January 2009
30 posts
Saturday Inspiration: Jim White
I’ve decided to free up some time for other projects by posting less on weekends. Saturdays will have a link to something that inspires me, and Sundays will have a memento of my Saturday activities.
Jim White writes songs the way I want to write short stories, and his film “Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus” completely changed the way I think about the South and my place...
3 tags
American Graffiti: Zombie Version
Excerpts from a lost screenplay by George Lucas
RADIO DJ
Eyewitnesses say they are ordinary-looking people. Some say they appear to be in a kind of trance. Others describe them as being misshapen monsters. At this point, there’s no really authentic way for us to say who or what to look for and guard yourself against. Get your bugaloos out baby! Just like the Wolfman, these zombies are...
Political Stalking, Take 2
A few days ago, I wrote about how you can stalk your neighbors’ political contributions online via publicly available donor information. The data wasn’t particularly earth shaking or controversial (unless you were shocked to find more Democrats in Berkeley than in Round Rock, Texas), but I found it interesting.
One donor map that I didn’t mention is the Proposition 8 Donors map at eightmaps.com....
17 Jobs I've Held, Part 3
Landscape Technician
This was my first job after college, and I quit after three hours.
I don’t think it occurred to me until a few weeks before school ended that I would need a new job. My job at the theatre was largely subsidized by federal work-study grants, and graduation would make me ineligible. I do remember stopping by the student affairs office to peruse the bulletin board for job...
Happy Birthday Harper Grace Harred
Dear Harper,
Today is your first birthday. Congratulations, you have now traveled 583 million miles around the sun, only to arrive back where you started. There is an important lesson to be learned in this, but I decline to tell you what it might be. I will give you a hint though: everyone has their own lesson, but only a few people ever learn theirs. The tragedy is that the lessons are not...
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Money, Politics, and Donor Stalking.
A friend of mine got a letter during election season that threatened to expose his support of “radical leftist causes” to his friends and neighbors if he continued to donate to such causes. It turns out he’d donated a significant amount of money to the Obama campaign (which is hardly qualifies as radically “leftist,” but I guess these things are relative.) They were able to identify him because...
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My Creeping Meatballism
Merlin Mann linked to this collection of Jean Shepherd monologues, and it reminded me of my own history with the writer and late night DJ. Of course, all good people have seen A Christmas Story, and many people know the film is based on a book by Shepherd, but I don’t think enough people are aware of Jean Shepherd’s other contributions.
I first encountered his work in the form of a textfile I...
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Not Another Links Post (Birthday Party Edition)
Today is my daughter’s First Birthday party, so I decided to go with a links post. It turns out that links posts take longer than just writing something, so take a look. As a bonus, there’s a Gilmore Girls clip in there somewhere.
Yes, I watched Gilmore Girls. Why?
From Slate
Bad Men: How many terrorists are really left at Guantanamo, anyway?
One thing that will not help anyone,...
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25 Book Titles You Can Use For Free
As anyone who has ever considered writing a book will tell you, the most difficult part of the process is settling on the perfect title. Many people spend years working on the name of their book, only to discover their creative energies are completely spent once the title is done. Most first-time writers find it impossible to continue with the work.
This would be a serious problem even if it only...
Testing and Curing Racism?
Project Implicit uses an online test to identify hidden or subconscious attitudes. The idea behind the project is that people don’t answer questions honestly if they believe their responses will be seen negatively. For example, many people refuse to admit they hold negative attitudes toward members of another race when questioned directly, but will reveal such attitudes in other ways. Project...
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17 Jobs I've Held, Part 2
A Life in the Theatre
My job at the Upper Room Dinner Theatre began as a work-study job in my university’s theatre department, but I worked there for nearly six years. The job never had a real title, which is okay because it never had a real job description. Among other things, I sold tickets, built sets, stage managed, and wrote children’s plays. I acted too, but actors were strictly volunteers...
3 Cool Interviews with Online Artists
I’m off on a bit of emergency travel today so my planned blog post is not ready. However, this gives me a chance to point to several cool podcast interviews. If you’re interested in comics (web and print), or if you create online content, then you’re required to check out these recent episodes of PRI’s The Sound of Young America.
First up, check out this interview with the...
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The Great Obama Panic
My family had just moved from Berkeley to Austin, so we didn’t really have anywhere to be on Election Night. I spent the evening watching the results with my daughter asleep on my lap, refreshing Google Reader and Facebook every few minutes. As soon as the networks called the election for Obama, my friends from the Bay Area began updating their Facebook pages with photos of cheering and...
My Ghost Stories
When I was growing up, three or four families in my church took turns hosting dinner parties. Not fancy dinner parties, just a bunch of people getting together for fried shrimp and oysters. After dinner, the kids played outside (this was gulf coast Alabama, so it actually was eternally summer), and the adults sat around and talked.
They were sober, God fearing small town folks, and not the sort...
I Voted For Bush
My Personal Timeline of the Bush Presidency
Summer 2000
I didn’t care about politics. My smart guy persona demanded that I feign a passionate interest if the topic came up, but my leftover high school Ayn Rand libertarianism made it easy to deflect any serious conversation (“What do I think about the crisis in health care? Taxation is slavery. Don’t be stupid). My thoughts were mostly concerned...
5 Corrections for My Wikipedia Entry
No one has written a Wikipedia entry about me, but I’ve compiled a list of common misapprehensions about me just in case.
That I was born in Alabama.
I grew up in Alabama, but I was born in Texas and lived there until the age of seven. Actually, I’m the only person that ever made this mistake. A few years ago I requested a replacement birth certificate from the wrong state.
That I finished...
Riding in Cars with Ghosts
I’m writing a novel. I started it during National Novel Writing Month, a writing “contest” in which participants attempt to write 50,000 words during the month of November, but real-life intervened and derailed my plans. I decided to start up again last week, and so far I’m doing pretty well.
It isn’t the kind of “serious” novel I thought I needed to write in my twenties. It contains very little...
Writing About Race
Related to my earlier post on racism and context, here’s a review of the movie Gran Torino that raises a question for me: what’s the line between a work about a racist and a work that is racist? Is it in the control of the writer/director, or does the audience ultimately make the decision?
I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I’m not sure in this specific case, but the topic that interests me. I...
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How to Pay for Stimulus
The Center for Public Integrity, a non-partisan and non-profit organization of investigative journalists, has compiled a list of failures by the Executive Branch during the Bush Administration. I have some quibbles with it, mainly that Congress and previous administrations need to share some of the blame), but it’s instructive to see an accounting of just how much the last eight years of...
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On Rush, Racism, and Satire.
It’s old news now, I guess, but I’ve been thinking about the recent hubbub around RNC chairman candidate Chip Saltsman’s Christmas CD. In what I assume was a campaign gift, Saltsman sent RNC members a mix CD for Christmas. The CD contained the song Barack the Magic Negro, a satirical parody song made famous by Rush Limbaugh. News of the gift was followed by predictable outrage, apologies, and...
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On Fiction Online
If you have five minutes spare minutes today, read Finale. It’s part of a weekly series of very short stories by Curtis C. Chen, available at his blog 512 Words or Fewer. I don’t think the story would ever see professional print publication, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s a practice piece, like a musician playing scales, and I enjoy the opportunity to observe a writer, or any artist,...
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Iqbal and Me.
I’ve been mulling the story of Muhammad Saad Iqbal since I read this article in the New York Times. Iqbal spent six years incarcerated in Guantánamo Bay and now suffers from a number of physical and mental health issues, the end result of the torture he claims American and Egyptian interrogators inflicted on him. He was never charged with a crime.
The CIA denies the allegations of torture, or...
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On Climate Change
For the past year or so, the Environment and Climate Change have become increasingly important to me. The birth of my daughter gave me a sudden and compelling interest in the future of the planet. Hopefully this space will help me answer some of the big questions that I have. Among these questions are:
What can we expect from Climate Change?
How should we prioritize it against other...
Links for 1/5/09
From the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/03/AR2009010301993_pf.html
The Maryland State Police surveillance of advocacy groups was far more extensive than previously acknowledged, with records showing that troopers monitored — and labeled as terrorists — activists devoted to such wide-ranging causes as promoting human rights and...
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On Amateurs and Art
Adam Gurri points out that blogging has made it possible for professionals to write about their respective fields and to do it for free, reducing demand for (if not obviating) science and economics journalists. He compares this to the economics of actors.
From Wired Blogs:
http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2009/01/guest-post-acti.html and...
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Republicans' Cynical Manipulation of the Religious...
The current issue of Vanity Fair features an article titled Farewell to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House. There’s not much new information in the piece (unless you still think Iraq had WMDs or a connection to 9/11), but I found it fascinating to read about the events of the past eight years in the words of White House and Cabinet staff members.
This section stood out in...
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Site Problems Resolved
I would define my web skills as somewhere between voodoo zombie and voodoo practitioner, meaning I alternate between following instructions clumsily and following instructions blindly.
Anyway, the crux of the issue was that the blog content is hosted by tumblr, so all I really needed to do was set up a non-hosted sub-domain. Unfortunately, I set the sub-domain up as hosted, so there were two IP...
Links for 1/2/09
A few things that caught my eye today:
From the Freakonomics blog:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/an-unhappy-year/
“We’re still happy? No way. Life satisfaction has plummeted during the recession. Of course there remain important issues about how best to measure well-being. So here’s my challenge to Lyubomirsky: Find a single indicator of subjective well-being that...
6 tags
My Predictions for 2009
I will avoid the cliche announcement that I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions (inevitably followed by a euphemistically titled list of resolutions), and let you know that I have made resolutions that I will not list here.
However, I have a blog to run, so here are my predictions on the success of the unlisted resolutions. 1. My daughter will not consistently sleep through the night. ...