11.4.07

Obey


Green Octopus
Originally uploaded by PhineasX.

9.4.07

Ministry Fiction Irritant #006

South of the city, where the suburbs turn country, I was trying too hard to joyride my buzz away, the midnight moon hanging low in the sky and the bright yellow road lines disappearing underneath the Caddy. Her Caddy. I swerved back into my lane and rolled down the window, hoping the frosty air would keep me awake. Bouncer tossed me out out of Tommy's without even putting down his drink. I couldn't show up at home like this -- she wouldn't stand for it again.

Come to life

When I asked Brother Patterson if he believed that Big Cat killed Babycakes, he replied, "If I say yes, you'll ask me how do I know. If I say no, you'll ask me how do I know. That's why you're not black and dirt poor. You ask those questions. I know, we know, the community knows."

- Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor, by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh

I feel guilty for thinking the book has come to life in the final section, "Our Gang."

Why I've Been Reading Pulp Crime

She wasn’t what you would call beautiful. She was just a red-haired girl with a lot of sock.

On Lee Meriwether

I had discovered an American Methuselah: quite possibly the only writer whose living memory spans the entire history of the republic. A roving reporter and diplomat, Meriwether knew Jules Verne and Oscar Wilde; he saw Twain writing Tom Sawyer and witnessed the Nuremberg rally.

5.4.07

Cameos & Totems

I don't know how many books are in me, but what I am going to do in the final story of the collection I have to turn in—somewhere someone will say "the known world." That book will be called All Aunt Hager's Children. And if I get around to doing a fourth book then in the final chapters of that someone or something will come up and say " All Aunt Hager's Children." I am a fan of Hitchcock movies. He just shows up and walks through for a few seconds. Ten or so years ago there was an essay in the New York Times Book Review by Phillip Roth, and he said he was going to school someplace, and he was in a cafeteria, and he came across a piece of paper, and he said he has taken the first word that was on that paper, and he used it as the first word for his novel. And the second word was used in the second novel. You never saw that? It was fascinating, if it was true.
- Edward P. Jones (interviewed at Identity Theory)

4.4.07

That's some good "whatnot"

My professor started pushing the gay marketing angle. How we are a target market. An educated, double income with no kids (for now.) How companies want gay money but don't want to support us or really be associated with us. (Can't offend the Bible Belt and the like.)
Read the rest at Jill's blog

Walkerism

No obsession is as good without a hair of repulsion thrown in.