The Audio-Visual Society

Wednesday morning, pulling up files for a class (two MP3s, two PDFs), I remembered, from junior high, the Audio-Visual Society, the kids who were the kings of all media.

Now we’re all members.

Eameses in the air

At the New York Times, Ice Cube visits the Eames house.

And a new PBS American Masters episode, Charles & Ray Eames: The Architect and the Painter, airs on December 19.

Related posts
Eames on reams
Twine and yarn

Lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum dolor end of semester, consectetur adipisicing elit grading papers, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore all day long. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea back tomorrow.


[Chicago, September 2004.]

Related reading
Lorem ipsum (Wikipedia article)

Blagojevich sentencing poll

It’s not every state whose news organizations get to poll audiences on appropriate prison time for an ex-governor.

This poll is from WCIA in Champaign.

Update, 12:44 p.m.: He got fourteen years. U.S. District Judge James Zagel: “When it is the governor who goes bad, the fabric of Illinois is torn and disfigured and not easily repaired.”

Review: The Wage Slave’s Glossary

Joshua Glenn and Mark Kingwell. The Wage Slave’s Glossary. Designed and decorated by Seth. Emeryville, Ontario. Biblioasis. 2011. 173 pages. $11.95 US / $12.95 CA.

One of the saddest things is that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours — all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy.

William Faulkner, in a 1956 Paris Review interview

The work of a writer and editor (Glenn), a philosopher (Kingwell), and artist and designer (Seth), The Wage Slave’s Glossary is a sequel to the trio’s The Idler’s Glossary (2008), whose entries explored a world free from the imperatives of getting and spending. (Sample entries: skylarking, sleep, slouch, stroll.) This new book is both well and oddly timed. In an era of economic collapse, it makes good sense to examine the language of work and the ways in which such language naturalizes perspectives and practices that might otherwise seem repellent. (Consider downtime, which identifies the worker at rest with an out-of-service machine.) Yet when so many are desperate to find a job, any job, the authors’ anarcho-revolutionary suspicion of “the work idea” itself seems strangely detached from human circumstance and urgency. It’s nice to envision the world “as a site not of work but of play,” but one still has to eat.

Suspicion of “the work idea” aside, The Wage Slave’s Glossary is a grand and saddening tour of language past and present. So many of the terms herein suggest weariness as the necessary consequence of work: boreout (“a syndrome of exhaustion and disillusionment caused by office work that is underwhelming and unsatisfying”), burnout (“long-term mental and emotional exhaustion and a reduced sense of personal accomplishment”), grinding house (slang for a house of correction, then for a place of work), guolaosi (“Mandarin neologism meaning ‘overwork death’”), karoshi (Japanese for “death from overwork”). Euphemisms abound: downsizing, for instance, which seems to have euphemisms of its own:

Also known as: recruitment, delayering, early retirement, force shaping, headcount adjustment, offshoring (or bestshoring), rightsizing or smartsizing, operational simplification, personnel realignment, rationalizing the workforce, recession, reduction in force (RIF), skill mix adjustment, workforce optimization, and workforce reduction (WFR).

I’m struck too by the metaphors of modern working life: the many ceilings that impede ascent (bamboo, brass, concrete, glass, and stained-glass), the transformation of the human being into machine (bandwidth, multitasking) or obedient drudge. Busy as a bee?

Bees works tirelessly, without ever taking orders or varying their routines, only to be unceremoniously shoved out of the hive when they become useless to the collective.

The Wage Slave’s Glossary is beautifully designed and made — small (4" x 6"), with a glossy embossed cover, cartooned endpapers, and numerous illustrations (each about ¾" square). It’s the kind of book that represents, I think, the future of print — the book as desirable object. (Decidedly not better on a Kindle.) The Wage Slave’s Glossary is — I’ll say it — a labor of love, and worth your money and time.

Related reading
William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12 (Paris Review)

[Thanks to Biblioasis for a review copy of this book.]

On the dash

Merrill Perlman:

Garner’s Modern American Usage calls the dash “perhaps the most underused punctuation mark in American writing.”

But — and this is this columnist’s opinion — it’s frequently overused.

On, Dasher! (Columbia Journalism Review)

[This post is for my advanced writing students, who have made the dash — and its potential for overuse — a frequent occasion of fun in the last weeks of a wonderful semester.]

Another random number

A random number between 1 and 1,000, generated by a journey on the New York subway system this summer.

As Elaine in Arkansas has helped me understand, there’s more to 42 than meets the eye.

A related post
Random number (108)

Uncle Mark Gift Guide & Almanac

The 2012 edition of the Uncle Mark Gift Guide & Almanac is available for download as a PDF. Mark Hurst offers single buying recommendations in various categories, along with useful and sometimes surprising tips and tricks. His computer advice this year: “Get the right Mac, or iPad, depending on your needs.” I second.

Salinger due-date slip at auction

A library due-date slip with J.D. Salinger’s signature is at auction. At least it’s smaller than a toilet (and you probably have one of those already).

Telephone exchange names on screen: Naked City

[Barney Sonners (Robert Duvall) walks from the bar where he works, before robbers and cops show up. “Torment Him Much and Hold Him Long.” Naked City. November 7, 1962. Click for a larger view.]

The Social Security Death Index lists just one Bernard R. Jankoff, 1913–1994. Items in the New York Times have some of the facts of his life. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1935. In 1938 he completed a law degree from Columbia Law School and passed the bar. He married Edith Ragovin (d. 1998) in 1940. They had three children. Mr. Jankoff’s name appears in a number of Times items as representing parties in real-estate transactions. I hope that the Jankoffs’ descendants know about this fleeting moment of television fame.

Update, 10:42 a.m.: I e-mailed family members, and now they do.

[MUrray Hill 7–3933.]

More exchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : Born Yesterday : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dream House : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Murder, My Sweet : Naked City : Nightmare Alley : The Public Enemy : Side Street : Sweet Smell of Success : This Gun for Hire