into desperate damage-control mode. Michael Leeden’s [sic] personal dodge (Supported the invasion? You must mean some other Michael Leeden) is particularly funny for its mix of mendacity and flopsweat.”

A Couple Good Links from Japan

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Very light posting recently – any time I’m not working or sleeping, I’m out in the woods, chasing one thing or another. To confirm my continued existence I offer the following links:

Catching skyfish. I get the strong feeling this is more than a little tongue in cheek; it’s a heck of a lot more interesting than the latest day-trading or real estate millionaire video come-on.

Japanomie – this documentary on hikikomori is interesting (give it time to load) – after making me frown and smile it finally brought out the crabby guy in me. “Kids today! Bah! Nothing there that a goddam haircut and a job won’t fix.” I found the film starting here and wandering around here.

Back to the woods (maybe I can catch a skyfish with my new spoodle)…