Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London in the early 1890s. Notorious for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde was one of the best-known personalities of his day. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his only novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray), his plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death. At the height of his fame and success, while his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry (the father of Wilde’s lover) prosecuted for libel. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for the “gross indecency” of having had sex with another man. Wilde was ultimately convicted and served a two-year prison sentence with hard labor in England. After his release, he lived the remainder of his life in self-imposed exile in Paris. Wilde was born on this day in 1854. He died destitute in Paris at the age of 46.
I find it interesting that on Wilde’s 1882 trip to San Francisco, the Irishman declared the city “where I belong.” Wilde sometimes mused about relocating to the American West. In October 2012, my wife Heidi and I visited Wilde’s tomb in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris during our trip to Europe. The modernist angel depicted as a relief on his tomb was originally complete with male genitalia that have since been vandalized. In 2011, Wilde’s tomb was cleaned of the many lipstick marks left there by admirers, and a glass barrier was installed to prevent further marks or damage.
Colin Meloy is the lead singer and songwriter for the indie folk rock band The Decemberists from Portland, Oregon. The most recent Decemberists studio album, The King Is Dead (2011), was the band’s sixth. In addition to vocals, Meloy performs with an acoustic guitar, 12-string acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bouzouki, harmonica and percussion. Meloy made his debut as a children’s writer in 2011 with Wildwood, illustrated by his wife, Carson Ellis. The second novel in the series is Under Wildwood (2012). Meloy was born on this day in 1974.
Once my two-month-old daughter Ramona gets a little older, my wife Heidi plans to introduce Portland’s Forest Park to her as Wildwood. The Decemberists are one of our favorite bands. It’s nice to be able to see them play with some frequency, since we live in Oregon.
Jhonen Vasquez is an American comic book writer, cartoonist and music video director. He was born to Mexican parents, raised in San Jose and is perhaps best known for creating the Nickelodeon’s animated series Invader Zim. Zim is a naïve but psychotic alien who tries to conquer Earth, but is always thwarted in a humorous manner. Vasquez also created the comic Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and its spin-offs, Squee! and I Feel Sick. Many of his creations are geometric in style and gothic in character. Vasquez was born on September 1, 1974.
H. P. Lovecraft was an American author of horror, fantasy, poetry and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction. Lovecraft’s guiding aesthetic and philosophical principle was what he termed “cosmicism” or “cosmic horror,” the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds. Lovecraft is the originator of the Cthulhu Mythos story cycle and the Necronomicon, a fictional magical textbook of rites and forbidden lore. Although Lovecraft’s readership was limited during his lifetime, he is now regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century. He was born on this day in 1890.
Note: Of course I replaced the head of 8-bit H. P. Lovecraft with that of his greatest creation, Cthulhu.
Aldous Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. He is best known for his novels, including Brave New World (1932), and a wide-ranging output of essays, including The Doors of Perception (1954). Huxley was a humanist, pacifist and satirist. He spent the later part of his life in Los Angeles and became interested in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism, in particular Vivekanda’s Neo-Vedanta and Universalism. Huxley is also well known for his advocacy and consumption of psychedelic drugs. He was born on this day in 1894.
Tom Robbins is a bestselling American author. He has written nine novels, and one collection, since 1971. His novels are “seriocomedies,” featuring complex, often wild stories with strong social and philosophical undercurrents, a satirical bent, and scenes extrapolated from carefully researched obscure facts. His 1976 novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was made into a movie in 1993 by Gus Van Sant. The Library of Congress states that Robbins was born on this day in 1936, though he claims he was born in 1932.
Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet, diplomat and politician. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.” During his lifetime, Neruda also occupied many diplomatic positions, served as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party, escaped into exile in Argentina, and later advised socialist President Salvador Allende. In September 1973, Neruda was hospitalized with prostate cancer at the time of the U.S.-backed Chilean coup d’état (the other 9/11) led by Augusto Pinochet. Neruda died suddenly of heart failure, but some suspect the junta had a hand in his death. Neruda was born on this day in 1904.
Note: In 2011, a Chilean judge ordered that an investigation be launched, following suggestions that Neruda had been killed by the Pinochet regime for his pro-Allende stance and political views. On April 8, 2013, Neruda was exhumed, 40 years after his death, to determine if he was poisoned. Last month, a court order was issued to find the man that prosecutors allege poisoned Neruda. Suspects include former CIA agent Michael Townley.
Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic and essayist. He is best known for his monumental novel In Search of Lost Time, which explores involuntary memory and was published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. Proust was one of the wordiest men in literature: “The length of individual Proustian sentences, snakelike constructions, the very longest of which, located in the fifth volume, would, if arranged along a single line in standard-sized text, run on for a little short of four meters and stretch around the base of a bottle of wine seventeen times,” wrote Alain de Botton. The reclusive Proust wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of his epic novel while bedridden. Proust was born on this day in 1871.
Heidi and I visited Proust’s grave in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris last October during our trip to Europe. A visitor had charmingly set out a tea cup and saucer for him. Oh, the involuntary memories elicited by the cue of tea biscuit dunking. Proust is one of Heidi’s favorite dead people, though that list is quite long.
Subcomandante Marcos is the nom de guerre used by Rafael Guillén Vicente, the main ideologist, spokesperson and de facto leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), a Mexican rebel movement fighting for the rights of the indigenous peoples of Mexico. The EZLN group takes its name from agrarian reformer Emiliano Zapata. On January 1, 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) became effective, Marcos led an army of Mayan farmers into eastern Chiapas state, to protest the Mexican federal government’s mistreatment of the nation’s indigenous peoples. Marcos is also a writer, a political poet and an anti-capitalist. He wears a black ski mask, often with a tobacco pipe sticking out, and a watch on each wrist. Nearly all EZLN villages have murals featuring Zapata, Che Guevara and Subcomandante Marcos. According to the Mexican government, Guillén was born on June 19, 1957.
My wife Heidi has a particular fascination with the mystery and mythology of Subcomandante Marcos. This pixel art character was suggested by her. Also, I am now dropping my publishing schedule to two 8-bit characters per week, usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Gabriel García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, he was awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. García Márquez started as a journalist, but is best known for his novels, including One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have helped popularize magic realism as a literary style. García Márquez was born on this day in 1927.
The nonlinear, multi-generational One Hundred Years of Solitude is my wife Heidi’s very favorite book and Gabriel García Márquez is her favorite author. I love magic realism and I agree that García Márquez is a pretty fantastic craftsman of richly detailed run-on sentences. But I was stunned that nearly every character in his famous century-spanning book is named José Arcadio or Aureliano. I am not exaggerating when I state that there are 22 characters named Aureliano in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Twenty-two. If you put this novel down for a few days, you too can share the farcical experience of having to cross-reference a family tree to remember which members of which generation are being talking about in a given chapter—even when you know that history repeating is the point and it almost doesn’t matter. I do like to experience how the world feels from García Márquez’s unique perspective.
Miranda July is an American film director, screenwriter, actress and artist. Her body of work includes film, fiction, monologue, digital media presentations and live performance art (which she began while living in Portland, Oregon). July wrote, directed and starred in the films Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) and The Future (2011). Her most recent nonfiction book, It Chooses You, was published in 2011. July was born on February 15, 1974.
Miranda July is a hero of my wife Heidi and she wishes they were best friends. On that note, Heidi would like to share some biographical information about July that you won’t find on Wikipedia: “The same extraterrestrial who impregnated my mom also impregnated Miranda July’s mom, which means she and I are alien half-sisters.” Also, Heidi and I learned everything we know about making buttons from July.
Chuck Palahniuk is an American novelist and freelance journalist, who describes his work as transgressional fiction. He is best known as the author of the award-winning novel Fight Club (1996), which was made into a feature film. Beginning with Lullaby (2003), the style of his novels has shifted to satirical horror. Palahniuk has had 13 novels and two nonfiction books published, the most recent being Invisible Monsters Remix (2012), a restructured and updated version of his 1999 novel. He maintains homes in the states of Oregon and Washington. Palahniuk was born on this day in 1962.
Douglas Rushkoff is an American media theorist, writer, technology commentator and documentarian. He is best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture, and his advocacy of open source solutions to social problems. Rushkoff is also known for coining terms and concepts including viral media (or media virus), digital native and social currency. He has written many books on media, technology and culture—as well as fiction works and graphic novels. His new book, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, is now available for preorder and will be released on March 15, 2013. Rushkoff was born on this day in 1961.
Two years ago, at WebVisions 2011 in Portland, I had Rushkoff sign my copy of his 2010 book Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age. As we chatted, I told him I worked at a university. He then asked about the learning management system my employing university uses to deliver courses online. I told him Blackboard (and possibly sighed bleakly). In reply, on the inside of the book, Rushkoff wrote, “For Ian – Blackboard is intentional,” and signed his name. His comment points out that software interfaces (and screens, in general) force users into particular patterns of thought, both subconsciously and consciously. Corporate models of screen-mediated learning are increasingly shaping how individuals understand the world, but to whom is the UI/UX in service? In a global sense, who stands to benefit most from the way our brains are being trained to consume/learn in this digital world? Related to these questions is another recent Rushkoff book, Life, Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back, for which there are many interesting videos available.
Matt Groening is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, producer, animator and voice actor. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell (1977-2012) as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons (1989-present) and Futurama (1999-2003, 2008-present). Groening has won 12 Primetime Emmy Awards, 10 for The Simpsons and two for Futurama. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 14, 2012. Groening was born in Portland, Oregon on this day in 1954.
Alejandro Jodorowsky is a Chilean-French filmmaker, playwright, actor, author and comics writer. A hero of the underground film circuit, he is best known for his violently surreal avant-garde films, including cult classics Fando y Lis (1967), the acid western El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973). Jodorowsky’s “psychoshamanism” spiritual system borrows from his interests in alchemy, the tarot, Zen Buddhism and shamanism. He was born on this day in 1929.
Emily Dickinson was an American poet who lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. While Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime. Dickinson’s poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. She was born on this day in 1830.
Ken Kesey was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), and counterculture figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. “I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a hippie,” Kesey said. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) by Tom Wolfe tells the story of Kesey and his 1960s band of psychedelic drug-using Merry Pranksters. Kesey died of liver surgery complications on November 10, 2001.
At the time, it seemed ominous to me that the great Ken Kesey, an Oregon resident, died the weekend I moved to Oregon in 2001. As of today, I have lived in Oregon for exactly 11 years. I swear my presence didn’t kill him. Today is also the day that Heidi and I return home to Oregon after 40 days of backpacking and train-riding through 10 countries in Europe.
Shel Silverstein was an American cartoonist, musician and, most famously, author of children’s books. He styled himself as Uncle Shelby in his children’s books. Most popular are The Giving Tree (1964) and Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974)—both childhood favorites of mine. Translated into more than 30 languages, Silverstein’s books have sold over 20 million copies. He was born on this day in 1930.
William Gibson is an American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist who has been called the “noir prophet” of the cyberpunk subgenre. Gibson coined the term “cyberspace” in 1982 and later popularized the concept in his debut novel Neuromancer (1984). Gibson’s early works are bleak, noir near-future stories about the effect of cybernetics and computer networks on humans. Gibson has written more than 20 short stories and 10 critically acclaimed novels. He posts frequent, interesting updates to Twitter as @GreatDismal.
Frankly, I’m a little surprised that I’ve now drawn 500 of these primitive pixel art characters. What a weird habit.
Ray Bradbury was one of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers. He is best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his science fiction short story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951). Many of Bradbury’s works have been adapted into television shows or films. He was born on this day in 1920 and died on June 5, 2012.
Oscar Wilde – No. 679
Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London in the early 1890s. Notorious for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde was one of the best-known personalities of his day. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his only novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray), his plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death. At the height of his fame and success, while his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry (the father of Wilde’s lover) prosecuted for libel. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for the “gross indecency” of having had sex with another man. Wilde was ultimately convicted and served a two-year prison sentence with hard labor in England. After his release, he lived the remainder of his life in self-imposed exile in Paris. Wilde was born on this day in 1854. He died destitute in Paris at the age of 46.
I find it interesting that on Wilde’s 1882 trip to San Francisco, the Irishman declared the city “where I belong.” Wilde sometimes mused about relocating to the American West. In October 2012, my wife Heidi and I visited Wilde’s tomb in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris during our trip to Europe. The modernist angel depicted as a relief on his tomb was originally complete with male genitalia that have since been vandalized. In 2011, Wilde’s tomb was cleaned of the many lipstick marks left there by admirers, and a glass barrier was installed to prevent further marks or damage.