"Reunited, and it feels so good"

I personally would rather show up to a high school reunion and find out that I was remembered like this...



And even if I wasn't, I'd certainly love to tell everyone this...



Everyone should have a dream, right?

"Please give me one more night..."

Part of a vignette by writer Tony O'Neill...

“One More Night” by Phil Collins comes on. Ron cranks the volume and bops his head dreamily as Phil implores, “I’ve been trying so hard to let you know… let you know how I feel…”

Which Ron, you ask?

This Ron...

Some Catching Up

Happenings on the "life outside writing/blogging/anything artistic" front have been flying. News on those if/when things germinate. For now, here're some things I've been meaning to post for the past month...

1
Now what am I supposed to watch on Sunday mornings?

2
[Michael] Chabon defends mass entertainment against the accusation that it is merely a formulaic product. At times it is; yet commercial culture’s focus on deadlines and profits can also act as a “quickening force” on an artist’s imagination. He demonstrates this with discerning essays on Arthur Conan Doyle, Will Eisner and Howard Chaykin, all of whom, like Chabon himself, attained the ultimate goal of the “pop artisan”: a delicate balance between “the unashamedly commercial and the purely aesthetic”. He disagrees with those who equate literary entertainment with mindless escapism, passive consumption or unproductive activity (“guilty pleasures” is “a phrase I loathe”). Instead, he finds that different forms of writing offer distinct satisfactions to an alert reader.

3
It'll probably still be a while before you can neurointerface directly with the internet or your friends and lovers, but psychologists are testing implantable brain 'pacemakers' that regulate brain activity and so far appear really useful for treating the most stubborn forms of depression.

But we can dream, can't we?

4
Some people may think that a monk is somewhat reclusive — kind of isolated, in a bubble, meditating all day. But it's quite the opposite. I'm on the computer, e-mailing. I'm driving, using cell phones and using Facebook. I have my own Web site.

Maybe becoming a monk isn't so bad after all.

"Everyone Stopped to Stare..."

Why is there an upsurge in hits to this site from folks Googling the phrase, "While the music played you worked by candlelight?"

Exterminate!

Yeah, we all thought this was funny...



I guess, if you can't beat 'em...

An 81-year-old man from Burleigh Heads, Australia, downloaded plans to build a killer robot from the Internet, built the complex machine, and then used it to kill himself in his driveway.

Via io9.

Dickjacked

Oh, come on...read this and tell me you wouldn't have blogged this with the same title.

Apparently science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, who penned wrathful classics like A Scanner Darkly and Man in the High Castle, is very popular with bookstore thieves. His books are number three on the list of top-five most-stolen book authors, at least according to one thief who was interrogated by a writer for a recent issue of Seattle free weekly The Stranger.

Who Needs People, Anyway?

I never got around to seeing Lars and the Real Girl when it was out. I'll have to catch the DVD. I heard whisperings about this documentary, shot in the UK, called Guys and Dolls. Apparently, these folks are the real deal...



You'd think my first inclination would be to laugh my ass off, and that my second would be to pity some of these folks. Somehow, I managed to suspend all of that, at least through the first half of the video.

What Do You Say to a Mocha?

"Going down?"



Isn't it amusing that one can frequent a particular café so much that the baristas actually start calling your name out loud just like Norm on Cheers?

Today, I buy this replacement coffee tumbler to replace one I just lost. It's the exact same model, which causes one barista to remark, "That's so Don!" But hey, like Nick Nolte said in Another 48 Hours, unapologetic for buying the same make and model car that got destroyed in the original movie, "I get used to things."

This Just Doesn't Surprise Me

Telecommunications companies have repeatedly cut off FBI access to wiretaps of alleged terrorists and criminal uspects because the bureau did not pay its phone bills...

Out of the Woodwork

Seems my friends list on goodreads blew up today. Three folks added me, and I went ahead and added one myself, someone whose writing I always enjoy whenever I come across it.

Why not come on over and check it out? I'll add anyone, especially anyone who reads the sort of books I read. C'mon...you've tried Facebook and MySpace and last.fm. One more social network won't kill you.

Pimpin' Ain't Easy

...is it, James?

I heard this alluded to on the Bat Segundo Show podcast interview with James Lipton, but my jaw dropped when I looked it up.

Actors Studio host Lipton was a pimp in France
Last Update: 10/22 5:04 pm

James Lipton, the host of U.S. talk show, Inside the Actors' Studio, once worked as a pimp in Paris, France.

The revered TV presenter, who has sat down with Hollywood's biggest names for in-depth chats about their life and work over the last 13 years, has revealed he once procured clients for French hookers.

He says, "This was when I was very very young, living in Paris, penniless, unable to get any kind of working permit... I had a friend who worked in what is called the Milieu, which is that world and she suggested to me one night, `Look, you'll be my mec... We would translate it perhaps... as pimp."

Hail to the King, Baby

x-posted to the other place.

Guess I'm Really Not Alone

I'm in a café in a library at the Big Red School on the Hill, playing hookey from work. Hell, I got stories to finish.

There's a joke in I-town, mostly among writers who know each other, that everyone here is a writer. "Everyone"--townies, professors, undergrads, grad students--is working on some novel or screenplay or somethingorother.

I'm observing a conversation between two people, an English professor and a library media specialist, and an old physics professor who kind of horned in on their conversation.

Two of the three confessed to being writers.

If Laughter's the Best Medicine

...then the person down the counter from me seems to have overdosed on it.

This dude is giggling uncontrollably for no reason that I can discern. I don't see a Bluetooth on him, he's not reading anything, and I don't see anything out the window we're both facing worth ROTFL about.

And, now he's just stopped like there was nothing.

Cramming

I know what you're thinking. All that screed about writing, and here he is blogging. Deal ;). I just wanted to take a second and brag.

I'm also part of an online flash fiction critique group, which I've been neglecting as I freak myself out trying to pound "The one with the mask" out of me. There's a minimum monthly participation level that I crammed into the last day of July with one story and three critiques.

The story was based on a Carver-like piece of Vogon poetry I wrote awhile back, probably the closest to a decent poem I've ever written or am ever likely to write. No, I don't consider that cheating at all, why do you ask? There was lots of editing that needed done. Anyway, I submitted it to surprisingly few criticisms, aside from people's individual tastes on sentence structure.

The point again that this is the umpteenth time I've experienced the joys of just sitting the fuck down and getting shit on paper, sort of the literary equivalent of a bulemic purge, in order to beat a deadline. You'd think I'd learn that lesson, but I doubt I will anytime soon. Already, I feel myself "not feeling like it," as far as the bits I have to do to carry "The one with the mask" those few precious steps toward completion.

Gonna Be a Bright Sunshiny Day

Just this second, I noticed a small family out on the Arts Quad at the Big Red School on the Hill. A young Mom and Dad, probably both grad students, were throwing a bouncy rubber ball back and forth while Little Baby Girl (who can't be more than a year old) was reading her little baby book. Mom miscalculated her throw and the ball bounced off of Little Baby Girl's head.

I couldn't hear anything from inside the library cafe, but you could tell the baby was screaming. Mom and Dad didn't seem too worried, though. In the time it took me to write this, Little Baby Girl was hugged and soothed, and is now back up and around, enjoying the sunshine and the grass, almost like nothing ever happened.

Unintentional Eavesdropping

Nope. I was in Indianapolis six months. No one paid me a dime.

(repeat x3)

No, not a song lyric. Just the ramblings of a probable itinerant (judging solely by appearance, I admit) sitting one comfy chair over in the café I'm sitting in. I didn't see a Bluetooth earpiece. And if I had, I don't think I'd necessarily be less disturbed.

Nothing to See Here

Jaysus, I'd tell this person to give it up already, except that this person obviously didn't find what he or she was looking for. Maybe this can serve as a warning for the next lazy-ass cheating bastard: Read the damn story yourself, you goldbricker! As if your prof couldn't spot your plagarizing a mile away.

You Thought I Was Being Paranoid

...when I said: "I started to get worried though when I started noticing that the blog was coming up in search results for some of the more "classic" stories, Babel's "My First Goose," for instance. And these visitors would spend more than enough time to copy and paste, too."



Do your own damn homework! ;)

Risky Business

From Jay Lake:

"I don't believe for a moment that vaccination protestors or SUV drivers are making choices with the intent of being deliberately destructive to others. I'm just noodling with the idea of how risk is transferred by these choices, rather than reduced or eliminated. Is it a social good that these risks get moved from one population to another, where the population experiencing the increased risk has no say in the matter?"