Fragile Industries: Useless Men (A Redundant Phrase)

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Wee Piggy and Superhero Tazzy
Bless their poofy hearts.
Survivor Toyland
Very bent, VERY funny! I always thought there was something a little off about G.I. Joe. With links to other toy hijinks.
Stuff On My Cat
just plain silly
Custom Altered Books
These make great wedding gifts or scrapbooks.
Project Rungay
Two fabulously glamorous fags ripping the show they L-O-V-E to watch. Project Runway from a VERY gay perspective.
Jafa Girls
These girls rock! Altered art, assemblage, found art, lots more.
Dr. Gloria Brame
Thoughts and resources for those interested in consensual adult sexuality. Who isn't?
Rianna
A professional woman of eclectic tastes. Laugh-out- loud funny and intelligent. Recipes too!
Altered Art
Unique and custom altered art direct from artist.
Everything in Moderation, Including Moderation
Pop Culture, Food and Chicago -- with a twist.
Everybody Knows
Enjoy her daily reflections. Formerly Freshman 44.
Houston Bridges
Just another pilgrim trying to make some progress. [his self-description. I'd say he's the big brother I had to wait 34 years to find.]
SF Mike
Great photos and stories about San Francisco: its arts, politics and characters (the author among them). It makes me homesick.
Bats Left Throws Right
Best blog I read.
Appetites
A discriminating palate from New Orleans muses on food, recipies and restaurants.
Blondesense
Beauty, brains, boobs . . . and a great sense of humor.
A Winding Road In An Urban Area
smart, smart, smart, and oh, did I say smart?

The Fragile Industries Manifesto

Hammers
Why the hammer logo? "Hammers" was my maternal grandmother's maiden name, and I like the matrilineal symbolism. My great-grandfather was a blacksmith, so there's that family history as well. I consider myself ready to undertake the Fragile Industry of rebuilding my life with that hammer. Rebuilding the Insconsolable Secret “that hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence.” (C.S. Lewis.) In taking up this blog I raise the powerful tool of language, of exchanged ideas, of humor. I am readying other devices from my toolbox, rusty, disused. The hammer is an ironic symbol of freedom and new life, of encouragement to me. Take it up if you dare.

Currently Featured On The Nightstand

Leonard J. Arrington: Brigham Young: American Moses
I keep tossing this aside and coming back to it. I have several reading itches I need to scratch, like good plague and virus reading (I love a fun germ) and my trash thriller/mysteries, and 19th Century fiction, and historical accounts of Latter-Day Saints. I must clarify, I am an unafilliated Christian, neither Mormon-basher nor true believer. I find the fundamentals of Morman faith utterly unbelievable, not to say laughable, but my interest in religious history in general brings me back to Mormon studies again and again because it is historically accessible, unlike mainstream Christianity or Islam, the sources of which are lost in time. Brigham Young is the second-most influential figure in Mormon history next to Joseph Smith, the founder of the faith. I can turn to multiple sources for a historically-defensible biograph of Joseph Smith or the very origins of the LDS church. This book is the closest thing to an accurate history of Young, yet it was written by a devout Mormon. I feel great portions of Young's life in this work have been, if not whitewashed, at least granted enormous charitable impulse. Yet other works are so anti-Mormon in bias, such an obvious axe to grind, that I cannot believe them either. It's time for an outsider without agenda to write this biography. In the meantime, I continue to muddle through.
Tami Hoag: Kill the Messenger
OK, so I need some trash reading, and I like mysteries and thrillers to cleanse the palate between Deep Works. I have my favorites, like Michael Connelly, who has never written a bad book. Tami Hoag, judging by this, one of her latest, may become another. Like Connelly, she writes a completely undemanding page turner that is more than a dumb police procedural or woman-in-peril formula. It ain't literature, but this was fun.
Chris Ware: Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
A perennial favorite, and one I re-read every year or so. This incredible, multilayered, seemingly inscrutable yet abundantly accessible work changed my mind about the graphic novel. This is a story that could not be told in words alone. His artwork is not standard overblown comic book fare at all; it is precise and architectural. Ware's artistry is not only visual, it is historical, narrative, deeply psychological and completely unique. He plays on the tropes of the old "comix" and the hyperbole of the back-page ads for X-Ray Specs, blends that with the voice of innocence and amazement of the Chicago Exposition of 1893, and then, in a perfect hat trick, adds our current post-modern nihilist, isolated and lonely existence of the 21st century to bring it home. I cannot describe the plot, because the plot, as cathartic as it is, is only one vehicle for what you experience. Be prepared to be confused and overwhelmed and moved to tears in this journey from son to father to generations past.
Dorothy Dunnett: The Game of Kings (Lymond Chronicles, 1)
It's about time for me to begin my decennial re-reading of the Lymond Chronicles. I've actually read this, the first volume of the six, so many times that I've worn out two paperback versions. I make it all the way through all six every ten years at least. This series is a splendid addition to any Desert Island Reading List. If you like your heroes tortured, your buckles swashed with erudition, romances long on intellect yet short on the formulaic ripping of bodices, and sagas so sweeping all beaches would be free of sand, this is your meat. Recommended companion: The Dorothy Dunnet Companion Vol. I & II -- a concordance for this and Niccolo, her other series, which I find less compelling. Yes, she's such a reference-intense, not to say dense, writer that two volumes of clarification ARE necessary.
Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything
I'm working my way through this slowly, no reflection on my fascination with the scientific subject matter or my perennial delight with the author's superb diction. My pace is restrained only because I want to enjoy this at length. Bryson is one of my favorite wordsmiths, but in this new context, he not only entertains but enlightens. I'm a closet science geek, but some areas have escaped my enthusiasm until this book. I mean, geology, really. Now it's sexy.
Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics)
This has a post all its own. A brilliant, courageous work, shamefully relegated to the "gothic" or "romantic" pile. This is the work that started a thousand imitators, all of which pale in comparison to the language, the intelligence, and the iconoclastic bravery of the original.

While I flatter myself that I am a Mostly Useful Woman, and have found most men to be More Useless Than A Cucumber (there's a whole book on the subject), this week's blog tenant has given me something to think about. Useless Advice From Useless Men posts daily answers to questions about the gender wars that will tickle your funnybone, along with free useless gifts. For example, they give the following question their studious attention, and use outcome probabilities to reach a conclusion:

Dear Useless Men,

I have a question,

Is it better to be really really hot, but lacking in other areas, or really really smart? Hot gets you laid, smart gets you everything else.. so really, it's hard to choose.

Hot or Smart Girl

Written by a group of self-admitted Useless Men (one is named "Any More Useless And I'd Be A Cat") these guys serve the function of providing a much needed humor component to the issue. So they aren't completely useless. This is a conundrum along the lines of "one hand clapping."

Check out their site by clicking on the Rent My Blog thumbnail to the right for a giggle or two.

Comments

I suppose, that I would rather be intelligent, with common sense, over being hot. Hotness is limiting. Intelligence has no limitations. Great post.

Posted by: AnthonyLemons | Tuesday, May 30, 2006 at 11:37 AM

Thanks for posting about us! I'd get that book, but I'm off of vegetables. I'm more a meataterian with a side of potatoes...

Feel free to send in your own questions. In fact we'd encourage it! We're really rather useless without them.

Thanks for having us.

Posted by: USELESS MAN | Thursday, June 01, 2006 at 02:02 PM

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