Saturday, August 13, 2011

SciFi Books Recos for my Fellow Nerds!



Check out NPR's latest list of top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy books! So many of my favs made the list :) How many of these have you guys read?

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien

2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card

4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert

5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin

6. 1984, by George Orwell

7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov

9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

MORE Literary fun :)




Thursday, August 11, 2011

Levis pulls riot ad and classic poetry used to sell jeans


I love when poetry take center stage. I love when words written many years ago still ring true, generations later. I love when a poetic classic is made relevant again, even if it's for commercial purposes...but I cant say that I loved this new Levis ad. There is just so much wrong with it...

And just as past campaigns have relied on the words of phttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifoets such as Walt Whitman, “Legacy” enlists the Charles Bukowski poem “The Laughing Heart” as a call to arms. Read by a narrator with a grizzled voice (not unlike Tom Waits), Bukowski’s words are instantly transformed into ad copy, becoming a lyrical ode to the art of jeans selection, boiling away the author’s artful intent and recontextualizing it as a sales pitch.

“Legacy” marries protest imagery, emotive music, and the words of a literary underdog in an attempt to realize Wieden + Kennedy’s vision of high commercial art.
- source Forbes.com



the laughing heart
BY Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

The Psalms

The Psalms
BY Thomas Merton

When psalms surprise me with their music
And antiphons turn to rum
The Spirit sings: the bottom drops out of my soul.

And from the center of my cellar, Love, louder than thunder
Opens a heaven of naked air.

New eyes awaken.
I send Love's name into the world with wings
And songs grow up around me like a jungle.
Choirs of all creatures sing the tunes
Your Spirit played in Eden.
Zebras and antelopes and birds of paradise
Shine on the face of the abyss
And I am drunk with the great wilderness
Of the sixth day in Genesis.

But sound is never half so fair
As when that music turns to air
And the universe dies of excellence.

Sun, moon and stars
Fall from their heavenly towers.
Joys walk no longer down the blue world's shore.

Though fires loiter, lights still fly on the air of the gulf,
All fear another wind, another thunder:
Then one more voice
Snuffs all their flares in one gust.

And I go forth with no more wine and no more stars
And no more buds and no more Eden
And no more animals and no more sea:

While God sings by himself in acres of night
And walls fall down, that guarded Paradise.