{"id":46042,"date":"2026-05-12T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=46042"},"modified":"2026-05-08T09:12:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T16:12:24","slug":"your-idea-starts-here-goatman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/your-idea-starts-here-goatman\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Idea Starts Here \/ Goatman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

YOUR IDEA STARTS HERE: 77 MIND-EXPANDING WAYS TO UNLEASH YOUR CREATIVITY<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Your Idea Starts Here: 77 Mind-Expanding Ways to Unleash Your Creativity<\/em>
by Carolyn Eckert
Storey Publishing
2016, 224 pages, 5.1 x 7.2 x 0.9 inches<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy on Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art director Carolyn Eckert originally wrote Your Idea Starts Here<\/em> for artists and designers who needed a creative boost, but soon realized that the book can actually help any inventive soul. This hardcover pocket-sized book pops with fun images along with 77 exercises to dislodge the blockages that are damming up your creative juices. For instance, Exercise 19 suggests changing up your routine (inspired by a Steve Jobs practice). Exercise 35 says to \u201cStop Whatever You\u2019re Doing.\u201d In other words, \u201cIf you were using blue, use orange. If it\u2019s square, make it round\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interspersed between the idea-generating exercises are inspiring stories about inventions (such as the potato chip, Slinky, and windshield wipers) and what sparked them. More brainstorming tool than self-help book, Your Idea Starts Here<\/em> is fun and simple yet super inspiring for anyone who looking for new ideas. \u2013 Carla Sinclair<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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GOATMAN: HOW I TOOK A HOLIDAY FROM BEING HUMAN<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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GoatMan: How I Took a Holiday from Being Human<\/em>
by Thomas Thwaites
Princeton Architectural Press
2016, 208 pages, 5.9 x 8.6 x 0.9 inches<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy on Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas Thwaites has a curious idea of what it means to take a vacation, at least if the just released GoatMan: How I Took a Holiday from Being Human<\/em> is any indication. What started off as a casual observation about how Queen Elizabeth\u2019s dog, Noggin, probably worries a good deal less than his royal master evolved into a quixotic book full of ruminations on ruminants. Animals, Thwaites imagined, live in the moment, free from worry, at one with the land. How wonderful to be so unburdened, he thought. So, after briefly considering becoming an elephant, he decided to try his hand at being a goat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along the way, Thwaites learned a good deal about goats. Humans, Thwaites tells us, have been interacting with them since 9000 BCE \u2013 from the domestication of bezoar goats somewhere in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains to the mythical, sexual subjugation of goats by the goat-horned, Greek god Pan, as depicted in a rather graphic sculpture discovered under layers of ash deposited on the city of Herculaneum by Mount Vesuvius in the year 79. Much to our relief, Thwaites just wants to be a goat, not to \u201cdo\u201d one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is not to say the book is not occasionally disgusting. The section describing the R&D behind his goat suit includes the dissection of a goat named Venus, who died of natural causes and whose skinned limbs, palm-sized brain, and oozing guts are explored in gory detail. I\u2019ll spare you. Suffice it to say that in the end, Thwaites gets his opportunity to clomp about on all fours on the steep hillsides of Switzerland, where he hangs out with a herd of Swiss goats and does what goats do \u2013 he grazes. For the record, the green-green grass, he reports, is sweeter than the blue-green stuff, which is bitter. Later, Thwaites makes a meal of the grass he\u2019d been chewing and spitting into an artificial goat stomach, using decidedly non-goat cooking techniques to make it digestible for his human digestive system. The resulting \u201cburnt grass stew,\u201d he confesses, was the \u201cmost unappetising meal of my life.\u201d Perhaps, though, if Thwaites had simply spent a few days hiking on two legs instead of four in this beautiful place, he would have had fewer goat concerns on his human mind. \u2013 Ben Marks<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Books That Belong On Paper<\/strong> first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair.<\/em> Sign up here<\/a> to get the issues a week early in your inbox.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Issue No. 117<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47588,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[31],"tags":[2398],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46042"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47588"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46042"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46068,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46042\/revisions\/46068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}