Depression Humor Revived

You know things are look­ing bleak when com­e­dy starts mak­ing fod­der out of depres­sion themes. Here’s a bit that tells you how to go from office work­er to home­less drifter in sev­en easy steps. (Video cour­tesy of How­cast)

via Val­ley­wag

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Dave Eggers in Conversation with Chris Elliott

“Come­di­an, actor and satirist Chris Elliott has made a career of blur­ring truth and absur­di­ty. Elliott wrote and per­formed for Late Night With David Let­ter­man, and went on to per­form in oth­er tele­vi­sion pro­grams, includ­ing Sat­ur­day Night Live.” Here he is in con­ver­sa­tion with writer Dave Eggers (A Heart­break­ing Work of Stag­ger­ing Genius). The video is cour­tesy of Fora.TV, and you can watch it here.

Jonathan Franzen Reads

In a quick three min­utes, you can watch the some­times cocky author of The Cor­rec­tions read from an essay on bird watch­ing, cour­tesy of BigThink.com, where you can also find more videos with intel­lec­tu­al heft.

For more thought­ful video, also see our YouTube playlist and the relat­ed col­lec­tion: Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 70 Edu­ca­tion­al Video Col­lec­tions.

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China’s Space Walk: Fresh Footage

As US stock declines, Chi­na’s stock keeps going up. It’s the sto­ry of the decade, real­ly. Here’s footage from Chi­na’s first space walk this past week …

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What Happens on Mars

From The Dai­ly Dish:

“Clouds move across the sky on Mars. The sun ris­es. Snow falls — but nev­er touch­es the ground.”

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George Orwell’s 1984: Download Free Audio Book Version

I first post­ed this one dur­ing the dead of sum­mer, so it seemed worth revis­it­ing this now that we’re all a bit more focused .…

Over at the Inter­net Archive, you can find George Orwell’s clas­sic, 1984, avail­able as a free audio book. As you’ll see, the record­ing is pro­fes­sion­al­ly done. You can down­load the full zip file here. Or alter­na­tive­ly you can get the indi­vid­ual mp3 files, or stream them, from this page. On a more per­ma­nent basis, you can find Orwell’s 1949 work housed in our Free Audio Book Col­lec­tion along with lots of oth­er free texts. Or see it on our list of Life Chang­ing Books.

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New Fiction in Five Parts

This post is a twofer. First, I get to tell you about FiveChapters.com, a web site that posts new fic­tion in kind of a nov­el way. Almost a throw­back to the 19th cen­tu­ry, FiveChap­ters pub­lish­es short fic­tion in ser­i­al for­mat. Each week, they present a sto­ry in five parts, and you can fol­low along as the week unfolds. Now (and here’s the sec­ond part), let me men­tion that FiveChap­ters show­cased last week a sto­ry from Scott Hutchins, a good writer and col­league of mine. It’s called $30,000. Here it goes.

Used Book Sculptures

Thanks to a heads up from one of our loy­al read­ers (thanks Bob!) you can see a new artis­tic trend that’s turn­ing books back into trees. Good stuff.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.