SERIOUS INTROSPECTION

Lost books.

posted: 08 January, 2009

One of the 48 boxes that we shipped from Scotland to Finland disappeared back in August.  I counted 48 when the shipment arrived; perhaps I miscounted, or maybe the box never left Glasgow in the first place.  Due to slow unpacking, I didn't even realise it was gone until late October.  I'm not completely sure what was in there; I notice more missing books all the time.

Stanley Elkin - Mrs. Ted Bliss - this is Elkin's last novel and I haven't read it yet.

William Gaddis - JR - This was a lovely British paperback edition that I bought planning to re-read it.  Not now, I guess.

Fernando Pessoa - The Book of Disquiet - This is the kind of book worth owning, even though you can find it in most libraries, because it's the kind of book that you can pull out and open to randomly and read any page when you are looking for some inspiration

Alasdair Gray - 1982 Janine - My favorite Alasdair Gray book and one that I was also planning to re-read soon.

Joseph McElroy - Lookout Cartridge - One of my favorite books ever; McElroy is a writer who is rather hard to find in libraries (which is a real shame); thus I justify owning his books, and I will replace this soon.  I also had a 1992 issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction dedicated to McElroy that will be harder to replace.

Ron Loewinsohn - Magnetic Field(s) - Another great and fairly obscure novel.

Julian Cope - Japrocksampler - Not sure how this got lost, as this box seems to be mostly fiction E-P, but it's gone.  Luckily I had actually read it.

Harry Mathews - The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium - Harry is probably my single favorite writer ever and I lost a couple, but luckily I had replacement copies in America.  Not this one, though.

Ben Marcus - Noteable American Women - I've actually bought this twice before and will buy it again.  This is one of the most inspiring of all recent books I have read and also something that I frequently pull out and read section of for inspiration.  The Age of Wire and String was also in that box.

 If anyone would like to buy me replacement copies of these, I would be very grateful!

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books

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09 January 2009

Serious Introspection
with John W. Fail was a live show in Helsinki, Finland from 2015-2016. We tried our best to entertain. You know, we did eight shows in the first season and it was pretty time-consuming, but we were excited to come back for eight more in 2016. It's all archived here. Each week, John along with hype man Justin Tyler Tate, interviewed people about their creative process and tried to deliver a direct, communicative experience about art and performance. The show took place at Mad House Helsinki's Ihana Baari, and was free to attend. No one is really sure why John hosted a talk show, but a lot of strange things have happened in the universe and this is ultimately pretty insignificant. We've made videos available from all episodes of the show here for you to watch. We also will occasionally post audio podcasts when we get the time to go more in-depth with people, outside of the public show. The show is indefinitely on hiatus as Justin moved away and other projects took over. The videos aren't always perfect and the audio even less so, but we hope you still enjoy them. But wait, there's more! We will come to your event and offer our services for hosting, hyping and media specialisation (live tweeting) for a variable fee. We are still available, in theory to be booked for parties, wedding, bar mitzvahs and other events. The for-profit arm of Serious Introspection is called SI Services and we're up for anything, really! Now that we all live in different places, it's probably going to be quite an ordeal just to have three white guys host your kid's birthday party. But please believe me when I say that we would really, really love to do this. If you'd like to find out more about Serious Introspection, you can start by watching these episodes and seeing if it's your cup of tea. We have made the show available as a podcast where people get Podcasts, generally iTunes or Stitcher. Try the Overcast app, it's really nice. We have a Facebook page which we use to post info about the upcoming shows and videos as they are released. The hashtag #SeriousIntrospection contains the running stream of live tweets from our media specialist Ernest Truely (and anyone else who might contribute). So yeah, that's it, pretty much. We will announce future events and SI-related matters here so feel free to check back any time. We're trying to keep this page simple, if for no other reason than our cup runneth over with websites already.