The novelist, essayist, humorist, and educator, David Foster Wallace, best known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, was found dead Friday night at his home in Claremont. His wife, Karen Green, discovered that Wallace had hanged himself when she returned home on Friday, September 12. He was 46.

Wallace won a cult following from the very start of his literary career with his darkly humorous and ironic wit. His first novel was published in 1987, The Broom of the System, but it was his 1996 novel, Infinite Jest, which shot him to the top of the literary world with its sprawling, complex and ambitious nonlinear plot that ran 1,079 pages.  

Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, Feb. 21, 1962, but was raised in Illinois, where his father taught philosophy at the University of Illinois and his mother taught English at the local community college.

He attended Amherst College, majoring in philosophy before switching his attention to creative writing. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1985, turning his senior thesis into the basis for The Broom of the System.

Since 2002, when he was named the first Roy E. Disney professor of creative writing, he had taught at Pomona College.

Today marks the anniversary of the birth of a personal hero of mine, the poet Guillaume Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky, better known as Apollinaire, who was born on this date in 1880. His greatest contribution to the 20th century, other than coining the term ‘surrealism’ and helping to publicize and define the Cubist movement, was probably his poetry, influencing many of the avant-garde, dada and surrealist writers in post-Great War France, such as André Breton and Tristan Tzara.

Early in the century Guillaume Apollinaire’s began to devise his Calligrammes, a term he used to explain his shaped poems.

It’s Raining

It’s raining women’s voices as if they had died even in memory
And it’s raining you as well marvelous encounters of my life O little drops
Those rearing clouds begin to neigh a whole universe of auricular cities
Listen if it rains while regret and disdain weep to an ancient music
Listen to the bonds fall off which hold you above and below

w00t. – interjection: expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word "yay", example: “w00t! I won word of the year”

The word has yet to find its way into the regular Merriam-Webster dictionary—but its inclusion in the online Open Dictionary, along with the top honors might just improve its chances. This year's winning word first became popular in competitive online gaming forums. Although the double "o" in the word is usually represented by double zeroes, the exclamation is also known to be an acronym for "We Owned the Other Team". In 2006 the Merriam-Webster dictionary voted “truthiness”, from the Stephen Colbert Report, as the word of the year.

However! (Drum-roll please)

New Oxford American Dictionary 2007 Word of the Year is “locavore”. Locavore was coined two years ago by a group of four women in San Francisco who proposed that local residents should try to eat only food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius. Another spelling variation sometimes seen is “localvores”. The locavore movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation. The New Oxford American Dictionary word of the year in 2006 was “Carbon Neutral”.

Perhaps the holiday season has already taken something of a toll on my psyche, (though I do little shopping and I’m more or less done), I’m feeling a tad bit overwhelmed these last few days. I think it’s mostly due to the fact that my trusted computer is in the shop for some repairs, as is my guitar amp … and I think every electronic gadget I own. And on top of that, someone hacked into my own Myspace account. And today a plumber is suppose to show up and take care of a few problems we have here at the old homestead, but how often do plumbers actually show up on the day scheduled, and on time? I should perhaps lighten the mood, quit the blather - or just step boldly forth and augment the blather, and mention that I’m really fond of old school fear inducing literature on subjects like culture shock and modern paranoia, media paranoia, ("the medium is the message") … (my personal favorite faux-cultural-analytical phrase: “media derived fantasies”), conspiratorial governments, and discourses on the mechanization of middle class culture on their efforts to mute class … basically anything on the spooky-spooky future. I’ll just quote some Alvin Toffler here and put up a pretty picture of a galactic spiral. I’ll feel better. Hey, I do feel better!

"Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock."

In short the definition of future shock is a personal sensitivity to "too much change in too short a period of time". I think Toffler is speaking to me directly, and that’s not a good sign!

I recently came across one of Toffler’s old books in a thrift store, The Third Wave. I glanced through it, and it’s not as richly paranoid as I would like it to be- I need more suspicion. If I was on my own computer, I could just click over to some eerie bookmarked pages, and just settle in with a nice cup of Earl Grey tea. There is a crumb of comfort there, don’t know why, but on some of these sites I find just enough soothing reassurance that whatever the hell is going on, seems to keep right on going on. It’s a disquieting assurance, yes, but it’s consistent, besides you know in this day and age you grab whatever peace you can find, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now ... here's looking at you kid.