Friday Five

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1. In Serbo-Croation, pank means punk. In Estonian, bank. Google images for pank. Among the many oddities you’ll find the Spanish comic book Peter Pank, a fair number of graffiti tags, and some bitchin’ glamor shots of Polish rock band Lady Pank. It’s an acronym for childless, professional aunts, for pantothenate kinase (the first enzyme  in the biosynthetical pathway of coenzyme A — like I know what that is), and it’s a tasty looking  diner in Sayreville, NJ. NPR’s definition gets you closest to us (though you’ll have no trouble coming up with more vulgar variants). Roxane talks about a definition a little  here.

2. Rethinking “retarded.”

3. In her new short-story collection,  American Salvage, Bonnie Jo Campbell looks at working-class life in cold, meth-drenched, small town Michigan. Get it here.

4. Daniel Nester was in PANK 3. We LOVE Daniel Nester. Inappropriately. And here comes  How to Be Inappropriate! Buy it, read it, love it, or we aren’t your friends anymore.

5. The Powell’s Q&A.