Feels like a two-fer of sadness today what with the death of Coretta Scott King and the speedy swearing-in of Judge Alito. It's not enough to hustle him into robes so that he can be confirmed in the afternoon, attend the State of the Union in the evening but Trent Lott has to shoot his mouth off about how the only reason anyone could oppose Alito is partisanship.

John Powers talks about this entertainingly in his book Sore Winners, that it's not enough to simply emerge victorious; it's important to smush your opponents' noses in their defeat. Indeed. In writing about the 2000 Election, Powers says that he wasn't expecting Bush to have won and then notes that, in retrospect, since Gladiator won best picture that year, he should have read the zeitgeist a little more closely.

So then what are we to glean from this year's nominees for Best Picture? Brokeback Mountain, Munich, Good Night and Good Luck, Crash and Capote? Other than the fact that the liberal, homosexual agenda is obviously thriving (go zeitgeist! woo hoo!)

Enough of that. I had to order a book from Amazon for school and I am a total sucker for the little message that says, "Wait! Add just $8.91 to your order and it qualifies for free shipping!" The book I ordered to push my $ over the threshold was 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style by Matt Madden.

Here's the story, as transcribed by Bookslut:

A young man sits at his desk, hard at work on his laptop.

He stands up and folds the laptop down.

As he walks out of the room, he stops for a second.

“What time is it?” asks a voice.

“It’s 1:15,” he says.

The voice says “Thanks!”

He opens the fridge.

The young man then stares at the open fridge.

He thinks to himself: What the hell was I looking for, anyway?!


I should point out that these are cartoons. Madden experiments with not only cartooning styles (underground comix, political cartoon, superhero) and narrative styles (point of view, language, etc.) but with everything. 99 is a lot of variations and setting the bar so high forces innovative approaches (tell the story as an advertisement, as a tapestry, as a map.)

What if it happened in a different location? What if everything was the opposite (and what does "opposite" mean when applied to "everything")? What if it had different text? Different images?

It's tough to describe how charming this book is; the website offers a sliver that suggests the joy.