Monthly Archives: April 2009
The Reader
| April 7, 2009 | Filled under Internerd |
I know I’ve already said this, but Instapaper is the bee’s knees.
Here are links to some stories on writing I’ve recently bookmarked, read, and then felt compelled to save:
- Freelance Fizzle! — Workin’ for The Mag ain’t quite like it used to be
- Physical Discipline — A delicate and disturbing short story, a favorite of Maud’s
- Confident? Or Delusional? — A newbie’s guide to publishing
- Why It’s Pointless Telling Anyone That Writing Isn’t Worth It — A.L. Kennedy on Writing
- Before Their Eyes — Writers very much profane and alive
- Writing For A Living — A joy or a curse?
- The Best Thing About Writing? — Money
- I’m Not Writing — by Marlon James
And this one, which is rage-inducing in it’s sap-like sincerity.
More to come soon.
Hook and wool
| April 7, 2009 | Filled under Internerd |
How’s this for inspiration?
Amid more than 200 dead, a 98-year-old woman was pulled from the rubble of her home nearly 30 hours after Monday’s earthquake in Italy. How did she occupy herself while waiting for rescuers she wasn’t even sure would come? She crocheted! (Link via web-goddess)
Mudblast
| April 7, 2009 | Filled under Blog |
Right, first things first. The motorbike is not like a car.
Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear writes about newbies on two-wheeled vehicles, and how much he “hated” the new Vespa. (This was written last October. I know it’s old. It’s still funny.)
Last summer when gas was $4 a gallon everyone started buying scooters and Houston was awash with helmetless idiots cruising down Allen in flip flops and bikini tops. When I was interviewed by the news in Chattanooga I tried to slip in some safety propaganda but they weren’t havin’ it and it was cut in the final edit. Oh well. Darwinism will have it’s way.
The first rally of the year was this weekend, in New Ulm. I did not stay all weekend, and because of that, I did not bring my scooter. I felt like the only sober person at the party. I also did not take any pictures, because I am lazy, although I did bring my camera.
For the rest of the summer there are scooter rallies every month. No word yet on whether the River Rally is happening again, but I hope so, because that was my favorite event of last summer. Mostly because I didn’t have to do any organizing for it.
Ocean of fear
| April 8, 2009 | Filled under Blog |
My partial viewing of a documentary on the USS Indianapolis 
recently caused to surface a previously unrealized phobia — the sight of prey (in this case, people) thrashing about in open water. Don’t you know that the kraken can smell fear?
The kraken legend is Norwegian, and has a real-life relationship to the giant squid. The documentary reminded me of watching Open Water late at night on hotel cable during our trip to Nantes and Norway, just a few months before going diving in French Polynesia.
Etymology
| April 8, 2009 | Filled under Shorts |
Driving through a small Texas town this weekend I saw a sign on a building: Parlor for Funerals. The wording was odd but it set me off on a spiral of thinking about words whose origins are more synergistic than their current usages belie.
Parlor is one of them. Originally meaning “a room for receiving or entertaining visitors,” it comes from the French word parler, “to speak.” So beauty parlor seems appropriate, but funeral parlor, a term rendered archaic by the even more perplexing “funeral home,” makes less sense. But the cadence of the word and the way it makes the mouth move is so beautiful when it is spoken.
Another word that falls into this category? Sangria. Literally, “bloody.”
Chest and drawers
| April 10, 2009 | Filled under Internerd |
The Associated Press on the awkward business of buying lingerie in Saudi Arabia.
Mexico, 1956
| April 10, 2009 | Filled under Photo Album |
We’ve Crossed the Zone Line – Tropic of Cancer – Mexico, 1956, originally uploaded by vieilles_annonces.
I want to go to Mexico so bad, but I’ve waited too long, and now it’s not safe. This collection of vintage vacation photos will tide me over for now. (Link via Wipe Your Feet.)
Save the date
| April 11, 2009 | Filled under Shorts |
Even if you don’t have a scooter you should still come. If only to drool over ours. More details TBA. In the meantime, check here.
Another day, another rally
| April 13, 2009 | Filled under Shorts, Video |
Are you a Mod? Or are you a Rocker?
The first Mod vs. Rockers rally to take place in Houston in many years has been scheduled for September. The site is short on details, but it’s gonna be organized by the same guys who put on the Dallas rally and it’s gonna be awesome.
God, I love summer.
Mateys
| April 16, 2009 | Filled under Internerd |
Apparently there is a whole subculture of people who like to dress and act like pirates, for fun. They’re like furries, I guess. But with eye patches.
Galveston Island once had it’s own bona-fide pirate, pictured above. His name was Jean Lafitte.
Memoir workshop at Houston Public Library
| April 16, 2009 | Filled under Blog |
Went to a kick-ass memoir-writing workshop last night at the downtown library. The free two-hour class was led by Thomas Larson, personal essayist, journalist at the San Diego Reader and author of The Memoir and the Memoirist. He also teaches college-level writing classes and workshops like the one I took last night.
I was so glad I went. Larson was an excellent speaker and was gently forceful in helping most of the people in the class brainstorm topics and reasons for writing a memoir. I already had my topic but I came away with lots of direction. I’m going to take a page from happykatie and list last night’s discussion outline-style. (more…)
Checkitout
| April 20, 2009 | Filled under Shorts |
I’m blogging for the Houston Press now. This makes me beyond happy.
Speaking of Henry Miller
| April 21, 2009 | Filled under Blog, Video |
Dogmatika has linked to a 35-minute documentary of Henry Miller, 81 years old, delivering a monologue in the bathroom of his California home.
Do not ask me how Miller differed from Bukowski. He just did. They were both misogynists, but something about Miller I really loved. I was never really drawn to the sex, per se. I was more drawn to the travel, and his vivid, visceral descriptions of everything from the seedy dens of Paris to the intense love and betrayal he felt over his wife and his many girlfriends.
Alec Baldwin vs Caitlin Flanagan
| April 22, 2009 | Filled under Internerd |
When he calls a slim and attractive girl… a pig, he is using the word in another sense, one that suggests a particularly feminine kind of repulsiveness.
Can’t believe I was ever even remotely impressed by something Caitlin Flanagan would write. Alec Baldwin is no better.
Link via Gwen
The Adelsverein
| April 23, 2009 | Filled under Internerd |
…was was a colonial attempt to establish a new Germany within the borders of Texas.
Stumbled across this while doing research for a story. Interesting. I’ve always wondered about the prevalence of German names, towns and culture in the Texas Hill Country. New Braunfels and Fredericksburg were the first cities to be established.
A town where one can ride…
| April 24, 2009 | Filled under Internerd |
“… with no stoplights, no police, no danger to hit some cage or some dog.”
This site is old as hell, but on the 23rd anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, please read this woman’s account of her motorcycle trip to the ghosts towns nearby.
Rock ‘n’ Roll
| April 24, 2009 | Filled under Blog |
Four-time Tony Award winner Tom Stoppard returns to the Alley with Rock ‘n’ Roll , winner of London Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Best New Play. It’s August 1968, and Russian tanks are rolling into Prague. Jan, the Czech student, lives for rock music, Max, the English professor, lives for Communism, and Esme, the flower child, is high. By 1990, the tanks are rolling out, the Stones are rolling in and idealism has hit the wall. Stoppard’s sweeping and passionate play spans two countries, three generations and 22 turbulent years, at the end of which, love remains — and so does rock ‘n’ roll.
We leave for Prague one week from today. In an effort to ease our excitement and anticipation, I bought us tickets to this play. Tonight’s opening night. Tom Stoppard, by the way, also wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Today, I
| April 25, 2009 | Filled under Shorts |
- Fed a baby alpaca
- Ate a really good hamburger
- Drank locally-brewed mint honeywine
- Rode through Sam Houston National Forest
- Got rained on
- Met a French blues musician
Hunt, TX
| April 26, 2009 | Filled under Photo Album, Shorts |
Read about my trip to Stonehenge II (and the Texas moais) for the Houston Press. More pictures here.
The Rock
| April 27, 2009 | Filled under Photo Album, Shorts |
Remember my trip to Enchanted Rock? I finally wrote it up for the Houston Press travel series. Click the picture to see more.
Two things I have enjoyed today:
| April 30, 2009 | Filled under Internerd |
Writing is time that’s spent on you. — Words of advice from Janice Erlbaum
I printed this out to keep in my notebook.
Just before she flew off like a swan
to her wealthy parents’ summer home,
Bruce’s college girlfriend asked him
to improve his expertise at oral sex,
and offered him some technical advice:
Use nothing but his tonguetip
to flick the light switch in his room
on and off a hundred times a day
until he grew fluent at the nuances
of force and latitude.
The beginning of a poem that made me happy. (Via Tiny Lucky Genius)
The May 2009 Smithsonian has EVERYTHING!
| April 30, 2009 | Filled under Shorts |
- naked man on the cover
- narwhals!
- Cold War espionage
- Depression-era fashion photography
- references to Henry Miller
