October 2010
47 posts
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Today in economic head-scratchery
The USA’s odious and head-splittingly complex “farm bill” throws roughly $25 billion in subsidies at growers of five commodity crops: cotton, corn, rice, wheat, and soybeans.
So why in the motherfucking hell was I just charged $4.99 for ten ounces of edamame?
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Sales pitch
It strikes me just now that the “I’d like to talk to you about Amway” conversation is exactly like the “I’d like to talk to you about Jesus” discussion.
Just substitute “consumer products” for “the lord”, “financial freedom” for “eternal life”, and the two pitches are pretty much interchangeable.
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Write one leaf
Write one leaf about why the hell Tony is sitting at his desk at 7:20 in the morning.
Seriously, write it.
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Sunday
A big pot of steaming black coffee and a couple of fried eggs with thick slices of fresh whole wheat peasant bread. Leafing randomly through the Sunday Times and sighing; wistfully at the Travel section and with dismay and resignation at the World section. Turning on the TV to spend an hour or so with the Top Gear lads. A hot shower and a fresh tee. An empty coffee pot makes way for a bottle of...
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The Interrobang: Underused Defender of Emphatic...
My suggested topic for next week’s round of Punctuation Pedantry.
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My Glamorous Writing Life, #904
I love the sphincter-cramp of terror I get when all of my current freelance gigs end at exactly the same time and I have nothing lined up in the queue.
I especially love when that happens just when all of my bills start rolling in. It really encourages my Inner Critic to unleash his favored catcalls of “Failure!” and “Hack!”
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Bored with the same old Lorem Ipsum text?
Lorizzle ipsizzle fo own yo’ amet, dope adipiscing elizzle. Fizzle own yo’ velizzle, fo shizzle volutpat, suscipizzle quis, gravida vizzle, shizzlin dizzle. Pellentesque get down get down tortor. Sizzle erizzle. Dizzle shizzlin dizzle dolor dapibus turpis tempizzle owned. Maurizzle pellentesque nibh et turpis. Crunk izzle mammasay mammasa mamma oo sa. Phat shit you son of a bizzle...
“What fresh herpery-derpery is this?”
– Dorothy Parker
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So, you know how in the movies...
…the girl is in her dark apartment and she feels like someone is looking at her through the window, so she goes to look and see what it is even though she knows that’s a bad idea, and she gets right up to the window and it’s just a raccoon, and she acts like “phew that was creepy but it could have been worse”, but then she turns around AND THE KILLER IS STANDING RIGHT...
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“Across that midnight landscape he rides with his toppling burden of despair and...”
– Loren Eiseley, from his essay “Strangeness in the Proportion” in The Night Country.
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Truthful Tuesday
I like Jay-Z.
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EXTREME ADVENTURE WRITING
I JUST SPLIT AN INFINITIVE WITH MY BARE HANDS.
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.
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I'm spotting.
Should I be worried?
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Amazon to Launch “Kindle Singles” →
marco:
(via infoneer-pulse)
Less than 10,000 words or more than 50,000: that is the choice writers have generally faced for more than a century—works either had to be short enough for a magazine article or long enough to deliver the “heft” required for book marketing and distribution. But in many cases, 10,000 to 30,000 words (roughly 30 to 90 pages) might be the perfect, natural length to lay...
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3:26am dream
My grandfather sat next to me at the track and the old, sickly horses ran their elliptical path. None of them won. Grandpa simply curled up his racing sheet and shrugged and smiled with his pencil mustache. We drank flat, warm beers and I stared down at my Batman t-shirt and the sneakers I was so proud to have tied myself, my little feet dangling off the bleacher seat a few inches from the ground....
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delgrosso asked: What, you don't have a single interesting thing to post today?
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Somewhere, somehow, things went haywire.
We can go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and threaten to blow Iran off the face of the planet. We can conduct a nonstop campaign of drone and helicopter attacks in Pakistan and run a network of secret prisons around the world. We are the mightiest nation mankind has ever seen.
But we can’t seem to build a railroad tunnel to carry commuters between New Jersey and New York.
The United States is...
delgrosso asked: Dude, how are you going to deal with having to sleep for 16 hours a day for the foreseeable future?
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Today in FMLery:
The good news is that I do not, in fact, have the flu.
The bad news is that according to my doctor, I probably have mononucleosis.
I knew I never should have gone to that makeout party at Scott Friday’s house.
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Bath
A man saw the whole world as a grinning skull and cross-bones. The rose flesh of life shriveled from all faces. Nothing counts. Everything is a fake. Dust to dust and ashes to ashes and then an old darkness and a useless silence. So he saw it all. Then he went to a Mischa Elman concert. Two hours waves of sound beat on his eardrums. Music washed something or other inside him. Music broke down and...
Truthful Tuesday
I feel like the real me was stolen and replaced with an emotionless replicant who simply goes through the motions of what used to be my life.
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Sit, Ubu. Sit.
Good dog.
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