February 2010
The Smithiest of all Smiths lyrics:
There’s a club if you’d like to go, you could meet somebody who really loves you. So you go and you stand on your own, and you leave on your own, and you go home and you cry and you want to die.
Want to know my opinion on something else? Just ask. I have nothing to do tomorrow but watch 40,000 html pages auto-update as I execute various find and...
January 2010
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The hardest part isn't the work, it's the business
There is nothing like writing a query letter to convince you that what you’ve written is crazy and rambling and terrible. I worked literally two days and came up with the following:
Boone Jacobsen is a failed astronomer who has let his life languish to ruin. A strained marriage, a distant son, a department chair quietly hinting for his resignation. When he inherits a restaurant in Key...
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Calling for disfluency →
bobulate:
On cognitive fluency, a preference for the easy:
Cognitive fluency is simply a measure of how easy it is to think about something, and it turns out that people prefer things that are easy to think about to those that are hard.
“Every purchase you make, every interaction you have, every judgment you make can be put along a continuum from fluent to disfluent,” says Adam Alter, a...
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“Natural quiet is a rapidly disappearing resource. According to acoustic...”
– Seed Magazine combines sound and images to provide a look (and listen) at these naturally quite places. Penguins, flapping butterfly wings, waves, and more. (via) (via guy)
Real work →
bobulate:
marco from Fraser Speirs:
For years we’ve all held to the belief that computing had to be made simpler for the ‘average person’. I find it difficult to come to any conclusion other than that we have totally failed in this effort.
Then Fraser Speirs on future shock and the definition of “real work:”
The tech industry will be in paroxysms of future shock for some time to come. Many will...
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Way to go, CNN
You may have noticed, during the State of the Union Address, that Obama mentioned the Supreme Court’s recent decision to lift spending limits on political contributions made by corporations. If you didn’t, here’s the juicy bit:
With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for...
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I finally finished American Pastoral. I feel no love for Philip Roth.
Hodgman Interview Airs This Weekend
merlin:
City Arts & Lectures | KQED Public Media for Northern CA
Like I said, my interview with Mr. Hodgman runs on this week’s City Arts & Lectures.
In San Francisco, it’s on KQED Sunday @ 1pm PST. More affiliates via their website.
And, if you don’t get CA&L in your area, maybe try PublicRadioFan.com, the KQED stream, or Paul’s lovely Radioshift.
I haven’t heard the final...
Some brief thoughts on the fiction of...
I’m slogging through the last sixty pages of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. These last sixty pages are perhaps the longest novel I’ve ever read and detail Swede Levov’s realization, via the interactions at a dinner party, that the world has changed significantly in the 30 years since his heyday as a star high school athlete. Gone is the optimistic glow of post-war...
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A modest proposal
When writing stories of The South, we should get to lowercase cokes. It is not Coca-Cola we’re getting when going to the store for cokes. We could come back with tea or Mountain Dew or Dr. Pepper or root beer or Wink or Squirt or SunDrop.
“you owe it to us all to get on with what you’re good at.”
– w.h. auden (via bibliotheque)
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Thanks so much to anonymous for pointing this out...
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WatchAiden’s camera work (and amateur beat boxing)
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I really, really love talking about writing →
Really
trotterpie asked: Greatest Muppet and why?
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Last iPad (ahem) post: the pricing model seems very similar to consoles like the 360, which act as loss leaders to attract licensees. It would be interesting to find out the payments being made to Apple from various content partners as well as Apple’s percent take from every transaction.
fwiw: Nintendo can’t afford to take a loss on Wii hardware because they don’t have the game...
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iBooks
Um….about the interface. Yeah.
Hopefully they’ll make a spine view or something much less 1995.
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Some of the best of PTO
putthison:
Some of the best of Put This On
So many have joined us in the past few months, so I thought I’d link to a few of our favorite pieces on the blog. Especially since my new intern starts today and I’m still exhausted from the Sundance Film Festival. (By the way: great styles in The Extra Man.)
How to shop like my mom
Wedding Attire for Guests
Wedding Attire for Grooms
The basics...
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One more encouraging anecdote
This past summer I had the amazing opportunity to sit one-on-one with Ron Rash and talk about writing, the time to do it, and how so many people give up. He had a story similar to mine. He knew two guys in his undergrad classes who were much better than he, but they just stopped. Ron, on the other hand, used to wake early and head in to his office to do class prep. At the time he was teaching six...
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Sound Opinions dissects The Pixies' Doolittle →
Special guest Charles Thompson, III, better known now as Frank Black. Better known then as Black Francis.
If you’re not listening to Sound Opinions, you probably should. It’s just a solid, solid show about music.
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Try to be anything else →
bobulate:
I keep thinking about Jessica’s one thing:
The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.
And this from Lorrie Moore on how to become a writer:
First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if...
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This is how it happens
Kyle drifts. He has seen a naked girl. In real life. He has captured her on film and she now stands against blackness, fire to her right. Her shoulder, hip, thigh alight in orange. The swell of her smallish breasts, her calf curving into boot top. Indelible.
He lies on his bed, stares at the ceiling, imagines her there above him. Myriad. She floats against the ceiling like a spectre, an...
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The decline of western civilization
From Inc.com’s “9 Businesses You Can Start In Your Pajamas in 2010”:
“So you’ve got a ton of friends on Facebook and a loyal Twitter following. Why not profit off them”
Hey! Why not profit off them?
No explanation for the inconsistent capitalization in the headline.
Also, “necessories”. As if, on the one hand, there can be such a thing as...
poetbabble:
eeb:
One of my students just asked me if I smoked pot.
Who asks his/her professor these questions?! And what prompted him? Am I that out of it?
I had a student ask me today if I was hungover the Saturday morning after my birthday. For the most part, I believe in full tranparency. I deflected on this one easily, but I never lie to them. I think that kind of credibility is...
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So we're at the bus stop
And it’s me and you and the dude with no shoes who screams obscenities into the trash can at mostly random intervals.
Let’s do what we can to make it less awkward.
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I don’t know Matt Langer. I don’t know how old he is or what he does for a living. I follow Matt Langer on Tumblr because he has interesting things to say, and I often like them. Today is no different.
In quintessential “You’re doing it wrong” blog post fashion, Langer takes to task Old Media’s online presence and their tendency to riddle their pages with ads...
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In the Time it Takes to Ring You Up →
For a long time I participated actively in Gainesville Poets and Writers, the town’s longest-running writers group. I had to give it up when my son was born because it took too much time away from my family in the middle of the week. But being in a writing group is something I miss. I think it’s a valuable exercise, especially if the members range widely in ability. By critiquing others’ works,...
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Making a difference →
viafrank:
bobulate:
For those who have ever heard, “Those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach:” Taylor Mali, on behalf of educators everywhere, on what teachers make:
I make kids work harder than I every thought they could. I make parents see kids for who they really are. I make kids wonder. I make them question. I make them criticize. I make them apologize and mean it. I make them...
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I live in a lovely town.
