Dear Turner Classic Movies (TCM):
I fell in love with you years ago. Who wouldn’t love a cable channel that broadcasts (and re-broadcasts (and, all right, re-re-broadcasts)) timeless movies, often in black-and-white, that otherwise would have faded into obscurity years ago?
True, I had moments of doubt (they happen in the best of relationships).
Mostly, you didn’t seem [...]
Entries from February 2009
Pay No Attention to the People in Front of the Curtain
February 28th, 2009 · 3 Comments
Tags: Celebrities · Everyday Life · Hearing · Movies · Television
Scuba? Not Your Real Saturday Post…
February 28th, 2009 · 6 Comments
…but I just had to share this. It’s suspenseful, in a humorous way. And it’s funny — in a suspenseful way. Or maybe it’s just me.
(Discovered at the Out of Character blog.)
Tags: Everyday Life · Humor · Movies · Nature & Pets · The Online World
Morning Instructions
February 27th, 2009 · 7 Comments
From whiskey river:
On Angels
All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe you,
messengers.
There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seams.
Short is your stay here:
now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,
in a melody repeated by a [...]
Tags: Looking Backward · Music · Poetry · Ruminations
Bowery Bums and Bag Ladies… But Writers, by God
February 26th, 2009 · 13 Comments
Ah, the writing life. We know it’s a stereotype, (almost?) never true, but the image remains skulking around our collective unconscious:
The disheveled hair. The soulful eyes, staring out the window of an upper-floor barely-furnished apartment in which the heat has been turned off, a “scarf” — fabric torn from the edge of a bedsheet — [...]
Tags: In the News · The Business · The Online World · Writing
Night Plus Light Makes Right
February 25th, 2009 · 2 Comments
From the toxel.com design blog:
Light writing is a form of stop motion animation wherein still images captured using the technique known as light painting are put in sequence thereby creating the optical illusion of movement for the viewer.
Two examples:
Impacto Criativo (Creative Impact)
Created by Propague and MidiaEffects with 2 cameras, 1700 clicks, 18 people, 20 nights, [...]
Tags: Art & Photography · In the News · The Online World
Too Much Time, Not Enough Seconds
February 25th, 2009 · 2 Comments
You may have already seen this (un-embeddable) video — title: “everything’s amazing, nobody’s happy” — of comedian Louis CK on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. (Hat tip to moonrat.) If not, do that now and then return here. We’ll wait.
[whistling, staring into space, picking up newspaper and re-reading Dilbert, Doonesbury, Get Fuzzy, and For Better [...]
Tags: Everyday Life · Looking Backward · The Internet · The Online World
Paying Attention to I-Don’t-Know-What
February 24th, 2009 · 4 Comments
When telling people about my flipping back and forth from technical writing to fiction, I usually say I went for five years without writing anything at all.
That’s not exactly true. Truth is, after about four years I’d had enough. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I didn’t have anything specific I meant to write, but just [...]
Tags: Looking Backward · Paying Attention · Short Fiction · Style and Craft · Writing
Bibliobibuli
February 23rd, 2009 · 9 Comments
Got a couple of words for you.
The first is the one in this post’s title. This is:
…a word coined by H. L. Mencken which means “people who read too much and so are generally oblivious to the world around them.”
Many of you probably know such people.
And then there’s dord. Yes: dee-oh-are-dee. Dord.
What an odd word, [...]
Tags: Language · The Online World
The Look of a Writer’s Blog: Putting Readers at Ease
February 21st, 2009 · 12 Comments
[This borders on "for geeks only" territory. But I think it's worth at least some attention if you aspire to get -- and keep -- a reading audience for your words on the Web.]
A highly respected site for Web-site designers, typographers, and so on, is called A List Apart. It’s been around for years, freely [...]
Tags: Programming, Web Design, Databases · Research/Resources · Running After My Hat · Tech · The Internet · Writing
Of Time, Things Small, and Things Green
February 20th, 2009 · 6 Comments
From whiskey river:
The Moment
Walking the three tiers in first light, out
here so my two-year-old son won’t wake the house,
I watch him pull and strip ragweed, chicory, yarrow,
so many other weeds and wildflowers
I don’t know the names for, him saying Big, and Mine,
and Joshua — words, words, words. Then
it is the moment, that split-second
when he takes [...]
Tags: Everyday Life · Language · Nature & Pets · Perfect Moments · Ruminations




