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Jerry Cotton posted:There's also actual publishers nowadays who wouldn't exist if places to knock out cheap books didn't. Oh totally! I would love for us to be a true hybrid press so that we could curate our works better. It would be nice if me and my coworkers were actually proud of what we publish. But my boss is having none of it. No hybrid because “reasons”, no imprint, no filing cabinets (because they don’t work). So few of my ideas actually see the light of day....
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Jan 22, 2020 22:38
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Here is a cool short hand dictionary I got given by a coworker    For something a bit more personal, here is something of a Bible to me during my early studies to be an interpreter An Australian Sign Language dictionary It's hideously out of date but it's the best that has been done by the community to this day  A photographic representation of the sign for Australia is on the front And English index  And a key  Probably the coolest thing to consider with this dictionary is how it is organised English and other Latin alphabet based Languages obviously having alphabetical order, how does one organise hand shapes? The chapters are organised in order of how many fingers are used in the sign , IE 0 fingers is fist, pointing is one finger and an outstretched hand is five. With miscellaneous handshakes that don't quite follow at the end.  And then within the chapters they are organised by where on your body they are placed.  So if you see a sign you missed the meaning of and want to look up later, just note how many fingers and roughly where on the body it was placed You can also see signs that don't have direct English translations, this one for example being akin to "local and regularly visited" 
Jestery fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Jan 23, 2020 |
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Jan 23, 2020 07:37
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This thread owns so hard.
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Jan 23, 2020 10:35
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Jestery posted:Here is a cool short hand dictionary I got given by a coworker How does Australian Sign Language differ from American Sign Language? Are they significantly different? There is a big school for the deaf in Fremont, California and I used to encounter deaf people constantly when I worked near it 20+ years ago. Like my terrible high school Spanish, I wish I remembered more of it. When it comes to languages, if I don't use it, I quickly lose it.
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Jan 23, 2020 16:57
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It's about as different as English is to Spanish or French Two main schools of signing exist British and French based. Very generally speaking Commonwealth nations nude a more British system and non Commonwealth nations use the French system. The most striking difference is a one handed alphabet for French systems and a two handed alphabet for British systems A lot of schools for the Deaf were being set up around the time of America's independence was still a bit sour in the mouth of the British so the French ended up having influence This being said you get a massive head start with talking to the Deaf for knowing any sign language. That is to say like, I could more easily Talk with a Deaf Chinese person than a Hearing person because of my fluency with Australian sign and knowledge of the Deaf experience
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Jan 23, 2020 20:39
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Jestery posted:It's about as different as English is to Spanish or French Are there cognates and false cognates between them?
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Jan 23, 2020 21:01
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All I know is a lot of the Australian Sign Language signs are funny, like the one for Italy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BtJ0CJ87rM
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Jan 23, 2020 21:12
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Blue Moonlight posted:Are there cognates and false cognates between them? Absolutely There is some shared vocab, especially with the internet and social media and neologisms such as "Netflix" or world Leaders (I'm fairly certain Trump's sign name is pretty consistent worldwide) and sometimes a sign just nails what it is and it spreads worldwide very quickly. But conversely false cognates absolutely exist too, Australian sign's "water/fluid" is identical to American sign's "sex/orgasm" which has led to interesting interactions, or Australian sign's "on-top" is the same as american's "bad" I had a funny chat with a Canadian dude because of a false cognate between coca cola and lesbian
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Jan 23, 2020 22:14
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Jestery posted:(I'm fairly certain Trump's sign name is pretty consistent worldwide) I hope it's a middle finger
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Jan 24, 2020 05:13
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Item Getter posted:I hope it's a middle finger It's sorta like slicking your hair into his trademark shape
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Jan 24, 2020 06:31
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This is a reprint of one of the sleazy sex books Donald E. Westlake wrote at the beginning of his career:  A few more new books. I have more, but didn't bring them to work with me.         
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Jan 27, 2020 21:35
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Jan 27, 2020 22:30
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This dude's grandfather led literal armies against the Nazis and he wrote a picture book about 70s rapevans.
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Jan 27, 2020 22:50
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:This dude's grandfather led literal armies against the Nazis and he wrote a picture book about 70s rapevans. It's a good van book. His gramps would have been proud.
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Jan 27, 2020 22:58
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Crossposting this from a thread in BSS that's inspired by this thread but focused on comics. I figured since these are more books, they made sense to go here too. Earlier in the year I got turned on to children's illustrated books by a Cartoonist Kayfabe video focused on the topic. I also have a son who isn't quite at his teenage years yet. As a result, when I'm out looking for bargains I generally take a wander through the children's section, especially at book fairs. I thought I'd post a couple of the more interesting books from his shelf. Up first we have a couple fairly standard books. I don't remember the particular Helen Oxenbury books that I had growing up, but I absolutely remember reading Ten Little Fingers, Ten Little Toes dozens of times to my son when he was a baby. Her art is wonderful; grounded but whimsical. Sparse on backgrounds, with slightly chubby characters who just look kind of angelic. In 1999 she put out an illustrated edition of Alice in Wonderland, and though I own at least two other versions of this book, I had to pick this up when I found it.   Beatrix Potter's works are classics, but I never really put together anything complete of hers, nor did I realize just how much of the work involved the illustrations. Nearly every page of The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter is filled with drawings. She was a great artist.  This page on the left in particular reminds me of comics, with the way the kitten moves around the page with the narration acting almost as a caption box would in a comic.  I bought this on the strength of the art. Rowan Barnes-Murphy is a British illustrator who does kids book, editorial cartoons, and (based on his website) paintings of peoples houses on spec. The art rules. One thing about picture books written for kids - there are some spectacular and imaginative artists working in the space who could probably draw the hell out of a comic, but just never work in the medium.   I picked up a these random books at the dollar store a while back. They're reading series aimed at young kids, so they should be generic trash, but many of them are by a single writer / artist, while others just have great art. They also all seem to use dialogue bubbles in the illustrations, which is a weird touch. On the whole, I was surprised by the quality and picked a couple up.     And now we start moving into the stranger side of things. Round Trip is a book that you read once from left to right, then you turn it upside down and read it again (thus going from right to left in the original orientation). The art generally works well both ways, and though I think it's not perfectly executed, it's just a cool concept.   This next book has a text blurb on the back jacket insert that... speaks for itself.  It's weird, man.   I read it to my son the other day. He was very confused. So was I. And finally, the last book is something completely different. My parents were grad students in Montreal and me and my brother grew up poor as a result. We also didn't have TV. Instead, we entertained ourselves with things we made ourselves, or in this case, a book created by my dad when I was maybe 6. The pictures are pulled from magazines, the book itself is made with tape and cardboard, and the story is a bit much for a kid, but I love it and I love that I still have it. I present it here in its entirety (minus his name being blanked out on the cover). (the front cover is a bit torn up, that was once a picture of a teddy bear on the front)         
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Jan 28, 2020 05:11
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Jordan7hm posted:And finally, the last book is something completely different. My parents were grad students in Montreal and me and my brother grew up poor as a result. We also didn't have TV. Instead, we entertained ourselves with things we made ourselves, or in this case, a book created by my dad when I was maybe 6. The pictures are pulled from magazines, the book itself is made with tape and cardboard, and the story is a bit much for a kid, but I love it and I love that I still have it. I present it here in its entirety (minus his name being blanked out on the cover). Thanks for sharing it with us. You can tell a lot of love went into it. It has a sort of sleepy, dreamlike quality to it that is reminiscent of a lot of older children’s literature.
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Jan 28, 2020 05:41
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I don't quite know what to make of this! Jordan7hm posted:And finally, the last book is something completely different. My parents were grad students in Montreal and me and my brother grew up poor as a result. We also didn't have TV. Instead, we entertained ourselves with things we made ourselves, or in this case, a book created by my dad when I was maybe 6. The pictures are pulled from magazines, the book itself is made with tape and cardboard, and the story is a bit much for a kid, but I love it and I love that I still have it. I present it here in its entirety (minus his name being blanked out on the cover). This is awesome, and I thank you for posting it.
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Jan 28, 2020 22:01
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I didn't know Helen Oxbury by name but I immediately recognised the illustrations as being the same artist as Bear Hunt.
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Jan 29, 2020 04:50
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It took me awhile to find a copy, but I finally did. Now I have to find the time to read it...  It seems a good time to refresh my memory on these movies. I've never read the books before.   Chuck Tingle makes me laugh:   Lastly, I finally got a copy of Matilda the Hun's autobiography, although I wasn't able to get it from her directly. I posted the email I got from her friend earlier in the thread. She's been in the hospital for the last year or so. I hope she gets better.  
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Jan 29, 2020 22:19
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Oh my gosh, this reminds me of a comic a friend of mine made a number of years ago titled “Ham and Clock” about a package of ham and an alarm clock that use foul language and fight crime... or cause crime? I can’t remember, it was many years ago. I wish he had it online.
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Jan 29, 2020 22:48
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The Urantia Book.  So sometime in the early 1900s, someone wrote this book. It’s a religious book that attempts to unify and categorize everything known about the universe and Christianity, from the ancient formation of planets all the way through Jesus Christ. It includes Magic, Marriage, psychology, all the angels, and the goal of mankind. It’s 2000 tissue-thin pages. It a modern religious revelation. It came out if a time when science was exploding, old religious truths were dying, and mysticism and spirituality were finding new leaders. People actually believed in it, as a holy book. I know it had some popularity from the hippies. I don't know if there are any true believers left.
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Jan 29, 2020 23:50
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lifg posted:The Urantia Book. Rad! I've never heard of this particular new age compendium, but people have been trying to compile THE book that has all the answers since at least the middle ages. Pico Della Mirandola is a good example. He tried to compile all human knowledge in the 15th century, and invited the most respected scholars of the day to help him in his task, but the Catholic church quickly put a lid on that. After all, knowledge is power. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pico-della-mirandola/
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Jan 30, 2020 00:01
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lifg posted:The Urantia Book. This brings back memories...I was working at a Kinkos in the mid 2000s. This older man came in late one night, ragged clothes and a leather cap. I remember his hands because several of the nails had pretty bad fungus. He stood at the counter and with the tone of a loving grandparent reviewed his 50 page handwritten manuscript with me. I saw URANTIA in it and my eyes lit up. End result was he just wanted me to carefully handcopy (like put one sheet at a time on the glass) what he had written. He was trying to make a sort of dummies guide (my words not his) for Urantia. The way he talked about it it was obvious he viewed this as a work of the highest importance. I was happy to do it...he just seemed so kind. Working at Kinkos was a great window into the sort of passion projects and vanity press stuff mentioned in the thread. There was always someone coming in with something that meant the world to them.
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Jan 30, 2020 16:52
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Pershing posted:This brings back memories...I was working at a Kinkos in the mid 2000s. This older man came in late one night, ragged clothes and a leather cap. I remember his hands because several of the nails had pretty bad fungus. He stood at the counter and with the tone of a loving grandparent reviewed his 50 page handwritten manuscript with me. I saw URANTIA in it and my eyes lit up. End result was he just wanted me to carefully handcopy (like put one sheet at a time on the glass) what he had written. He was trying to make a sort of dummies guide (my words not his) for Urantia. The way he talked about it it was obvious he viewed this as a work of the highest importance. I was happy to do it...he just seemed so kind. Yes!! I worked at a few different copy shops in the late 90s, including a brief stint at Kinkos (which I absolutely hated), and would consistently encounter crackpots who wanted their odd zines, booklets, pamphlets, screenplays, manifestos, and other weird works lovingly reproduced. Whenever possible, I would sneak a copy for myself. I still have some spread among a few boxes in my parents' garage, but I don't know exactly what since I haven't looked through those boxes in at least a decade. I know I recently mentioned this in the magazine thread in reference to a self-published UFO booklet. I need to dig through those boxes. I'm sure there is plenty of comedy gold to be mined.
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Jan 30, 2020 17:03
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Two items I just remembered: One was a terrible screenplay that was obviously trying to mimic the recently released Pulp Fiction. It was called On the Wall, and had the same true crime, vignette style, but the gimmick was that it was all seen from the POV of a housefly that was buzzing around. I might still have a copy of that. The other was a color copied handmade book (back when color copies cost about $1 each) brought in by a guy who built a Native American style sweat lodge in his backyard. All the pictures were of him and his sweaty, partially nude hippie buddies dripping with sweat inside a tiny shack. I desperately wanted to make myself a copy, but the guy was standing right over my shoulder the whole time.
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Jan 30, 2020 17:13
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One that always comes to mind is a dude who brought in a screenplay he'd written and now wanted to shop to various studios, etc. Ok, fine...people write spec scripts and try to get their foot in the door. The problem was he had committed the rookie screenwriter blunder of putting copyright notices all over the drat thing. Like, big letters on the front cover, back cover, various pages inside all COPYRIGHT MR. <NAME>, 20xx ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. I tried to explain to him about registering it with the WGA or something like that but he wasn't having it. I mean I get that studios can be poo poo and theoretically could steal an idea but he might as well have written I"M A COMPLETE AMATEUR instead.
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Jan 30, 2020 18:40
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Jordan7hm posted:Kids books Very cool. There's a children's lit thread in the Book Barn that would love those: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3900957 Round Trip was one of my White Whales. I remembered it from when I was a kid but I couldn't remember the name or enough about it except that it was in black and white and you flipped it over. I found it in a bookstore a couple of years ago and it was just as great as I had remembered.
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Jan 30, 2020 18:53
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Started collecting books again, and I got two gems today: First is an Easton Press leatherbound collector's edition of Double Helix signed by James Watson himself.    Second is a biographical children's book of Sotomayor signed by Sotomayor herself! My daughter is only 2 months old but she is half hispanic and this will be for her one day. 
D-Pad fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Jan 31, 2020 |
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Jan 31, 2020 04:21
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D-Pad posted:Started collecting books again, and I got two gems today: Wow! Those are both rad!
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Jan 31, 2020 05:31
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A few more books: Filthy Roman poet Catullus:   1st printing of Shaft. It's a little beat up, but I'll take it.   Another rare van book I managed to find for fairly cheap after years of searching:   I liked Fat Albert as a kid. It's a shame Bill Cosby turned out to be such a piece of poo poo. I'm not going to let it ruin Fat Albert for me.   
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Feb 1, 2020 00:11
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I love those weird old Penguin Classics editions.
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Feb 1, 2020 00:44
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There both DTF as hell lmao. Thanks this brings back some memories. I had either this book or a very similar one floating around when I was a kid. My favorite plate was "A Bad Neighbor" It had a disorderly house with vicious dogs, loose pigs rooting up the neighbors garden, no-good stepson drunk and belligerent etc. I'll try to find it or if its in your book please post it!
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Feb 1, 2020 02:01
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Pekinduck posted:My favorite plate was "A Bad Neighbor" It had a disorderly house with vicious dogs, loose pigs rooting up the neighbors garden, no-good stepson drunk and belligerent etc. I'll try to find it or if its in your book please post it! I didn't see it in my book, but that sounds amazing! Please post it if you can find it.
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Feb 1, 2020 02:32
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Gutter Phoenix posted:Wow! Those are both rad! Might as well post the rest of my fledgling collection. I've got a ton of regular books, but these are what I would consider my collection so far: Signed Neal Stephenson   Signed and numbered limited edtion of James A. Michener's memoirs   A cool illustrated edition of The Screwtape Letters  Abraham Lincoln collection  A 60s era Lord of the Rings collector's edition  A Mao's Little Red book with the original cardboard jacket  A first edition english printing of Mao's Little Red book   Various Chinese propaganda tracts  Old school D&D  I've also got a bunch of limited edition signed Warhammer 40k books that aren't pictured.
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Feb 1, 2020 02:56
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D-Pad posted:A 60s era Lord of the Rings collector's edition When I was a kid, my grandmother would bring my sister and I to a bookstore and let us buy what we wanted. But I guess we pushed her generosity a bit, so one day she said, "only one book!" So I picked that one. That was 25 years ago. I still have it. She still tells the story.
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Feb 1, 2020 05:28
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D-Pad posted:A 60s era Lord of the Rings collector's edition My dad has that edition! It's a gorgeous book.
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Feb 1, 2020 05:33
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I have a copy as well, given as a gift in the mid to late 90s. They've been making that one for a while it seems.
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Feb 1, 2020 05:35
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D-Pad posted:Might as well post the rest of my fledgling collection. I've got a ton of regular books, but these are what I would consider my collection so far: Good stuff. I can't believe I don't have a copy of Mao's little red book. It's one of the most printed books of all time, but I never see them in used book stores. That Lincoln set reminds me of a book I read by his old law partner, William Herndon. I have a litteral copy that I made back when I was a printer with a library card and no money. I should try to find an actual book, because it is very good. Neal Stephenson is an interesting author, and I've read everything of his up to Cryptonomicon. His books have become increasingly long, which isn't a bad thing, but it keeps me from reading more of them just because I have so many other books to read and so little time.
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Feb 1, 2020 15:31
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Gutter Phoenix posted:Good stuff. I can't believe I don't have a copy of Mao's little red book. It's one of the most printed books of all time, but I never see them in used book stores. I got them in China. They are super common there as you would expect. Not very common in America because if you made it out of China in that era you didn't want to show up with a communist book lol.
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Feb 1, 2020 17:22
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D-Pad posted:Abraham Lincoln collection I found a different printing of those at an estate sale once - sadly, I didn't know I was buying just the last four books. I wonder if I didn't search the house hard enough. I really want to get the first two in the same printing to have a complete matching set.
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Feb 2, 2020 00:11
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