Busy Days
Olivia and I went to see Simon Amstell last night in his comedy show "Numb." (It has a name to demonstrate that it's upmarket and philosophical.) Here's a snippet:He was pretty funny. We were in the...
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Every Day, In Every Way, We Are Putting an End To Geek Pride
So, the other day, writer and editor Mariah Huehner took reasonable exception to a Facebook photo, specifically this one:If the presence of "whores" at your favorite comic book convention upset you...
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Wow
This morning's post received a comment from livejournal.I thought it was spam at first. It read:дравствуйте!Ваша запись попала в топ-25 популярных записей LiveJournal. Подробнее о рейтинге читайте в...
View ArticleLocal Alert: Merle Kessler hit by car
From the local "entertainment" column:Playwright, performer, musician, screenwriter and wit-meister Merle Kessler was hospitalized after a serious bone-breaking hit-and-run accident Wednesday. His...
View ArticleThe center cannot hold
So, yesterday southern Europe saw an internationalized general strike against austerity, and Israel launched an attack on Gaza. Clearly, everything is being pulled apart, and some are trying to hold it...
View ArticleMore Rolling Jubilee
On the issue of debt forgiveness as income, and whether this will just harm the recipients of Rolling Jubilee debt purchase-and-cancellation, here's something from the tax code that might be...
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You Cannot Escape Irony
Christy Wampole's essay How to Live Without Irony is only the second-dumbest thing I saw in the newspaper this weekend. Here's the first, from a comment about a personality profile of Philip Roth:But...
View ArticleTuesday Quick Notes
The other day I saw the film A Royal Affair. No time to write a full review, but it's quite good for a costume drama. This one is about the mad king Christian VII of Denmark, and the reformist doctor...
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Cloud Atlas
Well, that was a big ol' mess of a mostly fun overly sentimental bit of glurge spectacle. So love conquers most, if not all, and freedom is a major theme of history. Interestingly, the narrative, such...
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Tribute to an Epic Beard Man
Friedrich Engels was born on November 28, 1820. So, to celebrate his 192nd birthday, I put my Engels novelette Arbeitskraft up on my website for free for the next two days. You can just sit where you...
View ArticleWhy I am not a reformist.
Speaking of anniversaries and labor relations, one hundred and one years ago, a fire broke out at the Triangle Waist Factory in New York City. Within 18 minutes, 146 people were dead as a result of the...
View ArticleOh, BART
BART apparently keeps its computer system out in a field somewhere, as today's rains took it offline. This led, according to BART, to inaccurate information on the electronic signs on the platforms. In...
View ArticleEven the Underground Needs Editors
I mentioned Imperial Youth Review before. I have a story with Don Webb in the first issue, which is out now. "And Other Horrors" is a Lovecraftian story with a Christmas and 2012 end-of-the-world...
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Short reviews of short fiction, and a confession
The anthology Fungi is out now. One critic says of it Though this anthology is diverse in genre and tone, the motif of infectious spores features a touch too heavily, and works meant to be humorous...
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Behold, the awesome translation powers of Bing!
Not bad, Bing! Among the ones you found impossible to translate was "one/a" (female). Yeah, that never comes up in conversation.
View ArticleFrom the mailbag
Specifically a comment from a previous post:You can't write at all, you are semi-literate and so undereducated your extra layer of fat might be useful to you not in a fight of course. Any self...
View ArticleHorror Drive-In Thread of the Century
Remember when we used to have the Shocklines Thread of the Week? Well that forum is so undertrafficked these days that at any given point a good twenty percent of front-page threads are spam. Not from...
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The Next Big
So, this thing is going around. shadesong tagged me. It's for writers, about their next book:1) What is the working title of your next book?Love is the Law2) Where did the idea come from for the...
View ArticleLooking for a job in publishing?
So are a lot of people!Of course, sometimes the best way to start is with an internship. Well, the Dalkey Archive is looking for a few interns:The Press is looking for promising candidates with an...
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