“Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.”

When Herman Melville created the tattooed character of Queequeg in his 1851 novel Moby-Dick, he helped introduce skin art to American literature. I was reminded of this at an author's reading at a local bookstore. But forget the presentation; I was busy trying to read the back of the woman’s neck in front of me.

There was a sentence tattooed there, but I couldn’t quite make it out. The words “yes” and “will” were visible, but her hair blocked the rest, and she left before I understood what statement her neck was making.

I was left pondering how one-in-four U.S. adults has a tattoo, including nearly 40% of people between the ages of 25 and 29. Once linked with risky behavior patterns, tattoos are now common even among mild-mannered literary types. (No doubt a librarian somewhere is getting the phrase “Live to Read, Read to Live” inked on his or her arm at this very moment.)

With its legions of readers, Portland is a place where words frequently leap from pen to needle and from paper to skin. But since a human is a difficult manuscript to edit, due care must go into choosing a literary tattoo. What words get under a person’s skin to the point where they have to be on top of it as well? And what authors are particular favorites?

Wordy authors are disqualified as tattoo sources. It would take your entire back to do justice to someone like Virginia Woolf or Umberto Eco. A website devoted to readers who get inked, Contrariwise, reveals that a particular tattoo favorite is the Kurt Vonnegut quote heading this blog entry (it’s from Slaughterhouse 5). Also notable is the preponderance of selections in Tolkein’s Elvish, and quotes from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince, and my own The Pocket Guide to Mischief.

Herman Melville described Queequeg’s tattoos as “mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them.” That’s why a poet’s brief, vivid lines provide such excellent material; there’s more to the words than meets the eye.

I did eventually discover the source of the neck tattoo I spied at that book reading. It’s from the end of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and it relates the character Molly Bloom’s train of thought. The quote reads “yes I said yes I will Yes [sic].” (If you’re wondering what Molly was so positive about, leaf through Ulysses yourself; don’t worry, It’s a quick read.)

But for genuine self-expression, why use the words of another? Why not self-publish? For one thing, the writer gets to know his or her readers quite well. And there is another particularly satisfying bonus to self-publishing on your own skin: You probably won’t go out of print anytime soon.
As for me, I’m holding off until I find the perfect quote to extract from this year’s best book.

Other links of interest: A recent Oregonian piece, and a less-recent Telegraph article. (The latter will give the literary sources employed in the above photos.)
My sources are here.
Photo credits (from the top): Colleen AF Venable, smallestbones, mass romantic, Jun Cruz Na Ligas, poetnicole, unknown.

We Just Got Served

An A.P. report today tells of the mischievous Horace Engdahl, the Swedish Academy’s Permanent Secretary for the Nobel Prize (the most prestigious award in literature!). Selections follow:

Speaking generally about American literature, [Engdahl] said U.S. writers are ''too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture,'' dragging down the quality of their work.

''The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature,'' Engdahl said. ''That ignorance is restraining.''

The most recent American to win the award was Toni Morrison in 1993.

Each Nobel Prize includes a $1.3 million purse, a gold medal and a diploma.

The Wheels on the Bike Go Round and Round

The United States was once a nation of bicycle riders. Americans loved bikes so much, in 1895, they owned 10 million of them. But these bikes started rusting into oblivion with that first sniff of the intoxicating aroma of car exhaust. Yep, a love affair with cars almost killed the bike. Almost.

Total U.S. Cars
1898: 30 cars
1900: 8,000 cars
1920: 8.1 million cars
1950: 40.3 million cars
1970: 89.2 million cars
1990: 133.7 million cars
2005: 136.6 million cars

But the wheels on the bike go round and round. According to a recent story in The Economist, worldwide bike sales and manufacturing are upshifting big-time. (Lame, I know.)

The article states, “Europeans mainly use bikes for commuting, but have the odd habit of ignoring [commuter bikes] in favour of sleeker, faster models which are then expensively modified. Americans prefer off-road BMX trail bikes."

Given this good news, I hate to be critical of American bike-buying habits. But here goes: Are off-road bikers the lowest form of life in the biking world?

After all, two of the primary reasons people buy bikes are a wish to save money by not buying gas and a desire to save the planet by not burning gas. But bikers who drive to a trail defeat both of those purposes.

Why not hearken back to the mindset of those original, high-wheeling bicyclists? If they wanted to ride a bike, they rode it.

Texas Ranger Poetry

"Our founders knew nothing of our processed foods. They again could never have even imagined a Twinkie or a shelf life."

From Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America by Chuck Norris

Shuffleboard Posses

Angela Pusateri is a Florida rapper with a new CD: "Who's Your Granny?" It's an appropriate title since Pusateri is 79 years old. And when Pusateri rocks the mic, she does so with lyrics like, “I am older and wiser, I ain't a disguiser/I am condo commando in a high-riser/Who's your granny?" SHE’S your granny.

Okay, actually she’s not. But to thirteen-year old Jenna Pusateri, having the world’s coolest grandmother is a source of slight embarrassment. Not that this is a difficult accomplishment; one can embarrass teen-aged relatives simply by exhaling carbon dioxide... or rapping, "Move over, Trick-Daddy, 'cause this is my town/I gotta shuffleboard posse and we're known to get down."

In the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, reporter Ihosvani Rodriguez wrote on Granny with some hip-hop hyperbole: “Granny Rapper is a septuagenarian hip-hopper who knocks out the rhymes with the energy of L’il Kim and the wisdom of Grandma Moses.”

This clip from Retirement Living TV shows off Granny's skills, but ignore the strangely lame producer at the start.

Advertising Helps Me Decide!

How can a country retain its unique culture in the face of American imports? Is the best course to stop imports from reaching the marketplace, or to make homegrown products that can act as replacements?

Dunno. But I do know that Islam for Today is touting Dara and Sara dolls as “Iran’s Islamic alternative to Ken and Barbie.” The site quotes toy seller Masoumeh Rahimi, who sees the danger of girls playing with Barbie and eventually rejecting Iranian values. She said:

"I think every Barbie doll is more harmful than an American missile."

I guess that makes the Bratz some sort of Doomsday Devices.

Dara and Sara were developed by an government agency known as the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. Since the agency is also in charge of marketing the dolls, it might consider using the ad strategy known as Organic Product Integration (OPI).

No more painfully obvious "product placement." With OPI, instead of just SHOWING a product in a TV show or movie, the product instead becomes an integral and “natural” part OF the show. (I’m all for integration! And organic things are so... natural.)

So now, products aren’t just products anymore. As Nela Ulabi’s NPR story makes clear, now the product is almost a character. Thus, the sponsors of a reality show make sure that contestants will be use their cars/drinks/phones while competing. And those products being discussed by the ad execs on Mad Men? They're not there by accident.

So now ads are always lurking in the background. You can't TiVo them out of the program... they ARE the program! How can American culture survive this onslaught of marketing? Robert Weissman of the group Commercial Alert suggests TV shows be required to warn viewers when OPI is occurring.

But I’ve got a simpler idea: Import more Dara and Tara dolls into the US. The rest will take care of itself.

Politics and Hot Dogs

Hot dogs continue to sneak into the news. First, President Bush addressed the United Nations about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Sixty years ago, the architect of that document was noted hot dog lover Eleanor Roosevelt. But did Bush mention Mrs. Roosevelt during his talk? No. (Nor did the President do so last year, when he spoke on the same subject at the UN.)

Why not? According to William Heuvel, founder of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, Barbara Bush has said that Eleanor Roosevelt's name was not allowed to be spoken in the Bush home.

It must have something to do with hot dogs.

This brings to mind the infamous (in Oregon, anyway) campaign ad showing senatorial candidate Jeff Merkley eating a hot dog while being quizzed on the day of Russia’s invasion of Georgia. It shows just how damaging the combination of a stalker with a video camera and a man in need of a beverage can be. (Posted here by Merkley’s opponents at the NRSC):

In a more genial mode, the Oregonian ran a story titled “Weenies on the Water” about an aquatic hot dog vendor named Jeff Dood. The story kicks off with Dood taking orders from his boat:

…a candy-apple red wakeboard boat swishes to a stop alongside.

"Gimme a Screaming Weenie and a Diet Coke," the driver calls across the choppy Willamette River.

"I want a Panini Weenie," a passenger adds.

"'Weenies on the Water’?" another passenger says, reading the menu on the side of Dood's boat. "That is so tight, dude! I want a weenie, too. Do you take Visa?"

Dood doesn’t. (Though sad, this probably isn't a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.)

Rating Poetry

Nights in Rodanthe is rated PG-13. The official explanation is "some sensuality"— as if!

From Manohla Margis's review of Nights in Rodanthe. (She didn't like it so much. "There’s no joy and not even much cruel laughter to be had from the spectacle of... some of the most pitiful, platitudinous, risible dialogue in recent memory."

With This Burger, I Thee Wed

The Mirror reported on the marriage of Brits Tom and Kerry Watts and their wedding burger. It was big. Tom's quote:

“I got to marry the woman of my dreams and then I got to have the burger of my dreams the same day.”

There's something both endearing and off-putting about huge hamburgers and the people who love them. So cute, so very wrong... Hey, does the same sentiment hold true for hot dogs?

The Philly Phanatic recently gave us a case-study when it duct-taped a number of jumbo Hatfield Hot Dogs in order to fire them from a hot dog cannon. (It was for a commercial.)

The hot dogs were left behind as litter, and eventually, for members of the Philadelphia police bomb squad to deal with, as they responded to a report of suspicious packages outside of the Phillies stadium.

An A.P. report stated that after evacuating stadium employees, the bomb squad blew up the sausages. A Phillies senior VP said, "We could have gone over and picked it up and thrown it in the trash... But if we had been wrong, somebody might have lost an arm."

I guess. But what hot dog deserves to be fired from a cannon and blown to smithereens by a bomb squad on the same day? As for the Phillie Phanatic, no conclusions are drawn. It seems as endearing and repellent as it always has!

*Phillie Phanatic photo by Erglantz.

Campaign Blast from the Past: Those @!&%! Voters!

American political candidates regularly pay carefully-phrased compliments to the American public. They know the most basic rule of politics: NEVER insult your voters.

It sounds obvious, but even veteran politicians sometimes forget. Senator Jim Watson (right, 1862-1948) was in office for six terms. But when he said, “You can vote for me or go to hell," Watson lost the next election.

Hearing of Watson's gaffe, Calvin Coolidge quipped, “He gave them a difficult alternative.” (Capping irony: If you visit Watson's official Senate page, it has the heading: James E. Watson: "Impossible Not to Like.")

Frontiersman Davy Crockett (1786–1836) had better timing than Watson, but worse results. Starting in 1827, Crockett served three terms in Congress. But after losing his seat in 1835, Davy told voters to "go to hell."

Crockett left town and went to the Alamo. In less than a year, he was dead.

The most legendary line along these lines came courtesy of Dick Tuck. After losing his bid for California state Senate seat in the 1960s, Tuck joked, "The people have spoken— the bastards."

Representative Morris Udall (left, with JFK) used the same line after losing the Democratic presidential primary to Jimmy Carter. Like Tuck, Udall also had a sense of humor... and he needed it, since that was the fifth time he'd lost a presidential primary!

As for McCain and Obama, they'll probably navigate the next weeks of campaigning without incident. (We'll see about Biden and Palin.) Nonetheless, two of these candidates will soon want to what Abraham Lincoln said about losing an election. The great American president said that it made him feel like a boy who’s stubbed his toe: he’s too old to cry, but it hurts too much to laugh.

*My sources are here.

The Last Song You'll Ever Hear?

This poster is part of a safety campaign in Australia:
"Watch for cars when wearing headphones."

Of Stupid Larvae and Abolished Apostrophes

Knowing that Professor John Wells is president of the Spelling Society might lead you to believe that he is a fusty phonetics perfectionist.

Not so; Professor Wells actually advocates a revolutionary "freeing up" of spelling in English: "Let's allow people greater freedom to spell logically. Text messaging, e-mail and internet chat rooms are showing us the way forward for English."

Free spelling? Chat rooms showing us the way forward? Wow. Wells also believes that teaching spelling to students is a waste of time. In The Times, he maintains that English words contain so many irregular and illogical spellings, "modernizing" our vocabulary only makes sense.

Though hearing a prominent academic talk this talk is novel, my guess is that U.S. citizens would consider these changes somehow un-American. Competitive spelling bees are beloved here, even though they're unheard of in most countries. For instance, there are no spelling bees in Italy; nobody would ever get eliminated, because words are spelled pretty much the way they should be.

But taking into consideration the emotional damage wrought by spelling bees, I'm starting to like this free spelling idea. I still get choked up remembering how I was ousted from a 4th-grade spelling bee by the word “caterpillar." Stupid larvae!

But Professor Wells lost me when he called the apostrophe a "waste of time." He asks, "Have we really nothing better to do with our lives than fret about the apostrophe?" Thus, he proposes abolishing the apostrophe.

You can have my apostrophes when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers! (On the other hand, apostrophes do suffer regular abuse...)
Some of Prof. Wells' Other Recommendations:
—Double consonants: Allow double consonants when the preceding vowel sound is short: River becomes rivver; model becomes moddel.
—Danger, Anger, Hanger: Replace the soft g with a j: Danger becomes danjer.
Use a double g after the n if the sound is hard: Anger becomes angger.
Use a single g if the sound is elided: Hanger remains hanger.
—Their, there and they’re: They all sound the same and the meaning is unlikely to be lost if we just use “there” in each case.

Department of Dubiousness

"The plot is plodding, the characters are interchangeable, and as an actor [Justin] Bruening makes David Hasselhoff seem like Derek Jacobi."
From Alessandra Stanley's review of the new version of Knight Rider.

Campaign Blast from the Past: The County Election

In 1852, Missouri-native George C. Bingham completed "The County Election" (detail, right). The painting portrayed free liquor being poured, inebriated voters propped up at the polling place, bought votes, and a glad-handing politican (in top-hat).
You might think (like I did) that Bingham had a jaundiced view of the questionable Whig tradition of providing voters with free liquor. Not so; Bingham was a Whig!

So where we see ethics violations, this was actually Bingham's way of paying tribute to the will of the people. He wasn't necessarily condoning the hubbub, but there is a spirit of celebration surrounding the democratic spectacle. (Or so say Bingham's biographers.)

George Bingham had political aspirations of his own, serving as State Treasurer of Ohio from 1862-6 and running unsuccessfully for Congress.

And while his Whig affiliation dates him, Bingham was ahead of his time in one respect; he anticipated the rise of heavy metal with this detail from "The Jolly Flatboatmen" (1846).

* My sources are here.