th High-Strung & Knife-Happy Hillbilly Blues Revue

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Dec 26
When I was a kid I read all the time…my folks claimed I taught myself to read when I was three.  Parents tend to overstate the humble accomplishments of their children.  Probably we’re all about average.  probably I liked the pictures as much as anything.  I vaguely remember some books with fire engines in them…Where the Wild Things Are…the kid with the purple crayon…five Chinese brothers: one of them could swallow the sea…and then Roald Dahl and Mark Twain, The Wonder Book…some picture books about myths and folk stories from around the world…the World Book encyclopedia (my Granny was a rep)…and a small library of children’s reference books about sharks, carnivorous plants, dinosaurs and planets. I was six and we moved to Switzerland.  There was a pharmaceutical company in Basel that arranged a job and a visa for my Mom - she’d gone looking for work in the Old World fresh out of Ph.D school.  It seemed like the pinnacle of success for her.  The first year, before I could speak German, I sat in the back of my public school class room and read books in English. My dad was a librarian back in Oklahoma and he’d sent along boxes of books:  Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, Kidnapped and Treasure Island, The Hobbit, all the Encyclopedia Brown and Great Brain books, Roald Dahl: Danny Champion of the World, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, the B.F.G., the Twits, Witches, Matilda…I read while I was lonesome.  I read to pass the time.  I read ‘cause I liked it… I got older.  I read mysteries and plays and books about music.  I read classics ‘cause I thought I should and ‘cause I thought they made me smart…I read comic books and magazines about vampires and famous movie monsters and super heroes like Man-Thing and Howard the Duck… I got older.  I read mysteries and short stories by Davis Grubb, Ambrose Bierce and Charles Beaumont.  I discovered that Roald Dahl wrote for adults:  My Uncle Oswald and Switch Bitch and Someone Like You.  I learned to love Emerson and Thoreau and Shel Silverstein; I hated Virginia Woolf and Washington Irving.  I admired Steinbeck and John Dos Passos and Tolstoi and read the autobiographies of Woody Guthrie (he wrote three).  I read newspapers and Newsweek (before they got so wierdly reactionary - maybe ‘cause Joe Klein left or they let him go or…well, whatever)… I got older.  Outside of limericks I had a hard time making sense out of poetry.  I liked Richard Brautigan and Walt Whitman and Calvin Trillin but, like as not, I could hardly ever figure out what they were talking about…I liked the doggerel in the Industrial Worker and hobo and cowboy poems, but the highbrow stuff always left me kind of cold.  It satisfies the hell out of me that you can sing all of Emily Dickinson’s poems to the tune of the Yellow Rose of Texas.  I’m sort of a philistine, I reckon… I tried to write a mystery novel while I was living in New Orleans and it was awful.  Good readers don’t necessarily make good writers.  I’ve written about a hundred songs and maybe thirty of them are good…the kindest thing I can say about my poetry is that it’s silly: I can’t get past the story The people like to tell Hitler had one testicle One seminal vessicle Gee, that’s swell. But I love to read…it’s the best cure I know for being dumb.  or ignorant.  or lonesome.  If you’re reading silently to yourself you’re not making your profound personal foolishness apparent to anyone else. You can do it drunk or sober; unclothed or finely dressed; angry or sad or joyful… So I said all that so I could say this: I like this picture.    tinywordssmallbombs: fuckyeahads: Words Create Worlds | Fubiz™ Ads from Prague bookstore Anagram - “Words Create Worlds.” If those pop-up figures were actually made in real life, the designers are amazing! If they’re Photoshopped… well they’re equally as amazing, it just sucks that we can’t see it in 3D :) - cthrin This is fucking awesome.

When I was a kid I read all the time…my folks claimed I taught myself to read when I was three.  Parents tend to overstate the humble accomplishments of their children.  Probably we’re all about average.  probably I liked the pictures as much as anything.  I vaguely remember some books with fire engines in them…Where the Wild Things Are…the kid with the purple crayon…five Chinese brothers: one of them could swallow the sea…and then Roald Dahl and Mark Twain, The Wonder Book…some picture books about myths and folk stories from around the world…the World Book encyclopedia (my Granny was a rep)…and a small library of children’s reference books about sharks, carnivorous plants, dinosaurs and planets.

I was six and we moved to Switzerland.  There was a pharmaceutical company in Basel that arranged a job and a visa for my Mom - she’d gone looking for work in the Old World fresh out of Ph.D school.  It seemed like the pinnacle of success for her.  The first year, before I could speak German, I sat in the back of my public school class room and read books in English.

My dad was a librarian back in Oklahoma and he’d sent along boxes of books:  Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, Kidnapped and Treasure Island, The Hobbit, all the Encyclopedia Brown and Great Brain books, Roald Dahl: Danny Champion of the World, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, the B.F.G., the Twits, Witches, Matilda…I read while I was lonesome.  I read to pass the time.  I read ‘cause I liked it…

I got older.  I read mysteries and plays and books about music.  I read classics ‘cause I thought I should and ‘cause I thought they made me smart…I read comic books and magazines about vampires and famous movie monsters and super heroes like Man-Thing and Howard the Duck…

I got older.  I read mysteries and short stories by Davis Grubb, Ambrose Bierce and Charles Beaumont.  I discovered that Roald Dahl wrote for adults:  My Uncle Oswald and Switch Bitch and Someone Like You.  I learned to love Emerson and Thoreau and Shel Silverstein; I hated Virginia Woolf and Washington Irving.  I admired Steinbeck and John Dos Passos and Tolstoi and read the autobiographies of Woody Guthrie (he wrote three).  I read newspapers and Newsweek (before they got so wierdly reactionary - maybe ‘cause Joe Klein left or they let him go or…well, whatever)…

I got older.  Outside of limericks I had a hard time making sense out of poetry.  I liked Richard Brautigan and Walt Whitman and Calvin Trillin but, like as not, I could hardly ever figure out what they were talking about…I liked the doggerel in the Industrial Worker and hobo and cowboy poems, but the highbrow stuff always left me kind of cold.  It satisfies the hell out of me that you can sing all of Emily Dickinson’s poems to the tune of the Yellow Rose of Texas.  I’m sort of a philistine, I reckon…

I tried to write a mystery novel while I was living in New Orleans and it was awful.  Good readers don’t necessarily make good writers.  I’ve written about a hundred songs and maybe thirty of them are good…the kindest thing I can say about my poetry is that it’s silly:

I can’t get past the story

The people like to tell

Hitler had one testicle

One seminal vessicle

Gee, that’s swell.

But I love to read…it’s the best cure I know for being dumb.  or ignorant.  or lonesome.  If you’re reading silently to yourself you’re not making your profound personal foolishness apparent to anyone else. You can do it drunk or sober; unclothed or finely dressed; angry or sad or joyful…

So I said all that so I could say this:

I like this picture.   

tinywordssmallbombs:

fuckyeahads:

Words Create Worlds | Fubiz™

Ads from Prague bookstore Anagram - “Words Create Worlds.”

If those pop-up figures were actually made in real life, the designers are amazing! If they’re Photoshopped… well they’re equally as amazing, it just sucks that we can’t see it in 3D :)

- cthrin

This is fucking awesome.

Reblogged 2 years ago from literarydrunkard

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