Guess What, World? I Have a Favourite Italian Renaissance Painting!

Below is an early Italian Renaissance painting by Stefano di Giovanni (also known as "il Sassetta"), who lived from 1392-1450.


You may note that this is definitely a contender for the weirdest painting of all time, and it certainly wins Weirdest Renaissance Painting. And although Sassetta took pains to make his intentions as specific as possible by entitling the piece The Blessed Ranieri Rasini Delivering the Poor from the Prison in Florence, 1437–1444, I think we all know that it would be much more appropriate to call it Rocket-Man Going on a Fiery Rampage and Scaring Everyone Away Except a Man Who Lives In a Mouse Hole, 3033-3040 (Also, Is Red-Shirt-Man Grabbing His Crotch or Is That Just a Hole in His Pants?).

Fainting Goats

This is the weirdest, funniest thing I've seen genetics do in a while.

Advice

Try to curb your use of pet adverbs. I just realized that I use "genuinely" so indiscriminately that anyone who knows me well now has grounds to assume that if I don't use it in a sentence, there's a good chance that I'm being insincere.

Friday Brautigan: "Becky Misses the Pacific" Edition

Our Beautiful West Coast Thing
by Richard Brautigan

We are a coast people
There is nothing but ocean out beyond us.
—Jack Spicer

I sit here dreaming
long thoughts of California

at the end of a November day
below a cloudy twilight
near the Pacific

listening to the Mamas and the Papas
THEY'RE GREAT

singing a song about breaking
somebody’s heart and digging it!

I think I'll get up
and dance around the room.

Here I go!

New Review

Some Calvin & Hobbes'in' here.

"And why haven't we been properly shelved, hmmmm?"

When I woke up today, the shoes I wore yesterday were in the middle of floor, positioned with one at a slight angle to the other.

It looked like they expected something from me.

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

Don't eat meat, guys, forrreaaalzzzzz! My feature about Jonathan Safran Foer's fantastic new book here.

Tuesday Brautigan

This poem is dedicated both to another great Halloween weekend and to the fact that the ghost of Janis Joplin definitely just threw a basket at my friend Jessi. I won't go into details on the event except to say that it's pretty clear that no other explanation is possible.

BOO, FOREVER
by Richard Brautigan

Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I’m haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.