Practically speaking…

Dear readers, I will be less able to blog between now and January 3rd, as I will be traveling in parts of Northern California where the Internet is still a legend told by… Read More →

Special Christmas Carol Edition: NPR and Villainy

Don’t repeat the same thing I just said, in different fucking words. -Ian McShane as “Al Swearingen” in Deadwood Something that I actually heard today on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation”:… Read More →

Adventures in Birdland

(Driving towards the Stonefish bird refuge, which is beside the highway in a suburb called Elk Grove.) ME: Where are we going? MY FATHER (mystically): Heaven? MY MOTHER: No, Elk Grove. ME: OK.… Read More →

Jubilee Part 2: An Accidental Account of Thomas Pynchon and A Brief History of Tom Robbins

Okay, I lied. In my previous post, I claimed that in high school I read nothing but elevated works of high tragedy. You have to understand that it was four in the morning.… Read More →

Jubilee

Dear readers, It’s almost the end of the year. I promised you end-of-year-lists, but now I’m staying with my parents in Sacramento, and there’s no way to muster the web or print or… Read More →

Jubilee: Epigraphs

Next day, with the courage you find you have when there is nothing more to lose, she got in touch. -Thomas Pynchon, from The Crying of Lot 49 You get a word from… Read More →

Night By Night: More On Taste

Dear readers, Since I just posted a huge comment over at the Valve, which contains a lot of my thinking about “taste” and arguments about taste, I figure I’ll reproduce it here and,… Read More →

No Desert Island: Towards A Gutsy Aesthetics Via Nabokov

(x-posted to the Valve) Uh-oh. It’s that time again. Soon, every website remotely dealing with culture, plus a wide variety of magazines, will be talking up their “end of the year” lists. Regardless… Read More →

Magnets and Babble

Falling in love also conforms frequently to this type, a latent process of unconscious preparation often preceding a sudden awakening to the fact that the mischief is irretrievably done. –William James, on conversion… Read More →

Noise: Lintany

(Dedicated to petitpoussin and our disagreement about Adaptation) Our new theory is, that you must enjoy worrying about things. -My parents I will not have a job this summer. I will have to… Read More →