Letters of Note is a site that publishes correspondence of well-known people from history. The list includes people like author John Steinbeck, photographer Ansel Adams, scientist Albert Einstein, and editor/writer H.L. Mencken.

The selections are all great and worth reading. What I find most interesting is how good the writing is, regardless of the author’s profession. I wonder if we’d find that the correspondence of today’s celebrities is nearly so lucid and deep?

H.L. Mencken’s response to an aspiring magazine editor is classic:

Dear Saroyan,

I note what you say about your aspiration to edit a magazine. I am sending you by this mail a six-chambered revolver. Load it and fire every one into your head. You will thank me after you get to hell and learn from other editors there how dreadful their job was on earth.

(Signed, ‘H.L. Mencken’)

Classic.

A fascinating (and lengthy) discussion between authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath about the current state of the publishing industry and where things are heading.

Eisler is a New York Times Bestselling author who turned down a $500,000 book deal to go his own way and self-publish.

It’s working.

As in the music and movie industries, the gatekeepers of content distribution are slowly watching their power fade as the artists — the people who actually make stuff rather than just sell it — are finding ways to connect directly with their customers without requiring the services of middlemen and their markups.

Well worth a read.

Holy shit.

Speaking of things I missed, the link above is to a post written by Tom Gates, The Format’s former manager, about the band’s breakup. He wrote it in 2009, exactly a year after Sam Means called to break the news to him.

Recalling the crazy reality of managing a band that got dropped from their major label and recorded an album that didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding, he writes:

[T]hese two guys (and their band of merry men) would work nonstop, doing almost anything that I asked them to do (the bad examples are hilarious and, given my ego, must appear in their stories and not mine). We opted to release their second record with only the help of the company that I worked for, a concept which is now gaining popularity but seemed like assisted suicide at the time. We tricked out the internet, trying almost anything that was invented in any given week, with the band’s newfound freedom allowing us to out-maneuver the clumsy beasts that are known as Major Record Labels (not without making some hilarious errors in judgment along the way). Nate answered the same ten questions about 5,000 times, in twenty languages. Sam minded to the business, phoning daily to keep tabs on finances and projections.

In short, we kicked some serious ass and, in my opinion, created our own luck using the technology that confused most other contemporary recording artists. Our ship may have looked beautiful from the outside but inside all of the passengers were screaming the same thing as we hurled along into uncharted space.

‘Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.’

Wonderful, heartfelt writing about a band that will always have a special place in my heart.

Read it now.

I stumbled across this 2008 interview with Nate Ruess of The Format/Fun that I had never seen it before. In it, he briefly discusses why The Format broke up:

“Nothing too specific that I could think of. I would like to believe with everything I’ve been told that it was more a matter of being burnt out and not feeling like we could make another record together because we never had a free moment away from each other. It was nothing dramatic. Sam and I have never really fought before, so it was nothing like that. I think he wanted to do other things and I’ve always wanted to be in a band with Jack and Andrew, so it really worked out nicely.”

Nate also provides this interesting tidbit:

“I had the opportunity to keep The Format name, but it’s not The Format without Sam. And right now, I’m so excited to be part of something new.”

Definitely worth a read.

Great, in-depth article from the Seattle Post-Examiner.

I learned a lot. I had no idea, for example, that the band worked with Jeff Bhasker (a co-producer on Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy) on this album.

I love alcohol.

I love the relaxing, comfortable glow of a night spent drinking with friends. I love that alcohol makes me more outgoing and comfortable in large groups of people. And, frankly, I love a good cocktail with dinner.

I hate alcohol.

I hate spending $20+ on a night out. I hate waking up the morning after drinking feeling like absolute shit. And I hate feeling like I need to drink in order to spend time with my friends.

Apparently, this guy gave up drinking three years ago. Why?

It wasn’t a choice of restriction or having less fun, but rather of fully experiencing everything and truly having the most fun possible. The way I pitched it to myself was “You should be able to do all the dumb, crazy adventurous, fun stuff you do drunk… sober. If you’re drunk, you’re not fully there. You don’t remember everything. You can’t experience the adventures fully. You’re half-assing partying!” I took the challenge, but I was in a place where one reflects on life and big changes like this are easier to make.

There’s a ton of good stuff in his post, but final paragraph is particular great:

I challenge you to fully realize how awesome life is. To: Party hard. Go on adventures. Make good love. Be bold. Scare yourself. Laugh it up. Be awesome. You already are, and when you can party without alcohol, the rest of your life will become a party too.

Now, the question is: could I give up my manhattans?

via parislemon

The interesting (and somewhat unexpected) results of a profane test email that accidentally went out to all users of the cloud-based notepad app fetchnotes.

via Hacker News

There’s a United Pixel Workers t-shirt available for just about any internet geek/pixel pusher in your life. As you might expect, I picked up this one.

Three days left to order!

Stephen Hackett over at 512 Pixels runs a monthly feature called Old Mac of the Month in which guest writers reminisce about an old Macintosh model of their choosing. This month, yours truly wrote a piece about my family’s first Mac, the Macintosh Iivx.

So, I guess that I am kind of published now.