A couple of short pieces about the mess of war. War & Peace is by Luis Cernuda, translated from Spanish by David Unger. The End and the Beginning is by Wis?awa Szymborska, translated from Polish by Joanna Trzeciak. In between is a million miles from saturday night by tehwa. And the [...]

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Fred Sims and Dotty Wasserman compete in The Contest, from Grace Paley’s first collection of short stories, The Little Disturbances of Man, published in 1959 by Doubleday. Bass solo by tehwa. Sorry about the buzz. Too much coffee.

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A remix of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the core of which was recorded on Disneyland Records with Rica Moore narrating and Shelly Manne sticking the drums. The first half gets a walking bass by Stett Audio, and in the post-slumber edition has samples from Prokofiev’s Peter & the Wolf. In between and [...]

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A cursory glance at the first page of each Gormenghast novel, by Mervyn Peake. Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone were published by Eyre & Spottiswoode from 1946 to 1959. Must-reads all for Goths and Steampunks. The music is by Irmin Schmidt. The Overture and Sepulchrave’s Aria come from the fantasy opera, Gormenghast. [...]

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Man consumed by salamander. Axolotl, a story by Julio Cortázar found in The End of the Game, published in 1967 by Pantheon and 1978 by Harpercollins.

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Carl Sandburg was every bit as much a storyteller as a poet. This piece proves it. It’s called Many Hats and it was included in Good Morning America, published in 1928 by Harcourt Brace. His subject matter, as usual, was larger than life: the Grand Canyon. The stories it tells are [...]

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Vickie hangs me out to dry for being so late. Excuses follow. My blog has gone from fun pastime to scary obsession, what with all the collecting, remixing, painting, scanning, tweaking, posting and writing about all the critters there. My business eats all my weekday daylight hours. KABF music-directorhood and Audio 101 and World Tour steal [...]

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Some Pure-D Drivel from Steve Martin. A story like this makes it evident Steve Martin could have been a latter day Robert Benchley if he’d just not have been led astray by that pesky Hollywood. Come to think of it, Benchley was somewhat led astray by Hollywood himself, but still managed to write book after [...]

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Carter Willet returns with Number Ten from News From the Edge, Arguments Over the Twilight Module and the Disposition of Vitreous Trimfins. The Trimfin voices are segments of Idle Chatter, Notjustmoreidlechatter, and Idle Chatter Junior, by Paul Lansky. He has lots of samples and info on his Princeton site. And check out [...]

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A tribal grunt is followed by a Counting-Out Rhyme by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Then another Edna, The Singing Woman From the Wood’s Edge. Both are backed by Glass Drum by Stett Audio: OpSound here and MySpace here. Then, an Offering by Staraya Derevnya: OpSound here, Jamendo here and MySpace here. Back [...]

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Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. This is the third and final ode to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., borrowing from the text of Slaughterhouse Five and the abridged reading by the author as recorded by Caedmon Records in 1973.

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