Alchemy, Ennui, Cupcakes

Last week, in my Poe class, I reviewed a book which talked about Poe's hoaxing of the American public. In one of these hoaxes, a man reveals that he has succesfully turned lead into gold. In another project for the class, we need to review a cultural appropriation of Poe. Many of these appropriations render Poe as the dismal, depressed man that he sometimes was.

This link has nothing to do with Poe. Officially, that is. It represents instead Swedish playwright August Strindberg and his chipper friend, Helium. But the convergence of ideas is certainly present. Alchemy? Dark Figure of Ennui? Cupcakes? (Maybe the last one isn't so relevant to Poe, but to me...)
And besides, it is Friday. Enjoy.

Twitter saves the Day

I've been searching around for stories on or in Twitter recently, and I ran across this CNN article: "Student 'Twitters' His Way Out of Egyptian Jail." The story may over-emphasize the role of the "twitter" on getting the kid out of jail, but it also points some interesting applications of the tool. Using Twitter to get out the word, update your status, inspire political change. Not that this is all that different from sending a clandestine written message back in the pre-cellphone dark ages. Yet the (illusion of) the "culture of the immediate" is certainly appealing. Consider the bandwagon of text-messaging emergency alerts to students that many schools jumped on in the past couple of years.
Maybe I should have a GPS Device embedded in my skin for my own protection.