"Don't become a well-rounded person.

Well rounded people are smooth and dull.
Become a thoroughly spiky person.
Grow spikes from every angle.
Stick in their throats like a pufferfish.
If you want to woo the
muse of the odd, don't read Shakespeare.
Read Webster's revenge
plays. Don't read Homer and Aristotle.
Read Herodotus where he's off talking about Egyptian women having public sex with goats.
If you want to read about myth don't read Joseph Campbell,
read about convulsive religion,
read about voodoo and the Millerites
and the Munster Anabaptists.
There are hundreds of years of
extremities, there are vast legacies of mutants.
There have always been geeks. There will always be geeks.
Become the apotheosis of geek.
Learn who your spiritual ancestors were.
You didn't come here from nowhere.
There are reasons why you're here.
Learn those reasons.
Learn about the stuff that was buried
because it was too experimental or embarrassing or inexplicable or uncomfortable or dangerous."

-Bruce Sterling, The Wonderful Power of Storytelling

the most thoughtful thing I read today

was this insight

“... Cranbrook [Art and Design] students, almost all sons and daughters of the ‘First World,’ were not interested in addressing basic physical needs (mobility, clean water, uncontaminated food, shelter, sanitary services, and so on). Instead, most students chose to address perceived spiritual needs. Looking at their work one can only conclude that most of us in the West are starving for community and kindness, not for bread and water.”

from this entry from the slowBlog.

New Orleans, Louisiana (1)