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12:02 Allen orders green tea. He wants to learn what all the green tea fuss is about. 12:03 'wordsman is drawing penguins in the style of Raphael. 12:05 Allen still wants to know when Beverly is coming home. 'worsdman says it totally depends on her assignment editor. Her satellite phone is only for emergencies. 12:07 Rob sits down and puts a book called "VAS: An Opera in Flatland" by writer Steve Tomasula and designer Stephen Farrell down on the table. This is what Rob means by visual/verbal literature! |
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12:12 'wordsman and Allen ooh and ahh over Vas. Such a great use of two colors of ink! 12:14 Rob says the two colors of ink are "flesh" as described by the CrayolaTM crayon folks, and "blood." The whole book is smart like that. It's about bodies and eugenics in the biotech era . . . and a guy hesitating on the brink of a vasectomy. 12:17 All wince. Strong topic. 12: 18 Green tea --- big whoop dee do. Tastes like the byproduct of a distant, better tea. 12:22 Allen and 'wordsman vie to be first to borrow Vas. Rob gives them his lecture about buying their own copies, here, and supporting cool artists. They roll their eyes and nod sheepishly. 12: 27 Rob is going to hang out with Tomasula and, hopefully, Farrell, too, next week at a conference at Notre Dame called &Now, A Festival of Writing as a Contemporary Conceptual Art. It will be a gathering of the tribe. Good partying is forecast. Allen is envious. 12:32 'wordsman shows a drawing of a penguin Socrates. Penguins think well as they walk. 12:37 Rob is fascinated by an online flash game called Smack the Penguin or Pingu. A Yeti swats a penguin for distance. Friends have gotten addicted to it, while acknowledging it's hilariously dumb. A typical 2004 guilty pleasure. 12:41 Allen says Pingu has spawned it's own whole Pingu Microculture, with parody games, rituals and lore. Allen agrees that the spread of Pingu is representative of how culture travels nowadays. 12: 46 'wordsman shows a drawing of a penguin horrified by this discussion. 12:49 Allen says that guys who have severe cases of the fidgets should not wear shiny nylon workout pants. At the library, Allen could hear a plump guy with shiny nylon pants eight tables away. The guy was sitting and pumping his thighs rhythmically, lost in thought, working on a laptop. It sounded like a storm at sea. 12: 53 Rob was on a flight where a guy in shiny nylon workout pants woke everybody up each time he went to the bathroom. It sounded like unloading gravel from a dump truck. 12:57 Allen wants them to make noise-cancelling headphones expressly for the sound of shiny nylon pants. It's doable. 12: 58 'wordsman shows a drawing of a herd of disgruntled penguins grumbling amongst themselves. 1:02 Allen has a green tea buzz. He drank two whole pots. It's a mellow jitter. 1:05 'wordsman and Allen tell Rob to tell Tomasula and Farrell that they are awesome. 'wordsman is short on sheckles. All put on coats. The bill is covered and they leave. |