Lick My Dirty Asshole, I'm Smarter than You

The entirety of the Voynich Manuscript has been illustrated and put online. Yes please.

I have a large library by most normal standards. Seemingly I’ve arranged my life in order to acquire as many books as possible. I worked for three years right out of college in a large secondhand bookstore — where I was, all by myself, the paperback department — then for a literary review where I raided the mailbag on a daily basis. Over the decades I’ve spent a lot of my free time in book barns and flea markets and charity bazaars and estate sales. I review books, and sometimes have served as a judge for literary awards, and now and then have books sent to me speculatively by publishers and occasionally authors. And I’m bilingual; when I travel to a French-speaking country I literally need an extra suitcase for the books I bring back. Meanwhile I’ve moved around, often; only once did I live in a single place for as long as 10 years (and it was possibly the rattiest of all my residences). I lived in New York City in that bygone era when as soon as you got a $20 raise you’d move to a slightly bigger apartment. My older friends probably still suffer joint aches from helping carry my hundred boxes up six flights on multiple occasions.

Why on Earth would you want to strap one of these to your wrist? It barely tells the time, and it can’t take pictures, tweet or connect to your Facebook. In fact, very few people would have the faintest idea what it is, or why you’d want one at all. But for those that do recognize its intricate gears and dials, this tiny, complex piece of machinery tells a vivid and incredible tale. It’s a story of gigantic scientific upheaval, of adventure and shipwreck on the high seas, of war and death. A story of amazing intellect, lost riches and impossible chance - a sunken treasure that Jaques Cousteau once described as “more valuable than the Mona Lisa” - and it’s connected with an ancient celebrity whose star shone so brightly that he’s still a household name more than 2200 years after his death… Read on!

You’ve never heard of this game. It’s in only one cabinet, playable in one city and, generously estimating, maybe it makes a dollar a day. Nothing about this video game suggests it’s someone’s meal ticket, but it is. For life.

Built over the past year, Off The Waffle the game, found in Off The Waffle the restaurant, isn’t some self-regarding art piece commissioned by those who run a trendy breakfast spot in Eugene, Ore. Some things are, recognizably, a gift. This is such a thing.

And though the game, in its wooden, hand-finished arcade cabinet, with cartoon characters based on the cooks racing around in the back, has given smiles to everyone in the restaurant, ultimately, it wasn’t made for anybody who works here.

In 2003, officials in Garden Grove, California, a community of 170,000 people wedged amid the suburban sprawl of Orange County, set out to confront a problem that afflicts most every town in America: drivers speeding through school zones.

Local authorities had tried many tactics to get people to slow down. They replaced old speed limit signs with bright new ones to remind drivers of the 25-mile-an-hour limit during school hours. Police began ticketing speeding motorists during drop-off and pickup times. But these efforts had only limited success, and speeding cars continued to hit bicyclists and pedestrians in the school zones with depressing regularity.

Michael Greer

I’m a guy who loves books. For years that’s meant teaching literature both here and abroad. I like getting into the heavy stuff. I work with teenagers who understand Hobbes, and when we read the Odyssey together, we read the whole thing, not just the fantasy bits. But I also like working with my hands and that’s why being a bookbinder just seems to fit. It seems like such a rarity nowadays-the possibility to work with one’s hands. Especially to create something from start to finish. And then when that something happens to be the text of a really good book, it just works.