If there is anything to talk about besides the new Thom Yorke video, I don't know what it is. Some kindly soul braved the choppy waters of copyright infringement and uploaded "Harrowdown Hill," which debuted last night on the BBC, to YouTube. Many Bothans died to bring you this information.

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David Carradine kept a diary while he was working on Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill volumes 1 and 2.  Now he's publishing it as The Kill Bill Diary: The Making of a Tarantino Classic as Seen Through the Eyes of a Screen Legend which is available for preorder from Amazon and will be released November 1st.

David Carradine did a phenomenal job in the second Kill Bill, even as he delivered Tarantino's clunky, ill-conceived superman monologue (yeah, I said it).  Seeing him playing a villain reminded me of Henry Fonda's character in Once Upon a Time in the West, a role so counter-intuitive and yet so well-cast.  It's a shame Carradine didn't see more "heavy" roles after the Kill Bill series.

From the article:

What began as a long-shot attempt last year by Pearson Plc to sell California educators digital materials to teach history and politics, collectively known in US schools as social studies, has become reality in what could be the first large-scale step to eliminate books from classrooms.

Now, I understand the reasons:

"Most schools have a big fat textbook on the table that doesn't really entice students any more," Scardino said."

And I'm even okay with the fact that this is probably the real enticement for Pearson:

London-based Pearson estimated it cost about half as much to develop as a textbook with supplemental materials, and added that it had about a 41 percent market share.

My major concern is the impact this will have on literacy and reading comprehension, and it doesn't help  when you say things like:

Pearson's multimedia product, created by its Scott Foresman unit, enables teachers to tailor lessons to individual students, includes video clips and is able to read aloud all of the lessons in English and Spanish.

But kids are probably reading too much these days.   I hear that whole Harry Potter thing is really dragging down averages. 

Incoming fiction editor Tadd Adcox reviews Daniel H. Wilson's How to Survive a Robot Uprising, a book that is only becoming more relevant as humanity haplessly skis down the black diamond trail of total machine dependence.  Luckily, Humans United Against Robots (HUAR) is here to monitor the situation.

Robot Dog Shakespeare says (quoting Robot Dog Burns): The best laid schemes of mice and men are often crushed under the heel of the Glorious Perpetual Robot Army.

Check out our review of How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion.

(Image courtesy HUAR and KATG.) 

I think this is specifically forbidden in the Annals of Librarian Law:

A Librarian faces jail after he stole more than £250,000 worth of rare books and flogged them on the internet.

This is becoming more and more prevalent as Ebay becomes more and more ridiculously comprehensive and easy-to-use.

"The caretakers of Ernest Hemingway's Key West home want a federal judge to intervene in their dispute with the U.S. Department of Agriculture over the six-toed cats that roam the property."

Sycamore Review good buddy emeritus Gil Cook reviews Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door.  Lynn Truss is also the author of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, which I once heard one of the most respected linguists in the country refer to as "that god-awful book."  Gil is decidedly more optimistic.

 Please enjoy.

Coudal reminds us that their Verse by Voice project is still live and accepting submissions.  For those of you just joining us, Coudal Partners wants you to read your favorite poem on their answering machine.  They already have great messages from Zadie Smith and Laura Demanski (and a fake Christopher Walken).  Check it out.

I heard a great story on NPR in the car today. Like all good NPR stories, there are twists and unexpected discoveries, and lots of technical information.

The story revolves around an anonymous investor who is paying $2 million to have an erased and written-over text by Archimedes (eureka!) digitally uncovered. An 11th century scholar scratched out the original parchment and wrote a prayer book in its place. Now, with the help of multispectral imaging and a scientist whose area of expertise is spinach, the older work is slowly being regained.

The website says that the audio of the story will be up around 7pm EST, and I cannot recommend this story enough. It's one of those NPR stories that keeps you in the car long after you've gotten where you're going.

Jane Springer's Dear Blackbird I & Dear Blackbird II are delightfully strange and sad epistolary poems about the loss of love and the grief that follows.   "When the crows came, I welcomed them," the scarecrow speaker tells us in the first poem.  "That is how I became a heaven for crows, by loving their footfalls on my shoulders."

These poems are also about rebuilding and letting go.  In the second poem, the scarecrow informs us, "The only thing that made sense was to fall in love with a carpenter..." Somehow, when we aren't looking, time heals all wounds, if not completely then at least  with a certain amount of reliability.

Please enjoy Jane Springer's Dear Blackbird I & Dear Black Bird II.  Jane is a Ph.D. student at my alma mater, Florida State, and that's pretty neat.

(image of the white-browed blackbird courtesy Luis C. Tejo and morguefile.com)

Why am I always the last to know?  Partially Clips is a wonderfully funny, wonderfully literate webcomic created by Rob Balder.  He uses clip art images that do not change from panel to panel, but the dialogue is so pithy and hilarious that  you don't need a lot of visual cues to enjoy the comic. 

I spent a great deal of last night going through the archives.  Of particular note are this one making fun of Jane Austen, this one about poetry workshop, and this one about a ventriloquist. 

[via Cool Hunting, who, as the name implies, hunt the wily Cool}

Nate Hill is writing his own bible by rewriting the old one a passage at a time.  He's up to Genesis: 31, which is pretty dang far.  What makes Nate's project even more interesting is his choice of illustrations: animal parts sewn to other animal parts, or flowers, or himself.  Like the caption to his photo says: Nathan Hill, madman. Here's a sample of his writing.  The original (Biblical) text is in italics and Nate's version is in not-italics, which could be an interesting statement in and of itself, depending on what  one considers the function/legitimacy of italicized text to be.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.  And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.  And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.  And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.  And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

In the beginning, Nate created Himself.  It was nice for awhile, but it became too quiet.  So, He created the heavens and the earth.  No one knows quite why or where or when or how.  The earth was an empty waste and darkness was over the deep waters.  Nate was all alone.  There was nothing but an odd smell in the air.  The Spirit of Nate was moving above the waters.  Nate said, "There should be more.  Let there be something called an idea," and there was an idea.  Nate saw that the idea was good.  He thought of every idea that ever was and ever will be.  There was evening and there was morning, the first day.   

Blasphemy?  Probably.   Check it out. 

 There's something incredibly satisfying about Bowie Style's blog, print & pattern, which is simply a compendium of gorgeous prints and patterns (!) all jumbled together with the occasional editorial comment, and links.

I recently got a membership to Audible.com so that I could have something to listen to in the car while I commuted to a week-long summer gig I had - (If you don't know Audible, an online audio-store filled with radio shows from NPR and more books than you'll really ever have time to listen to, you should check it out, especially if you have a commute.  The audio quality of their books is excellent, you can sample the book and check out the reader's voice before buying, the download time is quick, and their prices are excellent, especially with a subscription.) - and downloaded Heat, New Yorker writer Bill Buford's new foodie book, now number twelve on the NYT best-seller list for hardcover non-fiction, in which he trails celebrity chef Mario Batali.

Although Audible's version was abridged (Tss!), the fact that Bill Buford himself was the reader almost completely made up for it.  Which is what I'd like to talk about.  (If you want reviews of Heat, here's one by Slate.com's Sara Dickerman, and here's another by NYT book reviwer Julia Reed.)  Buford was fiction editor at The New Yorker before he got distracted by food, and his attention to narrative, plot and character show not only in his prose (excellent!) but in his reading of it, as well.  Listening to Buford's book was a pleasure: his voice has depth without being gravelly, his intonation is interesting enough to keep listening to (we've all been to that ill-advised public reading) and he does voices.  I don't think I've ever enjoyed a commute more: the childlike pleasure I got in hearing Buford's imitation of Batali surprised me.  Even if you've read Heat already, take the hike here and listen to Audible's sample. 

Weekly feature?  You're soaking in it.

Mara Carlyle is a funny story for me.  I first heard her singing uncredited on a hidden track at the end of the Plaid album, Rest Proof Clockwork.  I had no idea who was singing, "I'm here/and now there's so little chance of escape/face me/face me," like she meant it, and back then the internet wasn't the sum of all human knowledge.  So I forgot about it.

Then Mara showed up singing on a Jamie Lidell remix compilation playing ukulele and the singing saw in an R&B song, the sort of twisted arrangement that warms my cold, dead heart.  I looked up who in their right mind would attempt such a feat, and found out it was someone whose voice I had been lovin' for years.  Small world.  Small british electropop world.

Two things: here is a video that Mara did for her song "I Blame You Not" which somehow manages to be weirder than any Bjork video yet executed.  Think I'm exaggerating? 

Mara Carlyle - I Blame You Not (YouTube video) 

And now, remember what I said about the singing saw and ukulele?  Well, head over to Mara's MySpace page and you can hear (and download) "Game for Fools," a cover of a Jamie Lidell song which benefits from the addition of a miniature guitar and a bowed hand tool.  

Next up is Tiny Robots, a band so obscure they don't even exist. They make music for Song Fight, the iron chef of musical competitions.  Every week, the Song Fight staff picks titles, and dozens of artists enter compositions that they feel are the best expressions of that title.  Usually, the fare ranges from nerdcore to, well, more nerdcore.  But then Tiny Robots showed up with these gems:

Five Nights in Britain - Tiny Robots (3:26)

Mountain Home - Tiny Robots (2:41)

Tiny Robots blew everything else out of the water.  They are currently 4 for 4 in the Song Fight arena.  My favorite so far is "She Gave Up," which has a beautiful hook and inspired production:

She Gave Up - Tiny Robots (3:37) 

After some internet snooping, I think Tiny Robots may be made up of members of a band call Loyalty Day, a quartet out of Berkley, California, but to date I haven't heard any LD songs that quite compare to Tiny Robots.  Sigh, my dream girl don't exist.  But she does have a MySpace page.

Okay, that's it for me today.  I'm driving to Chicago against my better judgement to pick up a friend from the airport.  Enjoy the songs.