Links for the wise, the proud, and the lonely

From desire to inspire: books on display. I love pictures of other people's bookshelves, although I love them even more when you can tell what books they have. JUDGMENT!

George Orwell Wounded by a Fascist Sniper: George Orwell's essay about being shot. I have a weird fondness for George Orwell that goes back to high school. For a long time I had his 5 rules for effective writing posted like a prayer over my desk, until I realized I actually like using long words where short ones will do. Call it a hapless, perhaps misguided, attempt to gain the approbation of my readership.

From Salon: Craft the Vote!, an article about campaign crafts. The slideshow includes this really excellent DHS alert level "security blanket." I want to make one.



I love, love, love Duck and cover!, a set of scanned advertising and information materials for prefab fallout shelters from the 1960s. (One such image seen above.) Boy, that family looks like they're enjoying the post-Nuclear-apocalypse world. I guess it makes sense, though-- I mean, they are sleeping in bunk beds, and nothing says "fun" like bunk beds.

Also: I went to see Becoming Jane last night, and it was OK I guess, except it kind of pissed me off. If you take this movie as historical fact (which, in my experience, most people who watch biopics do), then Jane Austen was a terrible writer, because her most famous novel was simply a novelized version of her own life (with the role of Lady Catherine De Bergh being played by Professor McGonnagall). I know that a movie in which all a writer does is write novels is boring, but I get so tired of these film versions of female writers' lives in which the whole point is romance. To sum up: "Jane Austen says: 'Boys please!'"