The Little Hacker's Room

saddondraper.tumblr.com: What does this mean? Don Draper all the way across the sky. Oh my god. It's so intense.

(Meme provenance: A defining scene in this Mad Men episode + Sad Keanu)

(Warning: this post is for adults, and the video embedded contains sexual content)

I haven't read Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade yet, but it sure sounds amazing—BB mod Antinous just hipped me to it this morning. The new book by Justin Spring new book chronicles the contents of an archive he discovered in San Francisco a few years ago, including a thousand-page diary belonging to Samuel Steward, a man of many identities.... ...including several that the subtitle of the book omits: pioneering sex researcher, collector of celebrity conquests, drug addict, masochist, Catholic (briefly), Navy enlistee (even more briefly), conquistador of vast provinces of America's pre-Stonewall homosexual subculture. Most fortuitously, he was apparently a graphomaniac who documented his long, dark, exuberant, sad, dangerous life in journals, an unpublished memoir, reams of letters, poems, erotica, semifictionalized short stories and even a 746-entry card catalog of his sexual history, scrupulously maintained over five decades and in some cases ornamented -- perhaps for future biographers? -- with what Spring decorously calls "DNA-verifiable" evidence of his liaisons. That, from the New York Times review (which ran with a terrific title).

All told, Steward is reported to have had sex with 807 different people, a total of 4,647 times, including Rock Hudson and Rudolph Valentino. Regarding those impressive numbers, Adam at Butt Magazine opines, However, the true value of his promiscuity lies not in the number of loads blown, but in what those loads can teach us. (...)

At times he was Samuel Steward, drunken professor, obscure literary figure and pen pal to the stars. He was also an author, first of serious fiction - Angels on the Bough - and later acclaimed memoirs - Dear Sammy: Letters From Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. George Platt Lynes, Alfred Kinsey and Tom of Finland all counted him as a friend. As a tattoo artist he went by Phil Sparrow. He mentored Ed Hardy and inked the Hells Angels. He even engraved 'LUCIFER' on Kenneth Anger's chest. In his dirty work he was the ripped Greek hustler Phil Andros. This particular alter ego dealt in filthy stories, pumping out titles like Shuttlecock and $tud, and attracting the attention of literary heavyweights like Christopher Isherwood.He was all of these things and more. Mr. Steward was also a sex researcher and self-proclaimed whore. Perhaps his most important occupation, however, was that of historian. For in the cache of his remaining belongings exists an individual history unparalleled in its meticulousness. Video trailer for the book follows (contains sexual content.)

Video at Blip.tv.

More about the book and what it all means: Huffington Post, Facebook page for book, website.

Amazon: Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade

Here's Jay Shafer of Tumbleweed Houses taking you on a tour of his clever, 100-square-foot house, which reminds me of a wooden, super-luxury first-class plane-seat on the flagship airline of some oil-soaked, cash-infused land.

Living in the Smallest House in the World (Thanks, Pddro, via Submitterator!)

• Tiny house sculpture
• Design for nine-square-feet house
• Tiny themed prefab houses
• To Do This Summer: Build a Tiny House Gadgets
• Tiny houses -- slideshow
• Terrific 180-square-foot shack houses family of four plus dog ...
• HOWTO make rim-perching adorable tiny gingerbread houses for your ...
• Spite Houses, built to piss off the neighbors

Connal Hughes and Anjel Van Slyke's photos of a 1980s-era Soviet arcade machine reveal that even light-hearted recreation was a grim affair behind the iron curtain.

Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines (Thanks, Rachel!)