Category: Miscellany

  • Lott is toast

    Salon.com Politics | Lott’s amnesia On Tuesday, on the racist Web site Nationalist.org, past Lott supporter Richard Barrett expressed offense that Lott would retract his remarks and try to portray Thurmond’s candidacy as anything other than what it was. “The reason that you have been elected is because you have been a segregationist, pitted against…

  • I often dream of air raids

    Robyn Hitchcock daydreams as this week’s celebrity guest diary at Slate. Link courtesy of She’s Actual Side, Nationwide, Believe. Given that she has now outed herself as a Robyn fan, and her blog name gives away her TMBG allegiance, I am going to go out on a limb and guess that she is also a…

  • A Brief Break from all

    A Brief Break from all the Heavy News Stuff. The latest “thing” here at the Salon blogs seems to be interesting Google searches that led to your site.  My favourite for today?  “pay scales for CIA“.  It does make me wondering – in most industries, you can look at how employees in comperable positions in…

  • One Pet Peeve Coming Right

    One Pet Peeve Coming Right Up. “Even if you don’t believe in capital punishment, the legislature has said capital punishment is available for certain crimes,” Mr. Horan said, adding, “If this doesn’t qualify for the death penalty, what does?” – Quoted in the New York Times This is something I just have to get off…

  • Minding the sun. I just

    Minding the sun. I just read Rich’s latest post to True Dirt, on the subject of welcoming the rain that we’re supposed to get here in the Bay Area in the winter, when we aren’t in a drought. He mentions the strange looks he gets at work when the prospect of rain makes him glad.…

  • All's well that ends well

    Now it can be told: In some ways the most frustrating thing about the deal I signed in August to write a guide to blogging for professionals was that I wasn’t permitted to discuss the project here in my blog-about-blogging. This was probably a good business decision for my publisher, as they did not want…

  • Where do you draw the line?

    Mark Pilgrim’s best writing comes when he is remembering the bad old days: And the bath—oh, the bath, it was like a time warp to old times. Not good old times, just old times. A pull-down chain on the john, an old sink that leaked, and small blades—like you could buy ten at a time…

  • Getcher quality tour

    Mark Hoback doesn’t want to monopolize this salonika Salon Blogs collaborative category, but not to worry, a few more people have notified me of their feeds and I’ll be adding them. Also, I expect to reorganize this page soon so that it links back more directly to other Salon blogs and provides a way that…

  • The big exhalation

    As the year winds down, I find I have a surfeit of interesting things to think, write, and talk about but an overwhelming desire to sit and stare at a fireplace warmed only by a string of chili lights. I’ll be in New York for about a week before Christmas, returning to Oakland on the…

  • Underreported racism

    Lott shows his true colors. [Bite Media]

  • A lovely view of Heaven but I'd rather be with you

    Between the sets of last night’s The Other Ones show at the Kaiser Auditorium in Oakland (details to follow), Robert Hunter played for about 40 minutes, just his voice and his tricked-out electric guitar. A lyric stuck with me. …I hear the cries of childrenAnd the other songs of warIt’s like a mighty melodyThat rings…

  • Your Salon Blog Tour of

    Your Salon Blog Tour of Quality  Let

  • Don't bite the lips that kiss you

    Check out The Unknown Hinson Jukebox for samples of such instant classics as “I Make Faces (When I Make Love)” and “In the Trunk of My Cadillac Car.” And who can forget these immortal stylings from “Put Out or Get Out”: I was in prison for 30 years, babyYou learn a lot when you’re in…

  • New reading series starts tonight

    New reading series starts tonight in San Francisco. Wednesday, December 4th at 7:30 pm2390 Mission Street Suite #10, at 20th and Mission$2New Series    New Writing///a creative//    new series of readings by some of the BayArea’s most talented writers   plus a free chapbook at every readingtonight’s fabulous readers:Chaim Bertman, Sasha Cagen, Stephanie Young, Liz WorthyFor further information contact Jenny…

  • Catch Michael Jackson's kids…. MadBlast

    Catch Michael Jackson’s kids…. MadBlast – Catch Michael Jackson’s Kids!…

  • Don't hate me because I'm beautiful

    B sends me this link to Maximum Participation Billboard Liberation. [A Meme List]

  • Blogging my dog ears

    All my life, I’ve turned down the page at the corner of the book I’m reading whenever a passage of writing strikes me in some particular way: as writing itself, or because it confirms or disputes some ongoing argument I’m having with myself. The gesture is vestigial, the first step in highlighting or underlining, annotating…

  • Another dirty blog

    What do you call a garden blog written by two people, discussing their plans, decision, thoughts, reflections, illustrated with digital images of the two gardens or the plants in them, with links to other gardening resources and the few (very few) other easily-findable examples of literate garden writing online? Briggs and Rich call it True…

  • Believe it or not

    0d my first music CD ever. With many technological advances I am the consummate late adopter. I like to let other people beta test the new techne at premium rates and jump in when the thing has proven itself and become consumer-easy. I waited till I bought a computer that could burn CDs with a…

  • Bush names bin Laden to head terror probe

    Sometimes satire gets at a deeper truth than “objective journalism” ever manages: WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 — President Bush today named Osama Bin Laden, a polarizing figure who is viewed with suspicion by some in the West but enjoys great cred in the Arab street, to lead an independent investigation into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.…

  • Which dreamt it?

    Before it disappears, go and read Literary Devices by Richard Powers, published in cooperation with Zoetrope. Borges suggested that the reader writes Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes. The software that drives battle scenes in the Lord of Rings trilogy approaches the kind of interactive storytelling landscape presaged in this witty, utterly engrossing tale. An excerpt from near…