Archive for August, 2010
WARNING: POST CONTAINS SHIRTLESS MEN! DO NOT SCROLL DOWN IF YOU ARE OFFENDED BY TOPLESS MEN! Not that it’s a post about shirtless men, or even about how many times I can cram the traffic-increasing phrase “shirtless men” into a single (shirtless men!) post, but I thought I should titillate warn readers up front. If [ READ MORE ]
This post was neither inspired by real life nor dashed off in the ten minutes before I run to work. Would I lie to you? Almost certainly. But here’s how it is — sometimes you just don’t have time to get a post up to your blog on schedule. Whatever your schedule may be (mine’s [ READ MORE ]
Remember when this blog was about writing? No wonder even computer-generated search results think I’m an alcoholic. But let’s remember for a moment that socially- and intoxication-inclined writers are working double duty — not only do they have to keep their bar etiquette and their drinks straight, they’re also constantly mulling over works of staggering [ READ MORE ]
It takes a very complicated algorithm to determine what balance of critical history, publication volume, and content makes a book “overrated,” and I’m sure you’re all dying to see that math — no? I should just go ahead with the list, and you can cheer me on as I pander to your sympathies or curse [ READ MORE ]
Am I late this morning? Are there people who actually notice that these days? That’s a sign of success, I think, though I’m sorry for the inconvenience (you should really just subscribe via your preferred feed/reader service). There are, as the title implies, houseguests, and “house” is a misleading term since I live in a [ READ MORE ]
To-do lists have been on my mind lately. O Best Beloved makes them constantly, I made one myself (it has angry red tape at the corners, lives on my desk, and makes me want to hide under the covers forever), and two different people I follow mentioned it on Twitter in the last few days. [ READ MORE ]
As a progressive-minded sort of writer, I tend to view private collectors of rare editions as people that just missed the point somewhere — a first edition of, say, Lolita is only valuable because so many people have realized the worth of Nabokov’s words, which appear unchanged in the cheapest and most recent editions. Having [ READ MORE ]
I was a student before I was a writer, so I’m used to hearing some pretty half-assed advice on how to use the English language better. But my personal favorite to date was not, alas, one that I picked up after foolishly telling someone “yeah, I’m a writer” at the bar — and you do [ READ MORE ]
Looking back on my childhood, my love affair with words should have been obvious, and one wonders why my parents didn’t take more corrective steps along the lines of Summer Math Gulag or whatever they call those programs. I might even now be a happily-fulfilled actuarial statistician. But no episode stands out more clearly in [ READ MORE ]
It’s very popular to read Jane Austen just now, which means it’s also very popular to complain about Jane Austen — a good friend recently told me that he was never dating a girl who’d read Pride and Prejudice again. Since everyone from Kate Beaton of Hark! A Vagrant to Seth Grahame-Smith of Pride and [ READ MORE ]
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