Short List: OK Songs

Today is being declared as OK Day by the author of a new book about the word OK. The word OK was first published on March 23, 1839. It is a fanciful acronym for the intentionally misspelled 'oll korrect.' Really. You can learn about OK Day suggested activities at the Facebook page.



1. Oh Well, Okay - Elliot Smith
2. Is This Sound Okay? - Coconut Records
3. Is It Okay if I Call You Mine? - Sondre Lerche
4. Pony (It's OK) - Erin McCarley
5. It's Ok - Dead Moon
6. Luna Lovegood is OK - Harry and the Potters
7. Oklahoma - Oklahoma!
8. Everything's Okay - Hank Williams
9. It's OK - Cee-Lo Green
10. Ok/No Way - Mission of Burma
11. (OK Go)

Short List: Favorite Public Art

1. Cupid's Span by Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen. San Francisco, CA.

2. Stravinsky Fountain by Jean Tingueley & Niki de Saint Phalle. Paris, France.

3. "Defenestration" by Brian Goggin. San Francisco, CA.

4. Book Burning Monument by Micha Ullman. Berlin, Germany.

Short List: Books I Should Have Read

1. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

2. Candide by Voltaire

3. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

4. Dune by Frank Herbert

5. Animal Farm by George Orwell

6. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

7. Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake, or Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Short List: My Favorite Autobiographies

1. Boy by Roald Dahl


2. Moab is my Washpot by Stephen Fry


3. Indecent by Sarah Katherine Lewis

Future Brianne: What Will She Have Read?

I wasn't reading a lot.. and now I am. It's bringing up a lot of un-read book guilt and this is what it looks like. I am nearly done with Perelandra by C.S. Lewis after reading a whole lot of it on the plane back from California this evening and so I know decision-making time is nigh.

These are my upcoming book options (alphabetical by author):

How the Irish Saved Civilization - Thomas Cahill
Book 5 of the 39 Clues - Patrick Carman
Foyle's Philavery - Christopher Foyle
The Ode Less Travelled - Stephen Fry
The Human Voice - Anna Karpf
That Hideous Strength- C.S. Lewis (3rd book in the Space Trilogy of which Perelandra is the 2nd)
Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
Carpe Diem - Harry Mount
Empires of the Word - Nicholas Ostler
The Language Instinct - Stephen Pinker
The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
The Linguistics of Lying - Harald Weinrich

I don't actually have access to three of these books right now, but I have so many I should have already read, this should not be an issue. I think I'm on a fiction kick and so many of these are not that... the poor non-fiction books are gathering dust.

WHAT TO DO.

The Man Who Made Lists: Not a Book Review

I recently finished The Man Who Made Lists by Joshua Kendall about the life of Peter Mark Roget and I don't know what to say exactly.

I was hoping this book would be a kickstart to me to attack the pile of language books I have languidly lying around my bookshelves, but not so.

From the first pages, I was writing "awwwww" in the margins because the front and back sheets are his handwritten list of animal names in Latin and English.

The book goes through his biography, and I don't like how it's written, like the author had a Pastwatch-esque ability to know where Roget is looking and what he is thinking as he walks down the road or in the middle of a meeting. I know there are records and he could have explained it after the fact, but I just don't buy it and it distracts me to throw in details about the buildings he passes and their little histories.

Whatever. So I identify with him, and he was destined to go on the Cool Guys List from the first cracking open of the book. So his life is tragic, and it makes me worry that I can try to organize the world in my little way, try to contribute to some field, realize the kind words someone once told me, that I am "a solution in search of a problem." And I will contribute, probably, but it won't stop my life from being terrible for no apparent reason, and it won't stop me suffering from debilitating personal issues that don't allow me to appreciate my many blessings or accomplishments. What I'm saying is, I'm really looking forward to the rest of my life. Thanks, book.

I mean, Peter Mark Roget was a serious genius, and put his hands into all sorts of medical and botanical classification projects, and now his name is (oh my, better write this one down) synonymous with Thesaurus-type reference books, but those are just word indices and lack the vision that his original system had about who would use his book and why and how.

RESOLUTION: To seek out an original-ish version of Roget's Thesaurus, in a rare books room in Portland or elsewhere. To see the original layout, to see the systems and sub-systems. To touch a page, even if through gloved fingers. To be inspired or not by it. Begin.

The Hippopotamus and Magical Sex

I just finished reading Stephen Fry's novel The Hippopotamus. I picked it out this summer at Powell's and chose it based on its very low low price, paperbacked-ness, and nice hippo cover. I read it during lunches as I was starting at PECI, and then shit went down, and I lost the book. I also lost my sunglasses, my check wallet, and a lot of lip gloss. 

A couple of weeks ago, I found them all in the same messenger bag that I apparently had not used or opened in months. So I took it up again, more than half-way through, and it finally got good and interesting, which it sadly had not previously been. This being the reason it was lost and not very well looked for. Anyway, spoiler alert, it turns out that this kid has fucked his cousin, a horse, and an older man because he thought his semen would heal them of their ailments. 

At the same time, Digg told me about this comic which highlights a superpower that necessitates the superhero to fuck the person for them to tell the absolute truth.

In related news, once upon a time, when an ex-friend and I would talk about things like, since Johnny Storm says "FLAME ON!" to turn into Human Torch, shouldn't The Thing, or The Hulk, or Colossus say "HARD ON" when they transform into their more invulnerable states? Or, when Wolfsbane transforms from her more human form to her wolf form, what happens to the hair down there? In related matters, Green Lantern could hypothetically create a green condom, bypassing the need for other contraceptives except! Could he retain a sufficient level of concentration during the moment in which he actually would need the block to keep it substantive? Of course the classic discussion is Superman's deadly shot through Lois and WonderWoman's wonderwomb from Mallrats.