random acts of linkage

*sigh* - So far eight businesses in the East Bay have been held up by robbers in the past couple of weeks. Via LAist.

I watched the SNL episode with Christopher Walken hosting and was surprised to find myself laughing at most of it. Especially Laser Cats.

I am looking forward to Morgan Spurlock's movie Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? Mark says, "Maybe he's with Carmen Sandiego." Here's an AVClub interview with Spurlock about the movie.

junot diaz links

Because he is one of my favorite writers right now and he just won the friggin Pulitzer AND he teaches at MIT.

Excerpt from his next book. Via Maud Newton. That picture cracks me up.

I'm as nerdy as they come, a deep lover of books, but those long hard years marked me as deeply as that river marked Conrad and maybe that's what the writer means when they say that I'm "from the street." If that's what the writer's getting at then I'll take it, I've no interest in erasing my particular version of the "American Experience."

Newsweek interview. Via coffeeandink.

But in my mind, I think that the same way a small, cold, gray, drizzly island nation in the North Atlantic could imagine itself the center of the universe, I see no difference why a Dominican who comes from this tiny little place and time can't also imagine himself the center of the universe.

LAist interview.

Going to college was like immigrating again except it wasn't as fucked up, it was actually kind of fun. I mean, it wasn't fuckin paradise, I mean, I worked my way through college, delivering fuckin pool tables. I mean, I know kids who say they worked their way through college and they had a fuckin work study job at the library, you know? I was fuckin working my ass off, so it wasn't a fun ass joke, but compared to what immigration was like when I was a kid? I was like, shit yeah, this is great! You get ass, people invite you to smoke weed, you meet people from all over the world, you read books you can't believe ever could have been written.

This video is from the Authors@Google series and is about 50 minutes long:

Watch on YouTube