Sunday 15 February 2009

Sick, but it's snowing so that's something at least.

I'm sick, but hopefully I'm getting better now and it's started snowing again so that automatically improves my mood.

Seriously, the water pump for my building broke so I was without water for a night, I was sick, there was no snow... I was pretty fucking down for a while there.

One thing that kept me going was the good spirit of the Hobo. I recently took delivery of a copy of "The Areas of my Expertise" an entirely fictional and very funny almanac of useless information by one John Hodgman. That'll be a link to his website back there, go check it out. Amongst the disinformation and flim-flam within there is a list of 700 hobo names that is just spectacular. It's worth a book in itself, and I'm delighted to find that it has spawned a site where you people have illustrated all 700 hoboes. It's fantastic when someone takes an already brilliant idea and runs with it. I have, somewhere an mp3 of Hodgman himself reading aloud all 700 hobo names but it seems to have gone from his site. It was a thing of wonder, a 40 minute recording that you could totally space out to, and in which words lost all meaning after a while.


I like John Hodgman because he always pops up unbidden in things I like. He used to write for McSweeney's, of which I'm a big fan and compered a McSweeney's event that I attended in London admirably. Thereafter I happened upon his 700 hobo names which I thought was incredible. Shortly after that he appeared on The Daily Show promoting his book of nonsense and was picked up as a reporter on that show. He appeared in Flight of the Conchords, gave his voice to the makers of Coraline which I want to see, and now I find that he used to be Bruce Campbell's literary agent. He is a man of whom I approve, thouroughly.

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