The Exquisite Corpse Adventure

The Library of Congress has recently revamped their literacy outreach website in anticipation of the 9th annual edition of the National Book Festival. The new read.gov site contains tons of classic texts you can read/browse with an all new fancy page-turning technology. Also on the site is the LOC’s own creation, “The Exquisite Corpse Adventure” (long title: “The Exquisite Corpse Adventure: A Very Unusual and Completely Amazing Story Pieced Together Out of So Many Parts That It Is Not Possible To Describe Them All Here So Go Ahead and Just Start Reading.”)

Exquisite Corpse Adventure

In name, this collaborative writing project harkens back to the original Surrealist exquisite corpse game, which was in turn based on an old Victorian parlour game called Consequences. Our more modern Mad Libs owe a huge debt to these games, as these games provide methods by which a collection of words (or images) are collectively assembled in some sequential manner. The LOC’s Exquisite Corpse Adventure will have 26 chapters contributed by famed authors of children’s books.

I think this is a supremely cool idea to get kids interested in reading, writing, and the power of collaboration with friends and peers, whether it be in a serious artistic endeavor, or just to prove that your creativity can be augmented tremendously just by rappin’ with your pals. Some of my more treasured memories center around collaborative writing activities: working on a newspaper column with my pal Billy, the word games our creative writing club used to play in High School, penning a dirty Mad Lib with friends, relieving bathroom boredom with roommates in college (in word/picture form), collaborating on a zine, working on a goofy short story with a friend by swapping back and forth each sentence, etc. I can only hope that innovative literacy projects like this one will help inspire new generations of young people to new forms of creativity.

Montage of 1980s Video Mate Profiles

It’s kind of amazing to trace the ways in which people have tried to use technology in order to (hopefully) get laid.

When I was in high school in the early 1990s, we filled out some dopey questionnaires that were supposed to gauge our personality, interests, and temperament.  I believe this was done on a Scantron sheet, like the kind you were used to filling out for achievement and I.Q. tests. These were fed into some computer where they were analyzed. A couple weeks later, we were given “Data Match Sheets” with the names of people the computer had matched us with, along with compatibility scores. I honestly can’t remember who ended up being on my form, nor whose form I ended up on. But I do remember being racked with anxiety over the stupid thing, figuring I would get matched with the biggest dullards my tiny school would have to offer, and that somehow, this was saying something bad about me.

I can’t find my Data Match Sheet, but I allude to it in some notes I’ve found here and there. Although this was just some silly high school stunt, it reminds me of a primitive match.com type service.  They both insinuate that they will be able to find a perfect match for you because they’ve got their mitts on some sort of benevolent, HAL-esque love machine/computer. Nevermind the fact that those questionnaires can’t really gauge the context of your answers, or measure the ways in which you might ultimately be hard-wired for attraction.

I was reminded of that when I saw the following video today, which was shared with me by my friend Jesse S. It’s a montage of video profiles made by men in the 1980s for a service called “Video Mate.” These men have hilarious mustaches, muscle shirts, mullets, Cosby sweaters, and yes, there’s even a viking costume in there.  It is a total charm offensive. Hilarious one-liners and snazzy pick-up lines abound. Some of the men are pretty creepy, and yet some of them seem like genuinely sweet guys who are just clueless when it comes to how to get members of the opposite sex to pay attention to them. It’s a fun little time capsule from a time in which video reigned supreme. It all seems so hopelessly cheesy to us now, but we have to remember that this was actually a viable option for singles back in the day. That and going on The Love Connection.

Dating Montage
Uploaded by smithy00101. – Independent web videos.

Grandma Loves Her Knives, 1969

‘TEEN Magazine Cover, September 1958

Color Word Monsters, 1982

Disciplinary Letter From Resident Hall Director [Breakin' the Law], 1996

Selections from Herra Koipeliinin, 1923

I bought this nifty old Finnish children’s book at a library sale in the 1990s. I got it when I was really into Scandinavian punk/ hardcore music, and was thinking it would be cool to learn Swedish or Finnish. Once I looked at this book, I abandoned all hope for Finnish because it just looks pretty much incomprehensible with all the double vowel nonsense. I did buy a “Teach Yourself Swedish” book around the same time as this book, but I think I only cracked the first chapter or two before I got frustrated and threw in the towel.

Passed Notes: The Tiffany Files

When I was in junior high and high school, it was pretty common for girls to pass notes. The notes were generally pretty inconsequential; but occasionally contained juicy gossip, or a funny anecdote from the days proceedings. I suspect the passed note (along with other forms of handwritten communication) has probably become an artifact in teenagerdom, given the ascendancy of e-mail and text messaging.

Dad’s senior photo, 1973

I inherited the hair, but not the wide lapels.

World Wrestling Federation Card, May 30, 1991

I was really into professional wrestling when I was a kid. I don’t exactly know what interested me , but here’s what I now suspect was going on.