skandalon

✖ Via Curious George Takes A Job by Margaret & H. A. Rey, 1947, cover, p. 36 and p. 37

As George is recovering in the hospital, The Man with the Yellow Hat see a newspaper story on it, and alerts the hospital that he would come get him. As George is waiting to be discharged, he finds a bottle of ether, opens it, and the fumes make him high, then dizzy, then knocked him out cold. When The Man and the nurse find him, they had to throw him in the shower to wake him up. (wikipedia)

Scans of the book were found at thisMySpace page. I first became aware of this strip via Etherealisation.

• Aug 28, 2010 link notes tagged: art comic illustration children book story monkey animal classic culture popular drug ether lost sleep

art story storytelling narrative novel author science_fiction vonnegut humor kafka reblog

✖ Via

Lapham’s Quarterly: Kurt Vonnegut at the Blackboard, New York City, 2005

I want to share with you something I’ve learned. I’ll draw it on the blackboard behind me so you can follow more easily [draws a vertical line on the blackboard]. This is the G-I axis: good fortune-ill fortune. Death and terrible poverty, sickness down here—great prosperity, wonderful health up there. Your average state of affairs here in the middle [points to bottom, top, and middle of line respectively]. This is the B-E axis. B for beginning, E for entropy. Okay. Not every story has that very simple, very pretty shape that even a computer can understand [draws horizontal line extending from middle of G-I axis]. Now let me give you a marketing tip. The people who can afford to buy books and magazines and go to the movies don’t like to hear about people who are poor or sick, so start your story up here [indicates top of the G-I axis]. Read on

• Aug 16, 2010 link notes reblogged from leugenio [via] tagged: art story storytelling narrative novel author science-fiction Vonnegut humor Kafka

Although Karim is named on YouTube’s site as a co-founder, Chad and Steve have promoted a highly simplified history of the company’s founding that largely excludes him. In the stripped-down version—repeated in dozens of news accounts—Chad and Steve got the idea in the winter of 2005, after they had trouble sharing videos online that had been shot at a dinner party at Steve’s San Francisco apartment. Karim says the dinner party never happened and that the seed idea of video sharing was his—although he is quick to say its realization in YouTube required “the equal efforts of all three of us.” Chad and Steve both say that the party did occur but that Karim wasn’t there. “Chad and I are pretty modest, and Jawed has tried to seize every opportunity to take credit,” Steve told me. But he also acknowledged that the notion that YouTube was founded after a dinner “was probably very strengthened by marketing ideas around creating a story that was very digestible.

✖ Via TIME: “The Gurus of YouTube” by John Cloud, Dec. 16, 2006

We have no problem understanding how our actions shape representations, narratives, ideas. It’s some time more difficult to understand how those constructs shape us in return. Here’s a good example of a narrative elaborated in order to shape the behavior of future adopters (toward the innovation that is YouTube). As a marketing tool, the story about the party is supposed to give users a basic idea about how to behave with YouTube.

• Jun 12, 2010 link notes tagged: technology communication art representation fiction idea action community organization innovation users marketing YouTube story

I’m not afraid to compete. It’s just the opposite. Don’t you see that? I’m afraid I will compete―that’s what scares me. That’s why I quit the Theater Department. Just because I’m so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else’s values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn’t make it right. I’m ashamed of it. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.

✖ Via The New Yorker, “Franny” by J.D. Salinger, Jan 29, 1955, pp. 34-35

• Jan 30, 2010 link notes tagged: art author story loser lost nobody nothing dissatisfaction life fame celebrity subject philosophy