From Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory. The British fought the war for four years and three months. Its potential of ironic meaning, considered not now in relation to the complacencies of the past but in itself alone, emerges when we consider its events chronologically. The last five …
I’m kicking off a week of Deep Reads, in hopes of jumping back in the habit of reading books, which I’ve fallen out of for the last couple of months. Regular content — including, I promise, new Sandwich Century entries — will resume next week. From Fred Halliday’s 100 Myths …
All-Story magazine, October 1912. First appearance of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Tarzan of the Apes”. Art by Clinton Pettee; text available as an e-book here.
And now it’s time for another exciting installment of LEONARD GIVES ADVICE TO WRITERS EVEN THOUGH HE IS TERRIBLE! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ One of the biggest problems in writing fiction is giving a character attributes that you, as a writer, do not possess. “Write what you know”, they say, and if, for …
So everyone is bitching and moaning that the awesome new debt ceiling deal is going to be bad for the economy. Liberals are all running around saying that Obama went all Cave Carson on the deal, and that all the austerity measures, which are totally necessary because America doesn’t have …
I’ve been listening to a collection of incredible music from the ’40s and ’50s by Holiness preacher Brother Claude Ely, which is inspiring in all kinds of ways, but also deeply frustrating. For one thing, as much as I like to denigrate religion, it is one of the few things …
I wrote this fairy tale a few years ago and never really found the right home for it (I read it aloud in front of a group of well-meaning parents and their baffled kids at the Evanston Ethnic Arts Festival, but you can probably imagine their reaction). Here it is …
So, because I am a self-hating jerk, I was flitting around a bunch of the right-blogs yesterday, to see what horrifying inhumane garbage they had to say about the Norway slaughter. And one of the most common threads, especially at Ace of Spades and Confederate Yankee, was a variant of …
Occasionally, I’d like to share somewhat longer excerpts from things I’ve read and been impressed by than my usual slender quote-of-the-day offerings. Here’s the first, from Hannah Arendt’s Essays in Understanding 1930-1954: “In trying to understand what were the real motives which caused people to act as cogs in the …
So, there’s this: And there’s nothing inherently wrong with the argument that big dumb summer blockbusters should be held to different critical standards than art films. The thing is, though, the video short-circuits that argument, calling you a snobby effete hipster jackoff with a funny haircut for daring to equivocate …
1. Playing competitive basketball 2. Attending the University of Hawaii 3. Attending Hawaii Pacific University 4. Attending North Idaho College 5. Competing in beauty pageants 6. Attending Matanuska-Susitna College 7. Working as a sports reporter 8. Working as a sports broadcaster 9. Serving on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation …
Nobody has suffered today like I have suffered today, unless they also read the entirety of the shitty Libertarian webcomic Roswell, Texas by L. Neil Smith. Allow me to share with you some of its insouciant crappiness in the form of a list. 1. The comic is set in an …
Leave it to Dave fucking Eggers on Grant-fucking-land to write the ultimate paean to the horseshit “Who cares if the Cubs suck forever and ever, Wrigley Field is TOTALLY SO MUCH FUN” mentality. The thing is so reeking of sensa-wunda excrement that the not-true-since-at-least-2005 accusation that White Sox Park is …
Since I’ve been unemployed, I buy all my books at Wal-Mart. They only offer three kinds of books (religious, self-help, and monster-based romance), none of which I enjoy, so it keeps me from spending too much money. Today, I was up at the Wal-Mart on the Austin Highway, and I …
Hi, publicists! You know I love you. You’re the reason I don’t pay for music. You help me make a living, sort of. But you don’t like wasting your time any more than I do, so here are a couple of tips that will save us both precious seconds we …
