W is for writing
(A version of this piece was originally posted on March 13, 2008)The writing that I have to write is of a kind. One of those kinds is a writing to be read, a writing that disappears into meaning and...
View ArticleX is for xeating
X is for cheating. It is the letter of abbreviation and shorthand.X is a signature and a saint, manifestation and incarnation, a use of the body to prove the existence of spirit.X is impossible, a...
View ArticleY is for yawn
You yawnas a sign of yielding. Giving wayis still a way to give.Movement is creation, anda yawn is a nodto the physicalityof language,difference in spaceas well as time,but it is also a way to say not...
View ArticleZ is for zed
The name is the thing.Thou whoreson zed! Thou unnecessary letter!It is an unnecessary letter, that anomalous hard consonant end. Like Ned and Ted for Edward—superfluous, silly. No wonder Z was on its...
View ArticleThe old and the new
Greetings. If you're visiting here for the first time, please feel free to look around. I have nearly 8 (!) years of blogging archived here, but as of August 2011, I'm no longer updating this site. You...
View ArticleReading 100 years of solitude nearly ruined all literature for me.
The night I finished it, the summer of 2007, I lay on my stomach in bed and looked across the pillows at Jeremy and said, I don't think I'll ever read another novel again.What shocked me, in the last...
View ArticleThe eternal present
Observation #2 on time: when it starts moving in CADS, it moves fast. We've shifted from an eternal world in the first 50 pages, where no one dies and all history exists at once (as Tim observed), to...
View ArticleA quick break
I haven't abandoned CADS, and while I'm overdue for a post, I'm up-to-date on my reading, and will try to have something tonight.In the meantime, however, I have another pressing issue on my mind. DC...
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Because steampunk is really all about the joy of being alive
A steampunk take on the conclusion of the Original Series Star Trek episode, "The Menagerie"I also rather enjoyed this strip, which is hotter than your mom.
View ArticleTheses on journalism: an experiment in format
(I posted the following on Twitter earlier today.)Fair warning: I don't really spend much time thinking about journalism.However, prompted by an interesting albeit somewhat roundabout (my fault, not...
View ArticleIt's not a bug, it's a feature!
Cute video from the Sun (UK), in the style of an Apple new product video.I'm not sure how much I want to nitpick. I've spent a lot of time in this space arguing that print is a highly developed...
View ArticleIf I were writing a political movie, this is how it would end
Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Snyder is proposing to eliminate the Michigan Business Tax and replace it with a "6 percent flat corporate income tax." Snyder estimates that the flat...
View ArticleWhat we talk about when we talk about books
(This is also posted at Bookfuturism)I'm taking it for granted that I'm preaching to the choir here when I say that books are different things. Books are novels, nonfiction, collections of photos,...
View ArticleA little controversy is a good thing
I gave a presentation on Lansing Literary Magazines at Ignite Lansing 3.0 on Friday night. I thought the presentation went well, and while I didn't bowl over the crowd (there were both more dynamic...
View ArticleLansing Lit Mags
I have some thoughts on the presentation after re-watching it, but for now, if you haven't seen it, my 3/5/10 Ignite Lansing presentation on Lansing Literary Magazines is available at YouTube here.
View ArticleSummer reading
I'm currently buried neck-deep in reading for my MA thesis on Gertrude Stein, but I'm starting to get really excited about being free to read anything I want this summer, and at the top of my list is...
View ArticleLansing Lit Mags, and me.
I've already posted a link to a slides-only video version of my Lansing Lit Mags presentation at Ignite Lansing 3.0. This afternoon, LCC TV posted video of both the slides and me. I think I have a...
View ArticleThere are only three meaningful places to cut federal spending
Last Friday, I tweeted a link to an Economist poll in which 92% of Americans said that it was important to balance the federal budget within the next few years, and 62% said that the budget should be...
View ArticleThere are things we can agree on, even across the spectrum
Andrew Sullivan echoes my point in yesterday's post (of course, I'm really echoing him and other reasonable people all along the political spectrum):When they [Tea Partiers] propose cuts in Medicare,...
View ArticleDiary of a Casual Gamer #1: Getting Lost
(This was originally posted at Ditching Otis)Playing Red Dead Redemption and Final Fantasy XIII at the same time is more than a little jarring. Not, of course, because of the wildly divergent settings....
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