…this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate.

– Kurt Vonnegut, MOTHER NIGHT

Not sure where this is going. All I can tell you is that these two characters will meet…

• You can read the two Kelly Link stories that won Nebula awards online: “Magic For Beginners” and “The Faery Handbag.”
• Touring is how we make money. There’s a big scam in the record industry and you don’t make any money from royalties. Just keep coming to shows. Will do!
  
• Is DEVO more relevant than ever? In Devo’s heyday, Mothersbaugh and Casale wrote many of their songs only after they had come up with a concept for the video.
• Clive Thompson on beating video game bosses.
• Don’t believe them! Don’t believe them! You gotta su-su-su-su-su-su-pect device!! Ted Leo covering Stiff Little Fingers’ “Suspect Device”: [MP3]

If you happen to be downtown tomorrow afternoon, stop by the RTA offices on 6th Street from 5-7 to see the poetry bus.

We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.

– Thomas Edison

• New interviews with George Saunders and Etgar Keret.
• Read Edward Gorey’s meditation on the literary life, THE UNSTRUNG HARP, online.
• I mean, here I am sitting in Cleveland, Ohio. What do I know about the New York literary scene?
• Speaking of Cleveland, Mac’s Backs finally has an operational website, and Books Cleveland is a website for all the independent bookstores in the area.
• The first vignette of Daniel Handler’s (aka Lemony Snicket) ADVERBS, and the review, which calls the book a “concept album.” (I had no clue he played accordian on 69 LOVE SONGS.) As far as concept albums go, my ambition is to write the literary equivalent of Wire’s PINK FLAG.
• 1-2 punch: Destroyer’s “European Oils” [MP3] and “Painter in Your Pocket” [MP3] Stream all of RUBIES. And, oh heck, just go here and fill up your Ipod with Destroyer.

This was inspired by Maureen’s post about taking her mother to Bob Evans for lunch. I’ve gone out to lunch with my mom and grandma several times, and grandma always picks “Bob’s.” When I looked around at the people there, I always wondered what was the appeal…

Then, a few years ago, Meg came across this article in the NYTimes. It profiles a small town in West Virginia where there are two major restaurants: a cozy, somewhat David-Lynchian diner, and a Bob Evans. And the writer, in this really wonderful way, turns the two restaurants into symbols of two different Americas. But this was the excerpt that really caught me:

The goal at every Bob Evans restaurant is to be the same as every other Bob Evans restaurant. ”We want to make sure the experience someone has in New Martinsville is the same as the one they’d have in Orlando, St. Louis or Baltimore,” said Tammy Roberts Myers, the P.R. director at the Bob Evans headquarters in Columbus, Ohio. The company’s guiding principle is simple: consistency, in everything from ambience to the distance between tables to the arrangement of food on your plate.

”Going out to eat is risky,” said Steve Govey, the Bob Evans regional manager for the Ohio Valley. ”You never know what you’re going to get. But at Bob Evans, that’s not true. Our strategy is being completely predictable, something people know they can count on.”

When I think about all the changes my grandmother has witnessed in her lifetime, and the way her body and her mind is changing, I think, “no wonder she wants to go to Bob Evans.” There aren’t any suprises there. It’s safe.

I’d like to turn this into a full length…