Uneasy Rhetoric

America has lost a literary icon, a quiet observer of the sad and sadly spiritual human condition or, if you prefer, a tired writer of small topics whose prose oozed with oversexed maleness and thinly veiled mysongeny. For me, John Updike was more the former than the later, and worthy of my devotion; thus, I [...]

I was going back through my archives just now and came across a sonnet I wrote in response to a Valentine’s Day contest Rebecca MacKinnon was running. Unlike most of the sonnets I’ve written over the years, I still like this one. In fact, it grows on me by the day. So, Narcissius like, I’m [...]

Man does this feel good. Verified at 50,230 words. And to think, just a week ago, I almost gave up. A few brief observations: 1. Shutting off your inner editor is harder than you think. The easiest way to achieve a high word count is to play fast and loose with the script. However, the [...]

Ray Bradbury visited the Directors Guild of America’s yearly Digital Day event and had this to say about contemporary cinema: “We’ve been making a lot of lousy [films] lately. But I’m writing an article called ‘Better Silly Than Stupid,’ and anyone who’s seen Van Helsing knows what I’m talking about.” Boy, do I ever. (via [...]

In light of my not-quite-recent post about blogging and misunderstanding, I thought I should point to a Blork Blog post from today. In “On Writing and Reading,” Blork wonders does an extremely high volume of on-line consumption not reduce the process of reading down to a simple input function? The danger I think, is that [...]