April 2012
1 post
1 tag
February 2012
2 posts
December 2011
1 post
October 2011
1 post
September 2011
4 posts
August 2011
1 post
July 2011
1 post
May 2011
7 posts
April 2011
1 post
Blood On The Forehead →
A very interesting read written by a very interesting man. (Who, unrelatedly, happened to contribute half of my own genetic makeup, amongst other achievements!)
February 2011
1 post
November 2010
1 post
WatchLighting A Smoke At 420fps
October 2010
1 post
Vague Burbling Of Self-Important Analysis
One result of having studied the Art of Writing and having been trained for years to examine the craft of wordery on a more dispassionate level than “How Does This Make Me Feel?” is that you lose a certain ability to enjoy books passively. In my experience, at least, whatever I read is constantly and inadvertantly subjected to a kind of scrutiny. Here is a good passage, here is the...
June 2010
11 posts
Saturday Musing
Is the phrase “reading my book” (MY book!) mostly used by people who read infrequently? It seems like this might be the case. “I’m just going to sit by the pool and read my book”.
“Voracious” readers, on the other hand, tend to refer to their reading material more specifically and less possessively. “Just reading that new Amis book.”
Is this...
Halfhearted Observation
One of the least ladylike things any woman can do is to rest a forearm on the steering wheel and a hand on the stick and lean across to talk through an open passenger-side window.
Point Of Order
There is no such thing as Scotch “whiskey”. Whiskey is a spirit which is produced outwith Scotland (in Ireland and the USA, primarily).
For the similar (but highly superior) spirit produced in Scotland, “whisky” or “uisge beatha” are acceptable appellations.
/pedantry
Mutant dating
agrammar:
magicmolly:
Here’s a question for anybody who watches TV or reads genre fiction!
Let’s say the social and political importance of sci-fi was, originally, its ability to smuggle transgressive material to readers or viewers in the form of an allegory. Genre fiction / TV was an easy way for authors to write about, say, Fidel Castro or nuclear holocaust without risking censorship—as...
Mainland Prequel
The Isle of Skye is a voluminous splatter that sticks to the west coast of Scotland like a prize-winning tomato dropped from a bell-tower. It is larger than you’d expect - 639 square miles of never-horizontal terrain house around 10,000 inhabitants (the recorded population was double this in the early 19th century).
We rolled into Portree (the largest town) in the late afternoon, and...
May 2010
26 posts
And You And I
It appears people at Haymarket Train Station at 2245 on a Thursday night can be divided into 4 distinct groups:
- Beery, disreputable-looking middle-aged men in creased suits
- Attractive, 20-something women with large handbags and nervous faces
- World-weary, large-bellied railway staff
- Me
Conclusions have not yet been drawn from this interesting data.
Advice for most
magicmolly:
•Put a noun with an adjective, try a different one, see what sticks.
•You’re not hard enough on yourself.
Advice for a very few:
You may utilise cast-iron idioms.
You’re definitely not hard enough on yourself.
tl;dr
Something that makes me feel a little sad is when an author almost writes an excellent book, but it fails because of self-indulgent tarrying and tangents. In my mind this is represented as a dish with too much potatoes and not enough steak. (Literally, this is the picture that appears when I have this sequence of thoughts.)
I went to my (disgustingly inadequate) local library this afternoon and...
A Sober Thought
The relationship between literature and certain substances (alcohol, primarily) is startling and fascinating, when you notice it. These relationships function on two levels. Possibly three. The first of these is present in the creation of a text - often, the substance of choice plays a large part in the process. Coleridge and Kubla Khan, for example.
The second level, and the more obvious, is the...
Dopilsya
Tonight was Russian night at an apartment in a seedy part of town. We drank genuine vodka and listened to Russian hip-hop. We also ate Russian food: pasta/mince-thing, salad-thing, and cheesecake-thing. I’m not too sure of the spelling, there, so don’t quote me.
There are apparently two main differences between Russian drinking and normal drinking, which our host explained. The first...
Tangent Waves Of Value
“As a high-school student, I have a unique viewpoint on life, literature, and science. This book was very inspirational to me, and I enjoyed reading it. Sagan got off on some very good points, although he went off on a tangent occasionally. One of the best features was the informative pictures and graphs, which were beautiful and awe-inspiring even when they were non-informative, so the...
Wyrd Ambassador
He entered the “Function Room” (this was the grandiose name attached to the upper room of the overpriced bar in which I was encamped) with a peculiar, nervous gait. It was immediately apparent that he was not going to fit in very well, but he mustered his resources and made a valiant try.
The room was filled with Psychology students celebrating the end of exams, and I was along for...
A (Non-Vague) Sense Of Foreboding
The weather, tomorrow, is apparently adequately representable by a sun with rain falling from it. I do not know what this means (meteorological miracle?) but it does not seem to bode well for tomorrow’s plans, which include:
lodging a cheque after (likely) a 30 minute wait
walking across the city, westward
drinking and carousing in a public park, and later eating from a portable...
Opening Page the nth
Well, the first idea was to buy a dog, any kind of a dog, and turn it loose in the main street with a bellyful of barbiturates and a bandolier of lit firecrackers. This was deemed, upon reflection by the committee, minutely too inhumane for our purposes. We didn’t wish our brave, high ideals to be tarnished by any smear of suggested wrongdoing, no matter how small or ill-deserved.
Subtlety...
Two Annoyances From A Bar
Trying to explain a portion of string theory to a table of friends whose expressions ranged from the comatose to the violently skeptical.
Ridiculing Formula 1 because “who could possibly enjoy driving in circles for hours,” and, “well, after a certain speed it’s just numbers, really,” merely to find that only the shyest person at the table agrees with you.
I later...
We were meant to have gone to the carnival but when I got to my friend’s apartment there was no one there, so I sat on the steps and smoked and listened to The Decemberists and wondered whether their songs with good lyrics were mistakes, or if it was the other way around.
Then my friend came and we started in on the wine. I had plenty because I was a little behind. When other people...