Follow this advice and you’re sure to fulfill your dreams of Broadway stardom in no time, without all of the trifling effort and emotional sacrifice.

Playwright Llewellyn Hinkes dispenses with a hapless write-in question. Sure, there’s a lot of snark in there. But there’s also seems to a good point buried beneath all the shrillness. Plus it’s hilarious.

In a blog post last month, I mentioned the pep-up power of Merlin Mann – specifically, the pep-up power of a specific speech on the subject of Getting to Work that he delivered at MaxFunCon.

Here’s a recording of the speech and Mann’s writeup. Listen, read and be moved.

At this rate, I may as well just make a post category for David Foster Wallace.

A personal essay published in the December 1991 issue of Harper’s Magazine, for your reading enjoyment.

This book contains highlights from Russian artist Vladimir Arkhipov’s collection of unique artifacts. Objects made by ordinary Russians inspired by a lack of immediate access to manufactured goods during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I’d like to get my hands on a copy.

Via Coudal.

I dare you to tell me you don’t want one. I dare you.

ps: Make sure you watch the video

Just like the title says. Saul Bass – a graphic designer who did a lot of work with Alfred Hitchcock, for instance, in addition to many other directors – is responsible for some pretty iconic stuff.

Timothy Egan, writing like Cormac McCarthy from Hell, tells the class how he spent his summer vacation.

Any rational human being would be tempted to see this as another eco-stunt, but listen: Egan gave up technology only because technology brings news (news being the enemy, temporarily). That’s it.

His findings are more poetic than scientific.

Sleep tight. Via Buffering.

The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert tears into the trendy practice of Thoreauvian eco-stunts – which typically consist of middle class white people voluntarily forsaking things in the name of conservation. And book deals.

Kolbert’s piece isn’t the first such criticism that I’ve read (that last link was to an excellent Mother Jones piece published last year) but hers is easily my favorite.

Today, an essay from The Morning News:

America has a problem with death; zombies have a problem with life. After seeing more than 60 zombie films, Johnathon Williams explains the difference.

Related to the much-discussed When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection.