Oh, man. This is amazing. Gary Socquet over at The Nervous Breakdown has published an online advice column, answered by a part-man, part-bear. In his own words:

So people call me Garebear (Bear for short) not because it rhymes (that would be lame, and my friends are not lame) but because I’m actually half bear, on my mother’s side. A few years back I started an advice column for the lovelorn: as it turns out, you learn a lot about making relationships work when one of your parents is a bear. And, well, I just like to feel useful. I think you’ll see what I mean. Let’s dig into the mailbag, shall we?

My favorite questions/answers:

Dear Bear:
My boyfriend is my best friend, he’s smart and funny and sexy, but he’s not a giver: he never considers my feelings, never asks me how my day was, and in five years he’s never once told me I look pretty. What should I do, Bear?

–Unappreciated

Dear Unappreciated:

Are you pretty? Is it possible one of the qualities you left off the list of his many fine traits is “honest?” Have you ever considered the possibility that he’s just taking pity on you? I mean, you call him your best friend, but it doesn’t even sound as though he likes you all that much. You’re clearly very needy, you have limited self-esteem, and at this point the jury is still out on your looks – although, honestly, if he’s never once in five years said you look pretty, well, do the math. And count your blessings.

Dear Bear:

I’m following up to let you know I took your advice and talked to that girl at work I like. You were right – it was so easy! Turns out she got a new pair of glasses and she was asking people in the break room what they thought, and I said, “They’re librarian hot.” (No pun intended.) What’s my next move, Love Doctor?
(name withheld for obvious reasons)

Dear Scott:

Guh. Please tell me you didn’t . . . Okay. Shit. Okay. Your next move . . . your next move. Okay, here’s the thing: “no pun intended” is not an idiom. It means exactly what it means. It is intended to follow an unintentional play on words, like when you’re in a meeting and somebody asks the fat guy to “weigh in” on the topic. So I’d say your next move should be to tell her in no uncertain terms how much you love her boobs, and then say, “No pun intended.” Get it, Scott?

Distract yourself from work with some surrealism(ish) and read the whole thing here.

Cinegraphic.net, an avant-garde film/video blog, has the first chapter of their upcoming book Two Women and a Nightengale available for free download. Cinegraphic. net says:

Part fantasy, part word-play, the fragementary narrative comes alive when read aloud.

This collage novel follows the classic format: images culled from nineteenth century sources, painstakingly rearranged and reassembed into entirely new, seamless tableaux.

This is the first chapter from the novel, complete with Betancourt’s artwork and story. It is a riff on Ernst’s 1926 painting “Two children are menaced by a nightengale,” taking up the story years later from were Ernst left it.

The story chronicles the adventure of Rose, her sister Marcella, the insane landscapes they travel through (including a sea where mothers drown their naughty sons), and the eponymous Nightengale on their way to the Moon.

The sheer lunacy of the tale is accentuated by the strangeness of the images.

The tale features magical mops, flying fish, and mocking sea turtles. And plenty of mind-bending imagery, like the image at left. And yes, that’s a wolf’s head on that little girl’s body, trying to force her way through an elaborate gate (with fire?). Delicious!