This early laptop weighed 24.5 pounds — and was, from the look of it, just as likely to induce carpal tunnel syndrome as the computers of today. (Via Boing Boing.) I’d lug a 24-pound machine around with me if it were a repetitive stress-busting gizmo like this (although I’d like it in pink, please). My wrists are keeping me up . . .
Shalom Auslander talks with Nextbook’s Sara Ivry about the inspiration for his impressive short story collection, Beware of God, which appears next month. The second half of one answer (the italicized part) reminds me of the prologue to my novel-in-progress, but of course it’s smarter and more succinct and makes me want to throw all 55,000 words of my manuscript . . .
Inspired by recent events, writer Tod Goldberg presents a sort of online living will indicating the situations in which he does not want to be resuscitated. He also asks for assisted suicide in certain instances: 5. If I begin to re-read Gravity’s Rainbow again just to see, finally, what the fuck I’m missing out on, end it. Jaime J. Weinman . . .
Twenty years ago, J.J. Jameson, one of Chicago’s “most beloved antiwar poets,” escaped from jail in Massachusetts, where he was serving time for a string of robberies and two brutal murders, according to police. His real name is Norman A. Porter Jr. Since the jailbreak, he’s been on the run, establishing a new identity but not keeping a particularly low . . .
Emma Garman’s “Extremely Similar and Incredibly Suspicious,” which appears at Mediabistro today, examines the resemblances between the new books from Jonathan Safran Foer and his wife, Nicole Krauss: Take a tragically dead father, a good-hearted but distracted mother, and a clever kid engaged in a mystery-solving quest around New York. Add weighty historical background, aging WWII survivors, some plot-driving letters/diary . . .