Getting back in the groove

Sorry for the absence. Here are some things:

- It isn't all that often that you get to see David Foster Wallace appear in a comic strip, but anything is possible on the internets.

- My good friend Grier aka King Vitamin has his new album up for online listening. Check it out.

- The bread bag twisty tie conspiracy is true!

- One extinction I'm pretty excited about: The banana.

- Being a bit of a slow reader and having a problem with starting collections and not finishing them, my new year's resolution was to read 50 books this year. They have to be read completely from front to back. I'm a tad behind, but here is what I got so far:

The Aspern Papers – Henry James
How the Water Feels to the Fishes – Dave Eggers
Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape – Sarah Manguso
The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter
The Art of the Possible – Kenneth Koch
Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
Erasure – Percival Everett
Chronicle of a Death Foretold – Marquez
Venus Drive – Sam Lipsyte
Minor Robberies – Deb Olin Unferth
A Fan’s Notes – Frederick Exley
Captain Maximus – Barry Hannah
The Angle of Yaw – Ben Lerner
The Voice at 3:00 AM – Charles Simic
All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy

Of these, my favorites were:

A Fan’s Notes – Frederick Exley (simply one of the best books I've ever read. The Great Gatsby meets Charles Bukowski... or something. Pick it up.)
The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter (A few of these were sub-par, but most were excellent. Twisted retellings of popular fairy tales.)
Venus Drive – Sam Lipsyte (Killer stories.)

I also quite enjoyed the Deb Olin Unferth, Cormac McCarthy, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Charles Simic. Four authors I always admire.

- Lastly, the future of male contraception is part cyborg, part car door lock:

A surgeon inserts a silicon chip into the vas deferens. A key fob sends out RF waves, just like the key to your car. The silicon chip converts the RF into acoustic waves, which in turn induce movement in the material, allowing it to expand and seal the tube. Sending another pulse from the key fob lets the material contract allowing sperm to pass.