tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65955292471570516652024-02-07T10:20:10.691-08:00Ye Olde Bloggemusings from <a href="http://www.defunctmag.com">Defunct Magazine</a>Defuncthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04294946805397230436noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6595529247157051665.post-23411776049583831802012-03-26T18:11:00.011-07:002012-03-26T18:41:07.119-07:00'Piano For The Bedridden' & Other Swan Songs<div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/about/" style="text-align: left; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; ">Brain Pickings</a><span style="text-align: left; "><span style="font-size: 100%;">, my new favorite website and soon to be yours, recently posted a delightful compendium of </span></span><a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/03/21/strange-invetions/" style="text-align: left; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; ">27 of history's strangest--and unsurprisingly defunct--inventions</a><span style="text-align: left; "><span style="font-size: 100%;"> which include among them the one-w</span></span><span style="text-align: left; "><span style="font-size: 100%;">heeled motorcycle (because two was just one too many),</span></span></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left; "><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc1q0pfk8py2eHSygS2O-PpyRbvjCNYILznGrOLKQZIRJxeLA6vazaFx-stsHc4E5x-KMvc3n7rd3B-AhSe-JI2pZ6rgNMiyYprLCruHe2YhoDjGiodhDmbH7UrAIE7wjSUOqbvtADcJU/s320/moto.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5724384536666215106" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 252px; " /><div style="text-align: center;"><span ><u><br /></u></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-style: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">bike-tire water wings (because who </span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">does</span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">n't want to look like they're wrapped in sausages while they're swimming),</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-style: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; "><br /></span></div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5sEDi89Ar3vRMms3thNTNQo3pNc0HQ2Q1hcqnniJbXsUwucmuqoaqZBTwx_ykJH9YkHQmzWwIQwHXTEtpgLmsYNS3MXX4Lfs4MwEYdrhtY13a5y2mMA0vPSH5RMBLK4kS4A_tu88QfVc/s320/tire.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5724384758297530610" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 282px; " /><div style="text-align: center;"><span ><u><br /></u></span></div></div><div><div style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; ">and a revolver with a camera on the barrel that takes a photo every time you pull the trigger (a terrifying idea that someone should immediately parlay into a screenplay).</div><div style="text-align: center;font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><span ><u><br /></u></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 247px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi__Lj76xVSP6kngBURULwxS-dmQTd_I8ru_-8dz_uUpLJQOHgrFZUuOYfcVG1X13RAMQaTQqwtb8yPDiZpzqfb_pDcKIeBaj7RieJNRZfDNRODYKKAsfPfrTdeOHGaiqKF0lNut4wMlyI/s320/gun.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5724384977374760178" /><div style="text-align: center;font-style: normal; "><span ><u><br /></u></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; ">While most of these doodads certainly no one was all that sorry to see come and go, I can't help but wish for my very own piano for the bedridden which allows one to plunk out Fleur de Lis without even sitting up. I also call dibs on the name "Piano For The Bedridden" for my purely theoretical band.</div><div style="font-style: normal; "><br /></div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDomgkguTso1U0pSyNUH6JrMCtvR09J4crEnJyNwWjm9uIEWir-cP8z6rVydL-qr6tYWkkN9IN1DTx29krrhH8BPkdkdy-BlVjhuhds1GWMZAYYkED8jiDYTf8Pcm1GQTkaYMsDuhyphenhyphenJ7g/s320/piano.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5724385264955476290" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); text-decoration: underline; display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 226px; " /></div></div></div></div>Rachel Yoderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407832981435724050noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6595529247157051665.post-43056450945842097762012-03-23T16:36:00.000-07:002012-03-23T16:36:23.492-07:00This is Grand<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAufAvoEYCHJFncTk2mvuYaK-54Yz8vHndc-oMWfpCre4dR6BN9JJq1-N26CI7lV66yntt3y4JP4cqAhavfPqjqVBrXJwQpyrsKYYGgyEKkcdTM2YDToUySz2e1DG72kVag6bKfcN8c4U/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-03-23+at+5.34.00+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="157" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAufAvoEYCHJFncTk2mvuYaK-54Yz8vHndc-oMWfpCre4dR6BN9JJq1-N26CI7lV66yntt3y4JP4cqAhavfPqjqVBrXJwQpyrsKYYGgyEKkcdTM2YDToUySz2e1DG72kVag6bKfcN8c4U/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-03-23+at+5.34.00+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I love the declarative sentences of
the CTA. If you’ve spent any time on the Chicago Transit Authority’s trains,
you will be familiar with them. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This is
Argyle</i>. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This is Fullerton.</i> But I
admit: I love some more than others.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The announcement <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This is Chicago</i> has always struck me as
patently obvious, yet somehow charming in its absoluteness, its utter
unassailability. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This is California</i>
never fails to elicit the knee-jerk contradiction, snarkier than I would like,
“Ahhhh, no, but it really isn’t.” My responses are utterly unvarying. I cannot
help myself. For years my brain has completed the introduction <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This is Howard</i> with my most cordial,
“Well, hello, Howard! I’m Kendra,” in response. I don’t expect anyone to share
my taste in these things, but I’m telling you that, for me, the joke never gets
old. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">And, for all those years, if I was
entertaining an out-of-town visitor, I would invariably halt our conversation
in the L car, look up expectantly at the speakers as we approached my favorite
landmark in the city, and wait with unfaltering glee for the voice of authority
to announce, as it always did at that point, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.chicago-l.org/multimedia/sounds/automated/Grand.wav" target="_blank">This is Grand</a>.</i> “It <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i>,
isn’t it!” I would think, maybe even say out loud if there was someone with
me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i> grand, afterall—life, the city, being on a train going
somewhere, all of it suddenly so poignant. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Indeed, what a sweetly archaic
adjective <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">grand</i> is in the first
place. How disarmingly earnest it sounds. How quaint to say such a sentiment
out loud in the first place, in public no less, in the polite society of
strangers. It is not at all the effect of the more precise statement <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This is Grand and State.</i> </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The station name hasn’t changed.
The station name has been Grand from the beginning, since the State Street
Subway put the first subway cars in the city. Likewise, its sister station, at
Grand and Milwaukee, is and has been Grand since The Milwaukee-Dearborn Subway
opened it in 1943. All that’s new is how the stations are announced. I’m sure
the addition of the cross-street is helpful. I’m sure it saves a few tourists a
year from schlepping the several blocks between stations. I’m sure it’s a good
thing to say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This is Grand and State</i>,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This is Grand and Milwaukee</i>. I’m sure
someone else will fall in love the exactitude of these statements. My
out-of-town visitors may be impressed with the thoughtfulness of this
supplement, its contribution to navigating the city’s great grid. “How clear!”
they will tell me. “How objective and to the point!” And I’ll have to agree.
It’s good. O<a href="" name="_GoBack"></a>f course it is. It just isn’t grand.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Kendra Greene is a </i>Defunct <i>staff reader and contributor to </i>Ye Olde Blogge.</span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Defuncthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04294946805397230436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6595529247157051665.post-45654793840535756682012-02-03T11:25:00.000-08:002012-02-03T11:25:44.046-08:00Thoughts on Procrastination<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIyQUACcrYg8fKxMt0sTHjfSiiM4addFxFSfRMh9avEwJhYpzFKHLG7LDq7cw4wQNImSXNUfG4hpBo0Lg_VNg2Ws3hipzOAh56vBki-pjGalEWnUeLwekB8VNOG88JHQrhXKYe8P9yPZU/s1600/old-tv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIyQUACcrYg8fKxMt0sTHjfSiiM4addFxFSfRMh9avEwJhYpzFKHLG7LDq7cw4wQNImSXNUfG4hpBo0Lg_VNg2Ws3hipzOAh56vBki-pjGalEWnUeLwekB8VNOG88JHQrhXKYe8P9yPZU/s320/old-tv.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.2860745028592646"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are three groups of people I despise: People who boast of how little they read, people* who constantly talk about how they don’t own a TV, and people who judge others for reasons one and two.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is not to denigrate not the people who have better things to do with their time than sit on a couch and watch </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everybody Loves Raymond</span><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> reruns, but to call out the pest who thinks himself superior because he watches television on a laptop, not a TV.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That said, I was, up until recently at least, that pest, the type of person who claims that turning off the TV turned on his creativity, that television is pointless if you’re literate, that a TV has been made redundant by the computer: I watch all my shows online, I would say superiorly, defensively, and I can amble over to my friend’s place in case I ever need to watch something live, like this week’s Gossip Girl or the State of the Union address.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This did not start intentionally. The television I owned went on the fritz, and instead of replacing it, I adjusted. (Never buy a Samsung. Approximately two months after my warranty expire, my Samsung stopped producing any images, a defect Samsung apparently knew of, yet found it cost effective not to recall. Secondly, be weary whenever Best Buy offers, say, a Samsung at a reduced price and claims the price is lower simply because Samsung is having a deal. There’s a reason they were having a deal, and that reason was to sell Samsungs to Luddites like me.) </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just recently, I decided I did need a TV. The thing about working from home is that you inevitably need a break from work. For whatever reason, I have a hard time turning off my brain when I turn on my computer. If I write for a few hours and deem myself ready for a recess, I might fire up my computer and watch a television show. Moments later, the laptop on my lap, I’m only half-listening to last night’s </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">30 Rock</span><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> while I’m checking my email, thumbing through the After Deadline blog on NYtimes.com, updating my Facebook status, checking to see if my editor has emailed me back, hoping to see if my professor has posted our grades already, reading an article on “5 Ways to Boost Productivity.” Or I would make food, letting the microwave drone out Jack and Liz’s dialogue. My brain always restless, I was less productive. (And I became annoying in everyday conversations. For instance: “Who’s this Billy Mays guy? Oh, he died? How sad... Sorry. I don’t own a TV.”)</span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So has the television increased my productivity? Not really. I’ve found that no matter what you surround yourself with, you can always find a way to procrastinate.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*Picking on these repetitive cads is nothing new. The Onion did it well enough 12 years ago: </span><a href="http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/</span></a><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></b><br />
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.2860745028592646"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></b><br />
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.2860745028592646"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Elliott Krause is a </i>Defunct<i> staff reader and a contributor to Ye Olde Blogge.</i></span></span></b></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6595529247157051665.post-15333010559126240252012-01-31T07:17:00.001-08:002012-01-31T07:17:47.649-08:00What's In A Name?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCS0_Si9NXvkW3uxTfRUNMsXlw4eu4EPjw-HF_MWYFfnJy8uKr2eEN1ii0Pi3daeI_PpmOPOenroVeqfZXCc24KyHG9HSQBk_gGZ8AVWR9iu1QjZvIsQM-HPcl5_-hGh7lr4uP-DJOG4o/s320/Screen+Shot+2012-01-31+at+9.14.00+AM.png" width="187" /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> My mother signed us up for AOL’s first dial-up service when I was fifteen. When it came to technology, my family was always years behind. Most of my friends got their first cell phones and computers when they were eleven or twelve, but for me, communication was still as primitive as ringing doorbells and biking around the block to see who was home. So the first thing I did when we finally got our computer was think long and hard about a screen name. Who was I, in 16 characters or less? Or better yet, who might I be? Most of my friends identified themselves with song lyrics, movie quotes and favorite foods. I still remember some of them: xxdeadendconvoxx, ScreaminTamale, EvanescenceGIRLY. I chose MarshIACT87 (a horrible and disturbing mix of Eminem’s and Shia Labeouf’s first names fused with my theatrical aspirations and the year in which I was born).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">High school pressed on. We dropped the X’s and the angst. We were falling in love all over the place, breaking hearts and getting ours broken in turn. Our screen names described our love, our tears, and our general appreciation for celestial bodies. I changed mine to starrlit71, and that’s who I was for a long time, long after everyone ditched their Dells for Macs and made the switch from AOL to IChat. I was starrlit71 when I met my first love and when I left him two years later; I was starrlit71 when my parents divorced; I was starrlit71 when I started college and moved two hundred miles away to a different state with a different name. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I wish I could remember why I’d chosen that name in the first place, but I don’t. Like everything, it had its time and place. Now I’ve settled for GChat, where my name is just my name, but I miss it sometimes, the invention.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; line-height: 20px;"><i>Amy Bernhard is a </i>Defunct<i> staff reader and contributor to Ye Olde Blogge.</i></span></div>
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6595529247157051665.post-22765335322651622132012-01-07T08:43:00.000-08:002012-01-07T08:43:52.368-08:00The Eastman Plan<style>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Before it was the Eastman Plan, it was the International
Fixed Calendar. And if it was not precisely Auguste Comte’s 1849 Positivist
calendar, it derived from the same basic mathematical insight, the same fourth
grade calculation: 365 days divides beautifully into 7 day weeks—plus a
remainder of one little day. In fact, the division is so tidy that if you group
four weeks together as a month, you can fit exactly 13 months into that one
year. You still have that single remainder day hanging around, of course—that
one weekless, monthless day sequestered at the end of the year—but, heck, why
not give it a pardon and make it a holiday and call the whole thing done?</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiWku4Zl1miF6oC-V1WJe_LbM5VUB-uH_z2KTA_qenbTU6NfYm5SswArEJfrLaRodH1Tt0t6lJLR2Z43Q48ByIinPEBLqplYtRJJC9VlP37wL93NUshF-PbFkvsAdff4ygutTNRrBRg3g/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-01-07+at+10.35.10+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiWku4Zl1miF6oC-V1WJe_LbM5VUB-uH_z2KTA_qenbTU6NfYm5SswArEJfrLaRodH1Tt0t6lJLR2Z43Q48ByIinPEBLqplYtRJJC9VlP37wL93NUshF-PbFkvsAdff4ygutTNRrBRg3g/s320/Screen+shot+2012-01-07+at+10.35.10+AM.png" width="208" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Moses B. Cotsworth presented just such a scheme in 1923 to
no less than the League of Nations’ Special Committee on calendar reform. It
was then sometimes known as the Cotsworth Plan, this system with every month
starting on Sunday the first, every month arranged like the one before, your
birthday always on Thursday if you were born on one. Think of it: that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Twilight</i> calendar you just got would be
endlessly accurate, its days arranged the same every year, and replaced only
because the images began to fade. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The benefits seemed obvious: there would be cost savings,
ease of scheduling, <a href="" name="_GoBack"></a>clarity and efficiency all around!
Perhaps it was the businessman in George Eastman that admired the 13-month
calendar. Perhaps this inventor of roll film held a special affinity for the
calendar’s smooth and regular progression of time. In any case, Eastman was so
taken by the notion that he didn’t just join Cotsworth’s International Fixed
Calendar League, in 1926 he ceded control of daily operations at the Eastman
Kodak Company so that he might devote more time to the issue. The whole idea
was known as the Eastman Plan in many quarters, so constant and compelling was
its new champion.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Two years later George Eastman did an obvious thing: he
stopped doing business by the capricious old Gregorian calendar and put the
whole of Eastman Kodak on the 13-month calendar. Others seemed ready to follow
suit. As of 1929 the League of Nations had scrapped 154 other calendar
proposals, leaving Eastman’s pet project one of two finalists in contention for
international adoption. The International Fixed Calendar was for a time poised
to be the new calendar of a modern new world.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Then, in 1932, Eastman declared in a suicide note addressed
to his friends, “My work is done. Why wait?” and killed himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The International Fixed Calendar League
folded within five years. Three years later the League of Nations had forgotten
the 13-month calendar, and by time the United Nations was the governing body
convened to vote on international calendar reform, the Eastman Plan wasn’t
worth mentioning.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOh1wZLi3vOxPiEwThnTlukZVus6xedaprrlS8EINE0Ma14ZVjMvftEF7cGvvpTQ7a4O8EFuEAV_d0bXpvuLIl5-msexHbtDJUCBy0KZaWUmV2s2NQ7xw8rCOPyMVcxVxQKaVz3qnfu5Y/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-01-07+at+10.34.25+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOh1wZLi3vOxPiEwThnTlukZVus6xedaprrlS8EINE0Ma14ZVjMvftEF7cGvvpTQ7a4O8EFuEAV_d0bXpvuLIl5-msexHbtDJUCBy0KZaWUmV2s2NQ7xw8rCOPyMVcxVxQKaVz3qnfu5Y/s320/Screen+shot+2012-01-07+at+10.34.25+AM.png" width="235" /></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If anyone still complained that under the 13-month calendar
financial quarters don’t end when months do, if anyone minded that Friday the
thirteenth came every month, or thought anything had to be a better name for
the new 13<sup>th</sup> month than “Sol”; if anyone cared about one day a year
unaccounted for in God’s 7-day cycles of toil and Sabbath, it didn’t much
matter anymore. The debate was over. Except for the employees of the Eastman
Kodak Company, who may have watched their families grow up by the irregular
jostle and sway of old Gregorian months but still clocked in every day to a
calendar perfect in its repetition, elegant in its predictability, and divine
in its perpetuity. Thousands and thousands of people did this, waking up under
one calendar and going to work by another, for six decades, until the Eastman
Plan was finally forsaken in 1989. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And who now is left even to say that this year, this 2012,
with its January 1<sup>st</sup> square on a Sunday, is exactly the kind of year
Eastman was waiting for, a year to begin a new reckoning? </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Kendra Greene is a </i>Defunct<i> staff reader and contributor to Ye Olde Blogge.</i></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6595529247157051665.post-33435132067764229492011-12-19T19:03:00.000-08:002012-01-07T08:48:42.883-08:00Love Letter To A Dodo Bird<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Dear Dodo,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Has there ever been an uglier bird?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeGmFlVf7tKFvAti99t2Yn0GuHQ5yxf16BMUKYYzsC934FdyWplcN7BANhQ_GDJEg-TEEW0n06_4Gu6gl8T3W0bWsTfCcqNAQ6nS5sqlI4ieM6sauLJczxeKwdKXDn5_4b0SfJXvp8dMw/s1600/dodo.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688050559684484050" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeGmFlVf7tKFvAti99t2Yn0GuHQ5yxf16BMUKYYzsC934FdyWplcN7BANhQ_GDJEg-TEEW0n06_4Gu6gl8T3W0bWsTfCcqNAQ6nS5sqlI4ieM6sauLJczxeKwdKXDn5_4b0SfJXvp8dMw/s320/dodo.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 257px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 250px;" /></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You, with red-tipped beak, yon gaping nostrils, most bald and all-but-plucked head.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwCEs0w5YekWs2xsg_Onl3Hs5z8CdHgtfWXsBppVYajWpgtG_edpiycWDWbibs4vAOQs1cggGJlVu7vV9K6vEVafunTr2LBOQD8TpXTgSMR4nbl0jj3rXEGgq4J9C4UTic5-OdFrSNIOU/s1600/dodo-head.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688050712067337506" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwCEs0w5YekWs2xsg_Onl3Hs5z8CdHgtfWXsBppVYajWpgtG_edpiycWDWbibs4vAOQs1cggGJlVu7vV9K6vEVafunTr2LBOQD8TpXTgSMR4nbl0jj3rXEGgq4J9C4UTic5-OdFrSNIOU/s320/dodo-head.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 212px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You, misshapen as an old boot.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Can I call you my fat baby, my inelegant overgrown dove?</span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Can I call you my portly piggy pigeon?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I love your flightless girth and beady dino eyes.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZIRbp136QHGzOPUOQ6LnVmso97PtD9jZlQkp3l11s3i00NjRSlrx6PUNldjxP9m03KMNoGgxbAhyngZBVrrAOgd4JVoXQMuT9bUr2qt348ML5LrDprXgbK2EhrhkTC7O2PP1JTlevlD4/s1600/beady-eye.jpg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688050837475359298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZIRbp136QHGzOPUOQ6LnVmso97PtD9jZlQkp3l11s3i00NjRSlrx6PUNldjxP9m03KMNoGgxbAhyngZBVrrAOgd4JVoXQMuT9bUr2qt348ML5LrDprXgbK2EhrhkTC7O2PP1JTlevlD4/s320/beady-eye.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 241px;" /></span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I love your mud-puddle plumage.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There are many reasons I love you but most of all this: your ignominious etymology -</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“Sluggard,” “Fat-arse,”</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcYnCHOrN7JC9AOfpxpBbGzt1Mbh9YNIgBnVfcM2v65kWP7R-fLoklNNF-u-wqrJq1jTgKIcym_AjDxzuCs3O_NP5cCw98AoMsLBCtxJopDO-SKhyddEP8cQexldMOVFC2PglWUO7Mmc0/s1600/dodo-butt.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688052162702331266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcYnCHOrN7JC9AOfpxpBbGzt1Mbh9YNIgBnVfcM2v65kWP7R-fLoklNNF-u-wqrJq1jTgKIcym_AjDxzuCs3O_NP5cCw98AoMsLBCtxJopDO-SKhyddEP8cQexldMOVFC2PglWUO7Mmc0/s320/dodo-butt.jpg" style="display: block; height: 320px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“Fool,” and “crazy.”</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Can I call you, as Vice Admiral Wybrand van Warwijck did, “loathsome bird”?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Or might I address you, in the manner of the Dutch, simply as “swollen” (as is my heart for you)?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Oh feathered lumpy lumpy!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Oh goitered low-hanging balloon!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I long to hear your call once more, low and awkward through the underbrush:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo.</span></i><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_QDsPF2bUmwsbtMx_La5ZgdAJJLKyXt467a3SImuurEXp1qNY5v_kAvG4jfPFefGyvBOQp9ltCB5VVGDglux-pK2lCk-QYz52AGUOTjx4PSgb3uqAx1iDMwTECLgesj7Mwc7r4Y2fLBU/s1600/dodo-skeleton.jpg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688052316805333074" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_QDsPF2bUmwsbtMx_La5ZgdAJJLKyXt467a3SImuurEXp1qNY5v_kAvG4jfPFefGyvBOQp9ltCB5VVGDglux-pK2lCk-QYz52AGUOTjx4PSgb3uqAx1iDMwTECLgesj7Mwc7r4Y2fLBU/s320/dodo-skeleton.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 314px;" /></span></a></div>
</div>
</div>Rachel Yoderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407832981435724050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6595529247157051665.post-77433046871826538072011-12-14T11:44:00.000-08:002011-12-14T11:51:55.829-08:00I Am Re-reading Franny and Zooey For The Second Time This Month<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjADoKDRsO0fg67hUjGZNf35SB5zA-944MiUIAeNKPVB_T-qlR4_vw2FAruDJxftS4kn-qt5jK7zmYu5zj-GgV95E7tFvI-LWNbzUPpTisYle7t_ahix6ZLqW_B-Pl9O9rkBPwhTHg5DjM/s1600/salinger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjADoKDRsO0fg67hUjGZNf35SB5zA-944MiUIAeNKPVB_T-qlR4_vw2FAruDJxftS4kn-qt5jK7zmYu5zj-GgV95E7tFvI-LWNbzUPpTisYle7t_ahix6ZLqW_B-Pl9O9rkBPwhTHg5DjM/s320/salinger.jpg" width="231" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">On January 27, JD
Salinger's corpse will turn two years old. <i>Franny and Zooey</i>--though nitpicked
by Updike, who is a cad, and by Joan Didion, who is the greatest nonfiction
writer of the past fifty years--is Salinger’s finest moment. If you haven’t
read Salinger since high school, start with either that or <i>Nine Stories</i>.
Don’t start with <i>Catcher in the Rye</i> unless you are a sexually frustrated
teenage boy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">Because I was a sexually frustrated
teenage boy, I started with <i>Catcher in the Rye</i>. For a book report, I had
to pick one novel from a pre-approved list of fifty. I picked <i>Catcher</i>
not because I was a twelve-year-old version of Holden Caulfied, but because my
older brother already owned it, which meant I would not have to borrow a book
from the library, which meant I would save the $1.50 of late fees I would have
inevitably incurred.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">I’ve reproduced the tale here not just
because I invariably go out of my way to recommend a good prose pacifier to
divorced parents of petulant twelve-year-olds, but for quite another reason.
What directly follows is a question about quality versus quantity, a question
that is only fair when it pertains to artists who are already deceased.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhJhl4PsZ-IqZNHRSkqS6_r7IFDTMBaPxXCHX7Yk6q6vklQB4FhRRmRrHKX4t-6pXECmYVE3lmGBIM9rhI-HAMyZbUFe__8onRqRxX-q5Aw6tw8DKVuthiegl-f6u4EQ5Dla-4UcwI2NU/s1600/tumblr_lf58ghTHSq1qcclm0o1_400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhJhl4PsZ-IqZNHRSkqS6_r7IFDTMBaPxXCHX7Yk6q6vklQB4FhRRmRrHKX4t-6pXECmYVE3lmGBIM9rhI-HAMyZbUFe__8onRqRxX-q5Aw6tw8DKVuthiegl-f6u4EQ5Dla-4UcwI2NU/s320/tumblr_lf58ghTHSq1qcclm0o1_400.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">If you’re a Salinger junkie, you have little
choice but to read and re-read his slender oeuvre to get your fix. This is not
healthy or admirable or even advisable. Since he published a mere four books,
roughly eight-hundred pages in all, whenever I get that Salinger itch, there’s
no place to scratch but the slim spine of one of my pocket-sized paperbacks.
And I hate that. Like a more traditional junkie, I find myself lying to my mom
instead of telling her the truth, instead of telling her that I am re-reading <i>Franny
and Zooey</i> for the second time this month. It’d be a boon, not a bane, to
his fans if Salinger had been more like Bob Dylan or Woody Allen or Philip
Roth. Every year it seems there’s a new Roth novel in my stocking or a Woody
Allen movie in my NetFlix queue or a Dylan album in my iTunes -- some
superlative, some in that middle ground between mediocre and good, and some
which are embarrassing, but totally have the right to exist. Regardless of
their merit, however, I taste and decide for myself if I should return for
seconds. Who knows? In a decade or so I might actually enjoy Bob Dylan’s
Christmas album.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">So which do you prefer: Artists who produce
prodigiously, even if their production might occasionally be embarrassing? Or
artists who are pickier with their output, producing less, but producing
consistently superb art?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Elliott Krause is a </i>Defunct<i> staff reader and contributor to Ye Olde Blogge.</i></span></div>
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</div>Defuncthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04294946805397230436noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6595529247157051665.post-28988837375528556242011-12-12T09:20:00.000-08:002011-12-14T11:52:19.077-08:00Take A Ride On A Giant Slingshot<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Both devoted garage-salers and lovers of all things thrift,
the apartment I share with my boyfriend is an orange-walled hybrid of past and
present, old and new. A dusty record player sits in the forty-two inch shadow
of our flat screen TV, which faces a tattered yellow chair we rescued from a
rummage sale two years ago. A missing leg meant that it was free, and after
several failed attempts to fix the thing we used a few blocks of wood to prop
up the back end, concealing our work with a bookcase purchased on Craigslist
for two dollars. </div>
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Saturday afternoons, my boyfriend and a friend of his from
art school sit on our couch (bought new last summer after we grew weary of
Goodwill’s stained, lumpy offerings) and watch VHS tapes they find at thrift
stores and auctions. <a href="http://www.spaceca.mp/" target="_blank">Interested in obsolete technology</a>, Josh and Derek create
videos and other conceptual-based art projects that celebrate the collision of
new media with old. Josh drags black garbage bags full of tapes from the office
we share, and I watch while he and Derek sort through them and decide which
ones to sample for their own videos. In one, Chuckie Cheese and his friends try
to hotwire a school bus; in another, a high school choir from Ohio goes on a
field trip to New York City. The
group favorite, though, is a video of a teenage couple that takes a ride on
what looks like a giant slingshot at a county fair, their screams
decade-shattering as they are snapped once, twice, into the night.</div>
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Watch below:</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Amy Bernhard is a </i>Defunct<i> staff reader and contributor to Ye Olde Blogge.</i></span></div>
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</div>Defuncthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04294946805397230436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6595529247157051665.post-19400038453403268992011-12-12T09:10:00.000-08:002011-12-12T09:10:51.162-08:00A Hundred Years Ago...or, the Square Pancake<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i> "...Many years later, I think about holding a relic. That issue of</i><i> National Geographic
was nearly a century old when I held it in my hands. Try as I might to
resist the simultaneous temptations of sentimentalizing the past and
frowning at the present, I can't help but feel that a century
twenty-five years ago might feel like a millennium now. I'm sure each
generation bemoans, or at least takes note of, the speed of its present
versus the languor of its past, perhaps without value judgement, but
things are radically faster now than at any point in human history, and
the past recedes at lightning speed. Of course, the older one gets, the
further into the past the past vanishes; though not news, this still
rankles. I was young when I held that issue in my hands: my childhood
ended the month before; adolescence just a week later; I didn't have a
whole lot of perspective yet. But I sensed the gravity of perspective,
of distance, before I could adequately essay it."</i><br />
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<i>Defunct </i>contributor Joe Bonomo has a <a href="http://www.nosuchthingaswas.com/2011/11/hundred-years-agoor-square-pancake.html" target="_blank">wonderful short essay</a> up at <a href="http://www.nosuchthingaswas.com/" target="_blank"><i>No Such Thing</i> <i>As Was</i></a> about holding one of the first issues of<i> National Geographic</i>, Record Store Day, and vinyls. Fans can also check out his <i>Defunct</i> essay, "<a href="http://www.defunctmag.com/Essays/Entertainment/Bonomo_Wait-For-It.html" target="_blank">Wait For It</a>," which appeared in last April's issue.Defuncthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04294946805397230436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6595529247157051665.post-67796080281212038382011-11-18T08:48:00.001-08:002011-12-14T11:52:51.599-08:00Take A Letter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Long before “LMFAO” and “BRB” freed us from tiresome longhand, there was Gregg shorthand. Useful in a number of settings, perhaps the most iconic that comes to mind is the office. The boss would pace and pontificate aloud in a necktie while his secretary sat primly before him, scribbling his every word on a pad atop skirted knee.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Few secretaries will still “take a letter;” even fewer practice shorthand, once a highly marketable skill. After all, in the space between the late 19th and 20th centuries the boss, as a general rule, did not type. His business was thinking. It was the secretary’s business to record the gems that tumbled forth from his tongue. She’d then translate her scritch-a-scratch via typewriter and present him with a draft for correction. This cycle continued, draft by draft, until he was satisfied with the final result. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">These days, the cost effectiveness of team-based letter construction is debatable. Ostensibly, his time in thinking up thoughts was worth more than hers in recording them. As she typed, he could be thinking up clever new thoughts. The whole scenario only has utility if we accept this suggested hierarchy, this basic separation of value and skills. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Thanks to the Dictaphone, the days of “take a letter” are largely behind us. And, thanks to the personal computer, we now know that bosses can indeed type. In fact, some can out-type their secretaries. We always knew this in the same way we always knew some secretaries could out-think their bosses. Let’s face it. The practice of dictation brought women to the feet of men, close enough for him to smell her perfume, to admire her legs, her stockings, her neckline, and all the while she would, as protocol dictated, hang on his every word. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Today, the female executive is commonplace. Perhaps office skills like shorthand and typing offered women backdoor passage to our most hallowed men’s club – the professional space. And while he paced and pontificated and peeked at his lovely, humble secretary, she quietly absorbed not just his words, but a sense of business acumen. She took a letter, and she ran with it. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Nancy Wyland is a </i>Defunct<i> staff reader and contributor to Ye Olde Blogge.</i></span></div>
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</div>Defuncthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04294946805397230436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6595529247157051665.post-32290390560858890172011-11-08T09:41:00.000-08:002011-12-14T11:53:02.487-08:00The Way of All Flesh Crayons<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://notnewyorkdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/flesh.jpg?w=432&h=323" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="http://notnewyorkdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/flesh.jpg?w=432&h=323" width="320" /></a></div>
I could have sworn that so-called “flesh” colored crayons
were around during the entirety of my 60’s childhood, but that couldn’t have
been the case. As the U.S. Civil
Rights movement heated up, Crayola Crayon Executives, huddled perhaps in their
multi-hued nuclear bomb resistant shelters for an emergency meeting during the
Cuban Missile Crisis, made the momentous decision in 1962 to change the
designation of “flesh” to “peach.”
I was four. I understood
neither nuclear winter nor racism.
I recall stockpiles of “flesh” crayons passed between me and my largely
white classmates for the rest of the decade until one day Flesh was
extinct.<br />
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I didn’t miss it. I was on to other pursuits by
then. A papier mache figure whose
newspaper skin I never quite finished.
A decoupage plaque of a dove of peace that my art teacher pronounced
clichéd. A social studies project
of screaming headlines pasted beside a naked Vietnamese girl running out of her
skin.<br />
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To learn which colors have been retired or changed, click <a href="http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0872797.html">here</a>.<br />
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</div>Defuncthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04294946805397230436noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6595529247157051665.post-63352107984883375692011-11-07T21:10:00.000-08:002011-12-14T11:53:21.557-08:00When The Daisy Girl Explodes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's election season here at Defunct headquarters! Those of us who love to watch local Iowa television thus find ourselves subjected to some rather uninspired ad campaigns. I tend to prefer that campaigns be maximally absurd and apocalyptic, so I'm pretty sad to say that for all the TV I watch, I've yet to see anything like this 1964 ad in which a little girl plays with a flower and then, naturally, the entire world is annihilated. LBJ's ultimately successful campaign ran the ad against Barry Goldwater. Watch for yourself:<br />
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Questions abound. Why is this little girl so bad at counting? Why is the nuclear explosion Goldwater is supposedly going to cause happening <span style="font-style: italic;">inside this girl's eye?</span> My nontraditional interpretation is that this evil child pulls the trigger by plucking that last flower petal, which she has brilliantly hooked up to an atomic bomb. If only someone could have stuffed her in a <a href="http://defunctmag.blogspot.com/2011/10/baby-cage.html">baby cage</a>, the world might have had a chance.</div>Kerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01111153040188627475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6595529247157051665.post-15606488893492658312011-11-01T18:22:00.000-07:002011-12-14T11:51:40.522-08:00All Aboard The Chattanooga<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In honor of the, ahem, "release" of our newest issue, I would like to present you with my very favorite defunct contraption. Gentle Readers, I give you The Chattanooga.</div>
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What exactly is The Chattanooga? It's a "curative" medical-issue vibrator crafted for treating 19th and early 20th century women diagnosed with "hysteria."</div>
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The Chattanooga evoked therapeutic "paroxysms" that relieved "ailing" housewives and "delicate" ladies of their debilitating "nerves." I suppose that, yes, a regular schedule of machine-generated orgasms might take the edge off of stifling cultural norms. "Sure." </div>
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After all, an unsatisfied 19th century woman was a crazy 19th century woman, so nothing short of an extended Rest Cure and daily treatments with The Chattanooga would rid her of her desire for something more than domestic drudgery, thankless childrearing, suffocation-friendly fashion, unfulfilling marriage, and second-class citizenry. </div>
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And just for "fun," here's one more thingamadoo called The Manipulator.</div>
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<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5670990793541966754" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP4To2rsIJLtjgcmM8_504n74x33zn9DJoNvCpEHW5xnqE-lXDyNgHugd6qVe0Atg9UIzCXQS3kRXDBoSC0Gu-_NrOq_gPrvigXC8cGKFYFX0-3GeWXhvpr3oqwTE2voVOeN6FnDZ30h4/s320/The+manipulator.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 127px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></div>
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Evidently the patient would lie prone on the table with her delicacies positioned over the small opening after which a switch was flipped and all her dreams came true.</div>
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(More "medical breakthroughs" at the <a href="http://www.mum.org/">Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health</a>.)</div>
</div>Rachel Yoderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407832981435724050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6595529247157051665.post-70135386634061238532011-10-28T13:03:00.000-07:002011-12-14T11:50:50.301-08:00The Baby Cage<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Even before organic baby foods and fleece-lined onesies, mothers everywhere could take comfort in knowing they were providing only the very best for their baby. Why keep a baby inside a stuffy London apartment, for example, when that baby would best be served by crisp, natural air?</div>
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So was the thinking behind the 1937 Baby Cage, a device distributed to all members of the Chelsea Baby Club in London who didn’t have direct access to a garden. Dangling your child over a busy London street in a thin, wiry cage is but a small price to pay for clean air, interaction with nature, and a stunning view of sunset, don't you think? And talk about supervision.</div>
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(More fascinating and quirky inventions at <a href="http://www.life.com/gallery/25371/image/3136964/30-dumb-inventions">Life.com</a>.)</div>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6595529247157051665.post-37552626064084276062011-04-26T18:19:00.001-07:002011-10-28T12:55:46.184-07:00Welcome, YeWelcome to Ye Olde Blogge, <i><a href="http://www.defunctmag.com/">Defunct</a></i>'s new blog on all things old. We're fascinated with the weird, the antique, the absurd, the dying, and will salvage these fine things for you while you wait for the milkman. Or, you know, <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44992707/ns/technology_and_science-space/">that defunct German satellite</a>. Welcome.Defuncthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04294946805397230436noreply@blogger.com1