Category: Miscellany

  • 'Know this'

    Here’s one of my pet peeves about television writing. It seems that a writer wants to show a character getting serious and reinforcing some sombre truth, she has that character say to another “know this: I will never leave you alone” or “know this: I’ll be watching you” or something like that. This always grates…

  • Grateful. For an often-morose moper,

    Grateful. For an often-morose moper, I have lots to be grateful for. I’m healthy, young(-ish), privileged, and free. I work at home. I live in a beautiful mediterranean climate. I have maintained a love affair for over a decade. I am still learning to know myself better, to listen to my…

  • Do the pink robots win?

    Last night I saw the Flaming Lips open for Beck and then back him for the second half of his set. Good show, interesting alchemy. I have all of Beck’s records except his most recent one. And I only have the most recent Lips record, but I’ve listened to it a lot and plan to…

  • Top 100 albums of the

    Top 100 albums of the ’80s. I haven’t found much to argue with in Pitchfork’s Top 100 Albums of the 1980s, but then I’m also a huge Pixies fan. Let me put it this way: if not for Doolittle, there would be no Pitchfork. In other words, the influence of this record is so vast…

  • Pete Townsend reviews Kurt Cobain's

    Pete Townsend reviews Kurt Cobain’s diaries. “Hope I die before I become Pete Townsend,” wrote Cobain in his diary. Pete doesn’t seem offended so much as saddened in his review of the just-published journals of the suicidal muse of the ’90s. It is desperately sad for me to sit here, 57 years old, a huge…

  • Purported Bin Laden "Letter to

    Purported Bin Laden “Letter to America”. Full text: bin Laden’s ‘letter to America’

  • Can the Democrats win again?

    Harley Sorensen has some, on balance, very wise advice for the Democratic party in Dems Must Change To Win In ’04 / View from the left: To win in 2004, the Democrats must return to their roots, rather than continue their recent insipid balancing act, an act that has turned them into spineless, lukewarm Republicans.…

  • Kikkomaso. Let me be the

    Kikkomaso. Let me be the last one on the block to link to this bizarre flash soy sauce superhero risqué music video….

  • I'd laugh if I weren't crying

    Tom Tomorrow describes three scenarios and asks you to guess which actually happened and which are outlandish satire. I should probably just link to the cartoon every Monday…. [Bite Media]

  • Fear of a Muslim Planet

    The Well is a private conferencing system, its “current” topic notoriously incivil, and yet there’s been a great discussion there lately, with a frank exchange of a wide range of views about geopolitics today and the war on terror, and litttle patience for unexamined truisms. Since I only “own my own words,” I can’t provide…

  • New arts journal: Princeton Independent

    Princeton University hosts an alumni network service called TigerNet, featuring mailing lists among other services. One such list is called Princeton-Writing and serves as a kind of coffeepot for writers. Eric Lubell, a writer from the Princeton class of ’76, felt that alumni are not especially well served by … [artsflow]

  • Ex-Republican Huffington bemoans new Stepford Pelosi

    I’ve been in there rooting for “San Francisco Democrat” Nancy Pelosi, though I know her mainly as a fundraiser, and cutting her some slack as she tries to reposition the Democrats in congress, but Arianna Huffington put her finger on a real concern in her recent Salon column today… [Bite Media]

  • Watchword Issue 4 Release Party at Café du Nord (in S.F.) on December 8

    Watchword Press is proud to announce the release of their fourth issue of Watchword by hosting an exciting evening of literary entertainment featuring contributors Ishle Yi Park, Maw Shein Win, and Stephanie Young. Also, come hear the mesmerizing music of Zmrzlina, Sonny Smith, and The Ebb and Flow. And… you… [artsflow]

  • Trampled by Babe the blue

    Trampled by Babe the blue ox. At loose ends… I am suddenly adrift. There’s no immediate urgency to find a new project, but my current work has suddenly stopped… I know I should enjoy the downtime, the freedom, the sudden rush of patient but niggling fantasies, but part of me also feels like I should…

  • A breather

    Couldn’t blog anything yesterday, dealing with a project-related crisis that’s still in progress. It feels funny to miss a day. I usually post something somwhere, but by evening, my first free moments, I felt too discouraged. Not chatty. On the other hand, change is good, so I may be able…

  • Reprising their roles…

    I thought this was a brilliant bit of webhackery till I saw the Mad Magazine credit in the lower-right. See the full-sized version to read the fine print. [A Meme List]

  • Humor crosses political lines. My

    Humor crosses political lines. My dad forwarded me a Mad Magazine poster called Gulf Wars: Clone of the Attacks. The satire beat anything they put out in my day (except maybe their controversial “So why not pardon Hitler?” back-page ad after Ford pardoned Nixon. Even as a child I could see that was a…

  • Writer's log

    I feel that one of the things I’d like to be “logging” is the start, milestone-reaching, or conclusion of any of my writing projects. For example, today I completed the first draft of a review of The Deadhead’s Taping Addendum (PepperTonic, 2002) for the upcoming issue of Dead Letters Magazine…. [X-POLLEN]

  • Idiocy of the week indeed.

    Idiocy of the week indeed. At Salon this week Andrew Sullivan writes, “Where, one wonders, has Denby been? The main argument on the right these days is not white supremacism (I know that’s news to Joe Conason, but then a lot of what’s going on in the world is).

  • W. Bush believes he is

    W. Bush believes he is presiding over ‘the end times’. (via The Smirking Chimp) According to Jack Van Impe Ministries International, President Bush “knows” that he’s involved with prophetic events concerning the Middle East and the final battle between good and evil:I know that he as seen this video, “Jerusalem: War or Peace.

  • Independent journalist blogging his way back to Iraq

    Former AP and New York Daily News reporter Christopher Allbritton publishes the Back to Iraq blog, through which he is attempting to raise money to send himself back to northern Iraq. Here’s part of his pitch soliciting support for his independent journalistic mission: This summer I went stumbling around Iraqi Kurdistan, the northern part of…