August 2011
1 post
the failure blog
all of my ideas about blogging, it turns out, have to do with failure. i keep thinking up topics that are failure-heavy: failed coptic binding, failed teaching experiments, failed writing, failed violin practice, and of course, bookstore failures.
This doesn’t —- or shouldn’t —- have the itchy schadenfreude or self-pitying tinge of failblog; rather, it should be a...
July 2011
2 posts
The best and worst idea of all time. →
Providing feeback via email, which I’ve tried to do a little bit this semester, can, if your students are over the first hump of being able to identify what it is that they want to talk about how it is that they want to talk about it, work really well. However, in most cases, I find it’s actually faster and more effective to meet and talk in office hours. The article suggests that in...
intellectual sonic ephemera
These are quotes from the Q&A after Azar Nafisi’s keynote address about Al-Mutanabbi Street at Corcoran, in conjunction with the exhibition of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Broadside Project. I’m transcribing her talk right now for the anthology that’s coming out next year of essays and poetry responding to the bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street—-it’s a remarkable talk,...
June 2010
1 post
birthday break!
“Toot a toozler! Twant a Zong! Sing a made-up birthday song!
Yip and yell from here to Boise.
It’s your [my] birthday!
Let’s get noisy!”
Thinks you can think will return on Tuesday! Hold your breath for: the snuvs and their gloves, schlopp, schlopp, beautiful schlopp, etc… …
February 2009
1 post
well i don't really blog
but i have to say that the light right now in the mid-afternoon rain is really good.
it’s been a long time since i was as sad as i once was but it’s been a short time, days maybe, weeks barely, since i had one of those brief, intense migraines of sadness and went a little bit blind, or light-sensitive, and had to close my eyes until the brain pain ebbed. and that short time has been...
September 2008
1 post
things i dig right now (and not so much)
i dig la ventana, a zine out of SF State, many bits of it anyway, and the energy that young youth radicals pour into all the stuff they do, and how starry eyed they are! (how quicly that turns into bitterness I am not so fond of). i think i dig litquake, and can’t wait for it to start. i dig teaching —- less of the starry eyed youth enthusiasm there, more of the caginess coupled...
August 2008
1 post
we must
we must, 100 times, 1000 times, we must must must have reverence for stories. people’s “true” stories, their lies… it is all the same, they are all worth something, they are all sacred. one must trust and have love for every story.
but not one’s own. ;)
new yorker fiction podcast; (yes i am tool) it gives me isaac babel’s short story but more importantly, the...
July 2008
5 posts
updates from the alternametropolis
(I apartment-hunt and I literary-mag-hunt. some confused observations)
1. only yellow apartments in foggy environs will be considered. all other submissions will be recycled unopened. (actually, we read all unsolicited apartments. go figure).
2. I am intrigued by these guys: bateau and I want to order a copy but I don’t want to pay bank! when I am famous I will open a paypal account and...
narrative problems part II
in which our protagonista tries to get a grip.
[nota bene: If you were paying attention in Chs 1-4, class, you will recall that littlewidget was flipping about the non-narrativity of life in general, her need for an organizational system, and the tendency of GTD and other organizational systems to make life feel even less narrative and therefore more scary. therefore she decided to come up with...
narrative problems
these are a lot of semi-disparate thoughts but I’m going to try to concatenate them as well as possible:
Chapter One:
In thinking about GTD (Getting Things Done): a lot of y’all folks that I hang out with use this system. I am somewhat in awe of how effective you are; I’m not sure what the correlation/causation relation is with effectiveness and GTD, but I’m pretty sure...
so sad.
sleuth:
“Since then, times have been leaner. He has been learning the hard way that 99 percent of the information in the Library never gets used at all.”
-Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, p. 21
oh man, I hope I can reconcile myself to this.
“I’m flattered that someone has come up with a product that appeals to me. ...”
– Jake, 27, poet and former anarchist, on Barack Obama (I wholeheartedly agree).
June 2008
4 posts
hey hey guys →
oh my lord I figured out how to allow comments on my tumblog and it only took 5 minutes i don’t know who these disqus guys are but once again the internet is magical and shiny so don’t laugh at my excitement.
phew.
that was almost as good as using the internet to figure out how to cable without a cable needle but not quite (because you don’t end up with pretty fabric when you...
internet + alcohol = tuesday evenings.
what does it say about our social lives when, while sitting idly around a kitchen table drinking with friends, a large part of the conversation revolves around reading a review/experiment about the properties of bum wine out loud for dramatic effect?
ah, bro science. Brought to you by the internet. and possibly canada.
WHY. →
companies will pay lots of money to dead CEOs, apparently.
uncool, guys.
Tim over at The U.S. Bureau of Fabulous Bitches wrote a really great post about the “cyloning” of tv villains… i.e. the movement of conflict from the external to the internal. Read it. As often happens with Tim’s posts, I found myself having a lot to say about it. Particularly, Tim sez:
“The timing of it [the “cyloning” of tv villainry] is tempting to...
May 2008
1 post
comparison blogging
I was inspired by Thwang’s Dork and the Ivy (yeah, i know, that was august, but I’m bored and at work and reading all of my friends’ internet presences)… so I’m gonna start comparison blogging myself and Neil Gaiman. I anticipate that it will be less funny and more pathetic than dork and the ivy. But a good time for me nonetheless. ;) and, hopefully, it will make me...
April 2008
10 posts
We Like The Moon remember this? yeah, i thought so. EVERYBODY LIKE THA MOON!
“They’ve studied their philosophy and found that life actually is...”
– http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/48863-the-airing-of-grievances
hurrah!
Titus Andronicus: The Airing of Grievances: Pitchfork Record Review three cheers for patrick stickles and titus andronicus!
Lolcat 100 Calorie pak « Lolcats ‘n’ Funny... →
““A great big empire built on slavery.”
“it’s not so...”
– donna and the doctor, on the Oud (“built to serve!”), latest episode of Doctor Who
reclaiming
Feministing I actually hate feministing’s mudflap girl logo… i think there’s no excuse for a mudflap girl ever. why? dunno. just visceral. BUT… I do kinda like cunt. ;)
get it together!
I am SO SO UPSET about the state of the hippest of the hippest literary scene. there is nothing new or interesting about it, if keith gessen and his new book are any indication at all. what I saw today at his reading was nothing more than the same ol’ same ol’: self-involved, boring faction in which women are objects, men are caricatures, writing is the subject, and the writing does...
“oh my god, it’s rainbow brong.”
– fiona, a looong time ago
“you’re not maladjusted to the world. In fact, you’re so well...”
– noah
um TUMBLR
i love arrkay’s tumblr