Nerve Essay: The Goatee Period

Since my sophomore year of college, I've liked reading the essays, articles, and advice on Nerve.com. Sure, some of it's smut, but it's at least literary smut.

Last week, I happened upon Alexander Maksik's personal essay called, "Dealbreaker: The Goatee; And how it can lead to the end of everything." It's not at all smut. In fact, I'm not clear on why it was published on Nerve. Yeah, there's a girl involved, but that part seems to take a backseat to the author's professional concerns. So it goes.

For the first few paragraphs, I thought I was reading my own story. Like the author at the time, I am in the middle of what I can say are my "salad days." I also have a goatee, though I've never assigned it much importance, as he does. It's only function, really, is to keep me from looking like a baby.

In this essay, I'm not certain the goatee had anything to do with the big change. My guess is that it was the drugs.

The Art and Craft of the Machine

I've been reading a few books through DailyLit.com, a website that sends little chunks of books to your email inbox daily. For me, the concept has gotten me thinking again about copyright and the ways it will need to change.

Today, it's Frank Lloyd Wright's tiny book, "The Art and Craft of the Machine," which seems like an incredibly appropriate subject to be reading about in email:

"In the years which have been devoted in my own life to working out in stubborn materials a feeling for the beautiful, in the vortex of distorted complex conditions, a hope has grown stronger with the experience of each year, amounting now to a gradually deepening conviction that in the Machine lies the only future of art and craft - as I believe, a glorious future; that the Machine is, in fact, the metamorphosis of ancient art and craft; that we are at last face to face with the machine - the modern Sphinx - whose riddle the artist must solve if he would that art live - for his nature holds the key."

Youth

I interviewed Joli about a month ago, and I have been promising myself that I would sit down and do some work with it and get it posted. Here is her response to the prompt "Tell about a time when you gave a heartfelt apology."

The Bacteria Whisperer

In April of 2003, I read an article in Wired magazine that absolutely floored me: "The Bacteria Whisperer." While the article's tag line is a bit frightening - "Bonnie Bassler discovered a secret about microbes that the science world has missed for centuries. The bugs are talking to each other. And plotting against us." (EEK!) - the part that got me excited was the information about the bobtail squid, which "lives in the knee-deep coastal shallows in Hawaii, burying itself in the sand during the day and emerging to hunt after dark. On moonlit nights, the squid's shadow on the sand should make it visible to predators, but it possesses a "light organ" that shines with a blue glow, perfectly matching the amount of light shining down through the water."