I’ve been compiling a ton of images for my Great Rabbits of Literature sleeve for several months now and working out this concept in my head for much, much longer. If your first thought is Watership Down, allow me to emphasize the Great Rabbits part. (Those rabbits were assholes, and not my kind of assholes.) I’m not even that stuck on the “Rabbits” part; hares are cool too. And “Literature” is perhaps too limiting, as I’ve included ancient representations of mythological and folktale rabbits throughout history. The symbolism of the rabbit is linked to the moon almost universally, even in cultures separated by time and distance, with little chance of contact. Death, sex, luck, danger, drunkenness, love, rationality, brave and steadfast kindness, trickery, and cunning wit… the rabbit has been used by storytellers forever to give their audiences lessons in all of them. I’ll post in detail on each rabbit , little by little, as its portion of my arm is completed.

Below (here, for rss readers) is a jpeg dump of the source material I’ve given the artist. We start next week … and go on once a month for the rest of the year, probably. I’m really excited to be working with Cindy. (More next week, when I’ve got some bloody gross progress photos to share.) Her eyes lit up when I explained what I want to do, and that enthusiasm from the artist with the portfolio I’ve been dreamily clicking through since I started getting serious about this made it all come together for me. The time is now!

Great Rabbits of Literature

Fictional rabbits from ancient through modern times.

35 Photos

• My internet friend Lindsey Markel was mentioned in the current editon of Bitch Magazine. And she posted an excerpt from the introduction to her upcoming book, You Are Among Friends, in her blog. I cannot wait to get my hands on a copy! Lindsey is also performing in the one-woman play My Name is Rachel Corrie in October and if you are in the Champaign-Urbana area, I hope you’ll go see it!
• Melissa over at Shakesville takes a look at “Real” Christians and Christian Privilege and goes to town on Ray Comfort & Kirk Cameron all in the span of a two days. GO LISS!
• Awesome, awesome comic from Carolita Johnson in the Huffington Post, A Woman Walks Down the Street. The comments are an added kicker.
• I can’t narrow down the most enjoyable post on Tiger Beatdown. So you should just go read it all, subscribe to the feed, and thank me later (with beers).
• Do you want your blood to boil? Here: Are female students ‘a perk of the job’? And a follow-up from vice-chancellor douchebag himself. (Just in case you didn’t loathe him enough.)

My list is short this time because I am currently working on getting my resume out to as many places as possible, while playing around with my new Wacom tablet that I have pined for since 1998 when Jeff sent me a link to the site that took a million years to load via dial-up but has never left my heart for a single day in these eleven restless years. Do I like it? Yes. Does it make me feel clumsy and untalented? Well, yes. But when has that ever stopped me?

This is part of an ad campaign for a marriage education program (that received a grant from the federal Healthy Families Initiative) found all over local billboards and in PAT buses. Does it instill confidence in their interpersonal relationship guidance skills?

More at Pittsburgh’s City Paper.

• threadbared has been looking at standardization, street style and style blogs. This post Footpath Zeitgeist on Street Style includes links to their discussions on the subject while looking back at earlier takes on the subject from 2007.
• Too Many White Girls at Jacket Whys. Race in young adult fiction is something I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about lately. (I’m worried I’m going to get it wrong in my book.) “But the dearth of black people on the year’s mainstream book covers is pretty appalling.” –Could not agree more.
• Disquisitions on Alternate History at Westerblog. Scott Westerfeld[1. who followed me back on Twitter!] has a video up from a talk at BookExpo America he gave with other YA authors about alternate history.
• “From the Wilds of America” – Analyzing the Idea of “British Colonial America” in Steampunk [Essay] from Racialicious. — Race in steampunk culture. “As pessimistic as Melancholic Steampunk sounds, it is also a definition of steampunk that gives SoCs[2. Steampunks of Color] the opportunity to confront our histories, since we cannot afford the luxury of nostalgia for the past.”

Ok, now from the science section of my feed reader:

• Keeping an Eye on Inflation at Catalogue of Organisms. Taxonomic inflation, that is. This is fascinating.
• Fossil hunting– Digging up extinct viruses in reptilian genomes at erv. That’s “genomes” not “gnomes” and while you might not think it could get any cooler than the notion of reptilian gnomes –erv will not disappoint. Let me assure you that this is awesome.

This might seem like quite a mixed bag, but every bit of it fits into my book research.

Oh! While I’m linking to things that are cool — check out Heidi’s blogathon campaign. She’s blogging for Rainbow Pride WV.

This is from the Dior Fall 2009 collection. I’ve never saved an image from a couture show to my hard drive before, but this dress speaks to me in tones usually reserved for private conversations in the dark. The line, the color, the detail. That collar! Oh!