Constant, Schmonstant.
For a Physics final back in high school, we had the option of writing a paper or putting together some sort of group "artistic option" illustrating 12 physics principles. Thus: the filming of the VHS classic, "Physics Project of Doom," in which two friends and I featured relevant snippets from Casablanca, Barbie surfing in the bathtub to the music of The Breeders and of course, 12 illustrations of basic physics principles, all completely riddled with flaws and incorrect calculations.

I think our poor, beleaguered teacher—a really, really young guy whom we caught one Saturday that year working a second job as a salesclerk at Sears—gave us a B. That B was a gift: our movie was lovingly crafted juvenile shlock, but it was crap in terms of an illustration of what we were actually supposed to have learned that year.

The latest on Found Magazine's beautiful website is in the same spirit, I think. Anonymous elephant illustrator, I salute you.

The Fact Men post their very funny Year in Review.
(Coincidentally, Wikipedia lists no such entry as "Very Little Known Facts".)

Loving Miranda July (even) More
Write a press release about an ordinary event! Take a flash photo under your bed! Draw Raymond Carver's Cathedral!
This is the best idea I've seen in a long time. If you've got any lazy days coming up this winter break--and even if you don't but just want to feel all warm and squishy inside for some slightly inexplicable reason having something to do with the allaying of the fear that all this goofy internet technology is alienating us from one another--I encourage you to check this project out.

Read it.

The Used World, by Haven Kimmel. The Used World, by Haven Kimmel. The Used World, by Haven Kimmel.

Goodness gracious, sakes alive.

Night Sounds
Our house is filled with knocking at night. In the apartment above my bedroom and office, they start stacking heavy piles of wooden pallets, it seems, beginning around eleven and ending a half-hour later. Also, walking around in heavy-soled shoes and I know exactly which is their squeakiest floorboard. Take me up there; I’ll walk you to it.

They begin loading their clothes washer (this I know is true), also their dryer, and hitting “Start” on both. In my bed, I hear and feel the rumble, hear the water make its gurgling exit between Rinse and Tumble Dry. The dryer too, as it growls and shakes. Usually, those things don’t disturb me from sleep any more than the trains that pass through here every couple hours on some weeknights.
Their whistle: Long, long, short, long.

I went through a bad spell last year. During that time, the train whistle, which I heard at two a.m. at my old apartment, felt like a part of my own personal disquiet; a dramatic underscore to my own insomnia. Train whistles can mean anything. When I was little, sleeping in the trundle bed at my grandma’s, they meant that shiver of risk: Train train coming from the wild unknown and disappearing to the same—but meanwhile it was now right here, mere yards from my bed, the safest place in the world. Sometimes I still catch a spark of that feeling. Mostly though, my brain has tuned it out. I fold clothes and put them away, or read, or sleep—right through it.

The Homeland celebrates its birthday.

Terrible photo on CNN, so I've provided one that's more fitting.
"Imagine what you can do here!"
Yes! Eat stale smiley cookies at Eat 'n Park! Stare at the overcast sky! Visit that one French and Indian War fort!

Actually, long-time readers will know, that like many emigrants from Pittsburgh, I am a freakily fierce defender of my hometown. This means I can make fun of it, like you can make fun of your dad, but you wouldn't catch me mocking your pa's propensity for multiple gold chains and stinky cologne, at least not in front of you, right? Well, that gold-chained papa, with his closet full of Stillers sweatshirts, he is the Dad of Pittsburgh. And don't mock him, or you're in for a hurting, a Jerome Bettis-style bus-accident, my friend.

Sigh. Can't wait till Christmas.