By Cory Doctorow at 11:52 pm Saturday, Aug 9
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Excavating Kafka, a new book by James Hawes, includes (for the first time) material gleaned from Kafka's hardcore porn stash, booklets that were published by the same publisher who published Kafka's own work.
Even today, the pornography would be "on the top shelf", Dr Hawes said, noting that his American publisher did not want him to publish it at first. "These are not naughty postcards from the beach. They are undoubtedly porn, pure and simple. Some of it is quite dark, with animals committing fellatio and girl-on-girl action... It's quite unpleasant."
"Academics have pretended it did not exist," Dr Hawes said. “The Kafka industry doesn’t want to know such things about its idol."
He added: "Perhaps Kafka's biographers simply don't like the idea that their literary idol was helped out in this... way in the vital early stages of his career... Of the world's authors, only Shakespeare generates more PhDs, more biographies, more coffee-table books... Everything Kafka wrote, every postcard he ever sent, every page of his diary... is regarded as a potential Ark of the Covenant... Yet no-one has ever shown his readers Kafka's porn."
Franz Kafka’s porn brought out of the closet
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Thanks, Sherry!)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:44 pm Saturday, Aug 9
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I'm on holidays in Wales, at my in-laws' cottage, in a little coastal town where my wife and her family seem to make up a substantial chunk of the local population. One set of cousins have a 1950s prefab bungalow just down the hill, built by Woolaways of Taunton. This weekend, they unearthed the manual that Woolaways provided to all the new bungalow owners -- and it's a masterpiece of oddly stilted technical writing, effusive sell-copy, and dire warnings about the depredations of damp. I took photos of the booklet and stuck 'em in my Flickr stream so everyone could enjoy 'em.
The Care of Your New Bungalow
By Cory Doctorow at 11:42 pm Saturday, Aug 9
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Tor.com's got great coverage of last night's Hugo awards. Many congrats to the deserving and wonderful writers and creators, especially those we've featured here, like John Scalzi (Best Fan Writer), Mary Robinette Kowal (Campbell Award for Best New Writer), Neil Gaiman (Stardust, Best Film), Locus (Best Semiprozine) (again!), Elizabeth Bear (Best Short Story, Tidelines), Ted Chiang (Best Novelette, The Merchant at the Alchemist's Gate), David Hartwell (Best Long Form Editor), Gordon van Gelder (Best Short Form Editor), Connie Willis (Best Novella, All Seated on the Ground) and Michael Chabon (Best Novel, The Yiddish Policeman's Union).
Hugo Award Winners
See also:
Chabon's "Yiddish Policemen's Union": wonderful blend of hard-boiled and Yiddish ironies
By Cory Doctorow at 2:10 pm Saturday, Aug 9
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The International Association of Book Towns ("a small rural town or village in which second-hand and antiquarian bookshops are concentrated") collects information about delightful bibliophiles' paradises. I once spent a magical day combing the shops of one of these places and by the end of it I was drunk on binder's glue, ink, and silverfish.
I.O.B. - International Organisation of Book Towns
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Thanks, Marilyn!)
By Cory Doctorow at 2:01 pm Saturday, Aug 9
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A Comcast tech showed up at Consumerist reader's grandad's house and totally failed to understand how their cable was set up and billed. So he called them thieves, cursed at them, and disconnected their cable. Naturally.
I come outside to witness my grandpa and the Comcast guy in a screaming match. The Comcast tech is threatening to leave and I ask "What the heck is going on?!" Well, my Grandpa starts telling me that he disconnected his cable and says we do not have a cable account with Comcast and basically accuses my Grandpa of hijacking cable. Okay, last time I checked, most 74 years old probably don't know how to hijack cable. So my Grandpa gets really upset and starts back for the house. I'm trying to find out from the Comcast tech what is going on and my Grandpa comes back out 2 seconds later with a Comcast bill in his hand. He goes to hand it to the Comcast tech and he rudely replies "Sir, I don't want to see your fucking bill. If you don't go back in your house and quit disrespecting me, I'm going to just leave."
Meanwhile, I ask my Grandpa to try and let me straighten it out and go inside for a minute because I could tell at this point he was getting really upset. So I continue to ask the guy what the hell is going on all the while he is telling me he isn't going back in the house to hook up my internet because he doesn't appreciate my Grandpa "disrespecting him". Well, from what I saw, my Grandpa didn't really deserve to get his cable turned off and treated in such a way. I finally talk him into hooking up the internet (I needed it for school as my homework is submitted online). But the issue still remains with my Grandpa's service. So I ask the tech why he thinks we don't have cable. He replies "When I look up the phone number on the account, it only shows internet, no cable television. That's a red flag mam."
Comcast Tech Accuses 74-Year-Old Man Of Stealing Cable Service
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Thanks, Marilyn!)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:03 am Saturday, Aug 9
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Robbo sez, "Thomas Hawk was forcibly removed from the San Francisco MOMA by two security guards at the direction of the over-zealous Simon Blint, Director of Visitor Relations. How ironic is that?
Why? Taking photos in the atrium.
SF MOMA policy on this? Their own web site specifically allows photography in the atrium. Hawk had also previously confirmed this personally with Thea Stein in the Marketing and Communications Department of the museum.
Didn't matter to Simon Blint who, according to Hawk, went all aggressive and power-trip happy, even trying to eject his companion."
If the museum has a photography allowed policy in their atrium as explicitly expressed on their website and someone identifies themselves as a photographer, artist and paying and supporting member of museum I would expect less hostility, aggression and harassment. Photography is an art and those of us who choose to practice the great art of street photography ought not be targeted by bullies like Blint. Many of the great artists, artists being shown in the SF MOMA itself were practitioners of street photography. It is ironic that the great Cartier-Bresson, who took thousands of photographs of unsuspecting people in his work, hangs in the museum while a photographer practicing the same type of work gets ejected by a power-trippy asshole. It's hypocritical and disappointing.
Simon Blint, Director of Visitor Relations at the SF MOMA, Yeah You Asshole, Photography is Not a Crime
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Thanks, Robbo!)
