From Austin Kleon:

Just as a reminder of all the different visual ways to approach projects, and design.

Even when she’s being overtly political…

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

From Salon, via Austin Kleon:

A great though about writing from David Foster Wallace:

If you, the writer, succumb to the idea that the audience is too stupid, then there are two pitfalls. Number one is the avant-garde pitfall, where you have the idea that you’re writing for other writers, so you don’t worry about making yourself accessible or relevant. You worry about making it structurally and technically cutting edge: involuted in the right ways, making the appropriate intertextual references, making it look smart. Not really caring about whether you’re communicating with a reader who cares something about that feeling in the stomach which is why we read. Then, the other end of it is very crass, cynical, commercial pieces of fiction that are done in a formulaic way — essentially television on the page — that manipulate the reader, that set out grotesquely simplified stuff in a childishly riveting way.

What’s weird is that I see these two sides fight with each other and really they both come out of the same thing, which is a contempt for the reader, an idea that literature’s current marginalization is the reader’s fault. The project that’s worth trying is to do stuff that has some of the richness and challenge and emotional and intellectual difficulty of avant-garde literary stuff, stuff that makes the reader confront things rather than ignore them, but to do that in such a way that it’s also pleasurable to read. The reader feels like someone is talking to him rather than striking a number of poses.

Exactitudes is A fascinating photography project by Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek that examines dress codes of various social groups.

I could spend the whole night just clicking through the various groups… oh wait, I just did.

Here’s a summary of what they are all about:

Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek have worked together since October 1994. Inspired by a shared interest in the striking dress codes of various social groups, they have systematically documented numerous identities over the last 13 years. Rotterdam’s heterogeneous, multicultural street scene remains a major source of inspiration for Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek, although since 1998 they have also worked in cities abroad.

They call their series Exactitudes: a contraction of exact and attitude. By registering their subjects in an identical framework, with similar poses and a strictly observed dress code, Versluis and Uyttenbroek provide an almost scientific, anthropological record of people’s attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity. The apparent contradiction between individuality and uniformity is, however, taken to such extremes in their arresting objective-looking photographic viewpoint and stylistic analysis that the artistic aspect clearly dominates the purely documentary element.

Wim van Sinderen, Senior Curator Museum of Photography, The Hague

What do you think?

We all know that American elections aren’t won on who you are for. They are won on who you are against. To that end I’ve created candidate trading cards. Proudly display your bias by letting the world know who you hate.

Enjoy!

Another news story (quasi) about my dark comedy, Resurrection Men.

Does this story have legs or what?!

Now if only the rest of the world would see it as the laugh riot comedy romp that I do:

From CNN:

Brothers admit stealing parts from 244 corpses

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (AP) — Two brothers who ran a funeral home and crematorium admitted Tuesday that they sold corpses to a company that trafficked stolen body parts, a macabre scheme that left families aghast and unclear about the fate of their loved ones.

Mario Mastromarino, left, is serving 18 to 54 years for running the stolen body parts trafficking scam.

Louis and Gerald Garzone pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy, theft, abuse of corpse and welfare fraud.

The gruesome allegations read in court drew gasps, murmurs and tears from about two dozen people who had entrusted the bodies of their loved ones to the Garzones’ facilities in Philadelphia.

The brothers allowed at least 244 corpses to be carved up without families’ permission and without medical tests, prosecutors said. Skin, bones, tendons and other parts — some of them diseased — were then sold around the country for dental implants, knee and hip replacements, and other procedures.

Some bodies were only torsos by the time the hacking was done, said Assistant District Attorney Evangelia Manos.

The mastermind of the scheme, Michael Mastromarino, pleaded guilty Friday to hundreds of charges that could send him to prison for life. He is already serving 18 to 54 years for running the scam in New York.

Mastromarino’s company, New Jersey-based Biomedical Tissue Services, took bodies from funeral homes in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Among the corpses plundered was that of veteran BBC broadcaster and “Masterpiece Theatre” host Alistair Cooke.

In Philadelphia, he paid the Garzones and their partner, James McCafferty, more than $245,000 for at least 244 cadavers between February 2004 and October 2005, prosecutors said.

Mastromarino would then send a “cutting” crew, led by former nurse Lee Cruceta, to Philadelphia to dissect the bodies. Cruceta pleaded guilty in January to abusing corpses and other charges; McCafferty pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy and theft charges.

The tissue plundered from a single body often fetched about $4,000, and Mastromarino made millions from the scheme, prosecutors said.

Authorities were able to identify only 49 of the 244 bodies, since the scam entailed falsifying names, ages and causes of death to disguise corpses that were too old or too diseased to be harvested legally. The Garzones burned their records in the crematorium when investigators started asking questions, Manos said.

One of the harvested bodies was that of Lois Elder, 58, of Philadelphia, who died of complications from a stroke in April 2005, said Taya Elder, her daughter.

Elder, 39, said she is glad to be spared a trial. Even though she heard many of the chilling details during the grand jury investigation that led to the indictments, listening to them again in court Tuesday brought her to tears.

“It took me for a loop,” Elder said. “It really is shocking.”

Her mother was supposed to be cremated. Today, Elder said she can only assume the ashes she has are what was left of mother’s body after the cutting crew finished its work.

Louis Garzone also pleaded guilty to insurance fraud.

He claimed in August 2006 that severe depression preventing him from working, Manos said. In reality, he had surrendered his funeral director’s license about two months earlier but continued to work at his funeral home, which was then under the auspices of another director, Manos said.

Both Gerald Garzone, 48, of North Wales, and Louis Garzone, 66, of Philadelphia, also pleaded guilty to defrauding the state public welfare department, which reimburses funeral homes for services provided to impoverished families. The Garzones filed for about $77,000 in unentitled reimbursements, prosecutors said.

The brothers remain free on bail until sentencing October 22.