Wednesday Linkstorm

Hunter S. Thompson's birthday today. Here is a quote from The Great Shark Hunt about Fear & Loathing (warning: contains two f-bombs and mention of Spiro Agnew's genitals): "The only other important thing to be said about Fear & Loathing at this time is that it was fun to write, and that's rare — for me, at least, because I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like fucking — which is fun only for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling. Nothing is fun when you have to do it — over and over, again and again — or else you'll be evicted, and that gets old. So it's a rare goddamn trip for a locked-in, rent-paying writer to get into a gig that, even in retrospect, was a kinghell, highlife fuck-all from start to finish... and then to actually get paid for writing this kind of manic gibberish seems genuinely weird; like getting paid for kicking Agnew in the balls. So maybe there's hope."Hey did you guys check out the new poetry by Lauren Hilger that went up yesterday? Do so post-haste.Donald J. Sobol, the creator of of the Encyclopedia Brown series, has died at age 87 of natural causes. Meanwhile, the creators of Wikipedia Brown are alive and well. (Barnstorm: your number one source for links to Das Racist songs.)Have you heard? Great American Windbag Jonathan Franzen is into birding. No, I know, crazy, right? He never ever mentions it.Landmark of my youth St. Marks Bookshop is in danger of closing. Ugh, that sucks. Go spend some money there if you're in New York.E.L. James, the author of your all time number one 50 Shades of Grey was at Comic Con this week. Per Jacket Copy: One woman credited "50 Shades of Grey" with her third pregnancy. A husband high-fived author E.L. James after she signed his wife's e-reader, saying, "My love life is awesome. Thank you!" Okay first of all the phrase "my love life is awesome" ("Sickening!"--Kevin McAllister). Second, "signed his wife's e-reader?" What? Here, sign this laptop. Sign this toaster oven. Sign this TI-81 graphing calculator.Dave Eggers doing his Dave Eggers thing in By the Book.Here's a gallery of five fictitious meals from great works of literature, including the chowder from Moby Dick. One time my sister read the beginning of Moby Dick and described the plot to me like this: "Some dudes want to go out for chowder so they go to find this chowder place and they think the chowder's gonna be really bad, but then it's pretty good." That's just a very accurate take on Moby Dick that omits nothing.Ed note: next Wednesday I'm going to be in Tennessee for the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Probably gonna be pretty busy and I also don't know what the wifi situation down there is like. It's just the South though, not Darfur or anything, so I expect they've got Internet. BUT! They did give me instructions for how to receive mail while I'm there for all of ten days so who really knows what that says about their approach to modern communications. (What vital correspondence could I possibly be receiving via the U.S. mails that can't wait til I get home?). Point is next week's Linkstorm's either gonna be abbreviated, not exist, or come at you live from Sewanee, TN where I'll be living out this arc: protagonist walks in like she's "2 cool 4 school"-->protagonist confirms that everyone at conference is a weird loser-->protagonist has some sort of eye-opening episode (her judgements were wrong, the world is a rich tapestry)-->protagonist grows to love weird loser peers-->protagonist discovers she herself is a weird loser-->protagonist is redeemed. Send all my mail to Sewanee!--Erin Somers