Fed by Birds

If you're still struggling to decide on your goals for the New Year, Neuronarrative gives us the reassuring example of the influential psychologist William James, who was notoriously indecisive, and spent 15 years trying to choose a career, switching from science to painting, back to science, natural history, medicine etc.

His diary for the end of 1905 has a familiar look to some of us:

'October 26: "Resign!"

October 28: "Resign!!!"

November 4: "Resign?"

November 7: "Resign!"

November 8: "Don't resign"

November 9: "Resign!"

November 16: "Don't resign!"

November 23: "Resign"

December 7: "Don't resign"

December 9: "Teach here next year".'

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This slightly stunned lull between Christmas and New Year is the perfect time to watch old films - I suggest Capra's You Can't Take It With You. It's uplifting, but also topical, featuring a greedy banker getting his comeuppance during the Depression.

The family of eccentrics that you're supposed to prefer to the capitalists are actually quite wearing - see below. Personally it makes me want to go and get stuck into some serious paperwork at the bank. But there are lots of good little scenes - as above, where James Stewart demonstrates how to embarrass your stenographer-fiancee in a posh restaurant.

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It's easy to fall behind with modern poetry. Apparently, Flarf is dead. Didn't know it was alive? Keep up, please. It's all lemur poetry now.

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These days, it's heartening to see a change in the google searches that end up at Fed by Birds. Once search phrases ranged from the baffling to the frankly horrifying, but now they are generally for much more appealing things, including, last month, "lovely monkey" and "healthy old man". I think lovely monkeys are already well represented here, but what could be more cheering than a picture of a really healthy old man? So much so that I think I'll make it a regular feature.

We start with Jack Beers, whose amazing life was the subject of a documentary called Holes in my Shoes. Jack was once famous as New York's Strongest Boy, and hasn't lost it: YouTube features a clip of him tearing a phone book in half at the age of 94. He's now 98, and seems to have joined a band.

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Everyone with a blog seems to be going crazy for the Typealyzer, where you put in the website address and it tells you what personality the author has.

Fed by Birds, it claims, is written by type ESTP - The Doer: "The active and playful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities. The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time."

This couldn't be more wrong. There's absolutely no joking or action-filled work around here, and remaining inactive for long periods of time is not a problem.

Even more confusingly, when I ask it about my other site, it tells me I'm writing in Chinese (Simplified).

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Apparently it's No Music Day today. So why not give the violin practice a miss just for once? And turn that iPod down! I'm talking to you, man in the green jacket on the Northern Line...

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Bibliodyssey has a great post at the moment about board games over the centuries, and among them are some that are really due for a revival. The Swan of Elegance instructs players in morality with the examples of Cruel Philip, Obstinate Sue or Polite Phoebe.

Oxford Digital Library has an exciting-sounding variation: swan-hopping

What I really want to play is the Mansion of Bliss:

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This 1946 advertisement for Casco was illustrated by the Russian-born surrealist Boris Artzybasheff. I'm not completely sure what Casco was/is, but they promise "new and unusual contributions to better living", and they certainly knew how to commission an eye-catching advert. Artzybasheff also illustrated this "improved design for modern man":

I can't find a big enough image to read the writing, unfortunately, but it's good to see Improved Man has a built-in filing cabinet, birdcage and some kind of early iPhone, with detachable heart and champagne glasses. I like the look of him a lot. And Improved Woman has a twig and is that a newt? - plus rear view mirror, martini, and I think it says that trapdoor in her head is for easy access by a psychoanalyst. Bring on the future!

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Walking through the British Museum I came across this strangely modern-looking owl sculpture, actually an Aztec vessel for sacrificial offerings. Interesting to see that if you were born on 1-Rain in the Aztec calendar you were liable to turn into a deadly tlacatecolotl, or human owl. (I can't work out what that is in the Gregorian calendar but here is a fascinating article about the Aztec calendar, which begins on 1-Crocodile and goes through Ocelot and Death's Head, ending with 13-Flower.)

Owl men were also popular in Seventies Cornwall, it seems.

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Talking of owls, a kind correspondent sent me this image from the Owles Almanacke of 1618, by Thomas Dekker, or possibly Thomas Middleton. In this mock almanac an owl makes predictions for haberdashers, grocers and ironmongers, and gives still-valid advice for the coming year, including, "Evacuate by vomit when The Sun in New Fish Street draws excellent French wines that leap up in your face." Also, "Those that would be taken for a gentlewoman must sue for shoes that creak like a frog but our shrewd dames will have dumb bottoms that they may rush upon their maids as 'twere out of an ambush."

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