A photographer friend of mine, Jonathan, was telling me about a discussion he had with someone at a video shoot we had just covered for Noisecreep. This person asked Jonathan how to become a photographer. He said his response was this, roughly paraphrased: “I didn’t really know what to tell the guy. The way you … Waste Your Life Away With Words
Hanukah starts at sundown today and it snowed a little bit in Pittsburgh, so to celebrate these two unrelated events I set up email subscriptions to jd.com — in case you’re one of the five people that read this site and are scared of URL locators and RSS readers. You will make your inbox vomit. … Spin the Dradle, Nauseate Your Inbox
I recently subscribed to the wonderfully-designed blog of someone high-profile in the publishing industry — a writer and editor. There was a good amount of useful information for people like me: unpublished twerps waiting in line to get their hopes eradicated. But there was also plenty of drek: two levels of main navigation, advertisement graphics … Read It, Won’t Buy the T-Shirt
The Road is Cormac McCarthy’s tenth book, and it’s about a father and his son traveling through a post-apocalyptic America. It was panned by critics and by the crowning jewel of praise, Oprah, and has been already been shuffled out of Hollywood as a film. McCarthy’s other recent success which made it to film was … Book Review: The Road
With my first book’s third draft only four chapters deep into in the can, zero agent prospects in sight, and no other connections to the literary industry at any level, I already mentioned that I have ideas and envisioned scenes for another book. Today I took this a foolhardy step further and formulated the dreaded … One-Sentence Summary For New Book, Only Worshipful Praise Welcome
Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer is probably his best known work, and it was highly-praised from its first pressing in 1962. Though mostly plot-less, it follows a few month in the life of Binx Bolling, a stock broker and veteran of the Korean War who now lives a quiet life in suburban New Orleans. The book … Book Review: The Moviegoer
The other day I ran into one of my pastors downtown. He had on his headphones so I laid my hand on his shoulder in the most non-threatening way one could do. We talked for a few minutes on the sidewalk in front of a coat store, and it was the sort of interaction seemed … Vitruvian Rendezvous
There’s colored yarn strings of stuttered graffiti phrases on the once-bare concrete walls that parallel the east busway on the ride into downtown. One of the legible phrases is “NO SET FUTURE”, set in half-serifed seafoam. Given the number of people that ride on those buses every day I’m estimating that more people will read … One Set Future
There’s an annual, month-long phenomenon called National Novel Writing Month (usually referenced by the offensively cutesy portmanteau, NaNoWriMo), and any writer with a blog worth its Google-salt is mentioning it — often through several posts. The idea is that participants spend the entire month of November writing, and completing, an entire 50k word novel, with … National Throw Words Onto A Screen Month
With a nod to its rural heritage, America recently resurrected a lost hour, so now the days are brighter earlier and much colder. The bike ride to the bus stop is actually less terrible in the these months because the only motivation heat doesn’t kill is the desire to smash your nose into ice cream. … It’s Thanksgiving Time and You’re Kicking Me
The Tell Tale Heart and Other Writings compiles (presumably) Poe’s better short stories and poems. If you’re familiar with “The Raven” and “The Tell Tale Heart” — and anyone who’s taken high school-level English, known a few goths that affect airs, or simply owns a TV would be — you’ll have a good idea of … Book Review: The Tell Tale Heart and Other Writings
Through some recent discussions with a friend I’ve decided to take comments off the blog. Not that the comments were really a huge “problem” to begin with, but it’s more representative of something internal. I want this site to be a documentation of a cadre of various things, a few of which are broad topics … Comments Closed, For Eternity
I received The Road to Serfdom last week in the mail, and book club is this Sunday. So immediately I switched from Poe to Hayek to make good on the deadline. Is this noteworthy? Not really, other than as an exemplary occurrence of the mania of someone who might take too seriously his reading schedule … The Pit (of a Certain Nantucketian) and The Penduluum (of Economic Theories)
On an episode of 60 Minutes a while back I heard of a writer who preferred to create on a typewriter instead of a computer because it forced him to reconsider things more effectively. Ray Bradbury drafted Fahrenheit 451 on a rented typewriter in the basement of a college building. He inserted dimes at the … This Is Not What You Wanted
“The grim phantasm,” of paper. The blurry, delicately left-aligned photograph you see here are all of the books in my possession that are in queue for reading. Please note the absence of the highest priority item, Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, which has been posted from an operative in Ebayland. You see, book club has … The House of Usher (of Books)
I ate an apple today that was named after a typical American male forename: Joey, Dennis, Christopher. Something. In my hand it was bigger and more dense than I expected and I wanted to yell out “APPLE GRENADE” before biting into it, but I generally like staying employed. Now the fruitbomb has been turned into … An Assembly of Resented Fools
My long-time friend and blog boss Seth W wrote a little e-book for which I did a mostly-adequate layout job, and you can download it for free. It’s called How to Buy Your First Bike, where he finally sticks it to Gettier’s paradox. Just kidding. He just advises us on the best way to hand … How to Download a PDF About Buying Your First Bike
Humble Apologetics offers to steer Christians toward a better way of defending (or explaining) their belief system in the general market of religious ideas. As you can guess, like most of other books addressed to the church at large, author and theology professor John Stackhouse says church has been doing it wrong for the last … Book Review: Humble Apologetics
Older than many things. It’s not very big (that’s a mini-pencil beside it), but I didn’t want anything bulky. The edges of some pages are yellowing, and there’s arcane charts and tables of measurements relating to growing and caring for commercial crops, some minimalist advertising for fertilizer, and two calendars of the entire year of … Notebook Bought
Not my notebooks. I’ve toyed with the idea of a pocket notebook for a while, after reading somewhere about how Chesterton would stop while crossing the street to write down a thought. This is partly because I like to cause car accidents, but mostly because I can’t remember any thought that strikes me from the … Write It Down