A Street Fair
I’ve eliminated the distinction between “frequently” and “infrequently” updated friends, and I’ve added some links for friends who’ve been blogging for awhile now. A lot of these sites are really cool, and you should check them out. So imagine this: you’re walking down a grassy unpaved street amidst big old brick buldings on a warm sunny day in Blue-Skies-Fallingville. You turn a corner and wham! You’re in the midst of a street fair. Ideas are on sale here; art and politics and anecdote and adventure. Where do you turn? You wander from kiosk to kiosk. Here’s what you find:
Black Maze Books is a small press publisher specializing in raunchy poetry, but previewing mysterious and grandiose works for the future. It is just adjacent to Bud to Blossom, which is a sort of pseudo-ambassadorship to Australia with delicious scent of fresh-baked good food floating through the air. EGAD is populated with all sorts of political progressives, astrophysicists, Minnesotans, Israelis. It’s a mess of telescopes and charts.
One finds EGAD to be hauntingly similar to Elisabeth Blair and her sister sites. They both have telescopes. Now this is a big table with lots of goodies; music and art and history. It’s fronted by an equally artistic but more politically driven Dazzling Surprises, heir apparent to the Third Rail Themes. These tables feature an eloquent and compelling lecture series, currently driven by observations of Ghana.
(f)lawless occasionally stops by the other tables to steal their food, or maybe to egg Black Maze Books. Forge 22 Web Design tries to look all sleek and professional, but is inclined to steal food as well.
Two masked carnivalers serve up jambalaya at From the City of Big Shoulders to the Big Easy, under the watchful gaze of a couple of fierce kittens. This dynamic is whimsically documented by the diligent writers at Gnash Nosh. And Gyda’s Song is generally quiet, but selling some stunning antique thoughts. Helen’s Cafeteria of Stray Thoughts is populated by a staff of Slovakians with predilections for Harry Potter and Star Wars, and the adjacent John D. Martin table discusses these things from the Egyptian-American perspective.
The Layabouting kiosk may seem the most laid-back of the whole bunch, but they’re extraordinarily talkative. If you approach this table, don’t expect to leave in less than a half-hour, or without learning twenty new things you never thought of before.
The Leila Texts features a consortium of awesome text-messaging Leilas (but almost all of them are imposters!) which is necely set off by the steady stream of Italo blasting out from the Middle Branch Productions table. Such grooves are carved into bias-smashing arguments and dance over at The New PolyAnna.
Oh fragious day, calous, calay!, Once Bitten, Twice Registered, Unieuph, and Virtually Cleistogamic all have a decayed, unattended air to them. The cypress moss hangs heavy here. Most of these are adorned and stacked-high with relics of scavenger hunts past and gone. The same could be said for Small Shelly Fauna, with, of course, the addition of the skeletons of extinct denizens of the Permian Period.
The Patience Family is chilling out, patiently, which is to say a la San Francisco. The Pork Chop Express farms out behind their kiosk, trying to speak in halting Italian.
Smallhouse Log is one of the strangest looking tables: An admixture of religious imagery and dada-like art. Don’t confuse it with the throne of The Wolf Baron, where you can get three opinions for the price of one.
All of the goods here are technically free. You can buy them for the price of time.
