 OK, so I got a Kindle. This is a major step, for someone who is as much of a book junkie as I am. Actually, more like a book magnet. And after decades of buying books, they add up. Especially since I’m a packrat, as Mrs W never tires of pointing out, and living in a flat with limited space, it leads to books three deep in the bookshelves, that sort of thing. Of course, there’s the occasional cull, but that just clears out space for a while that fills up again. Then there’s the feeling that while I’m not likely to read any Dan Brown ever again—once was enough—there’s still no reason to believe that a single tree should ever be sacrificed for a Dan Brown book, as Mrs W once commented. Elitist, I know, but there it is.
So I thought about this for a while, and a couple of years ago we borrowed one for a long weekend from the son-in-law, and Mrs W really liked it, but that was in the US, and for a while there the availability of titles in the UK was pretty sparse. Full story »
 What makes a good Utopia? Are there minimum critical success factors that would allow the vagaries of human nature to be overcome? Does it mean a four day work week and personal jetpacks? A permanent rustic rural retreat, with all necessary services being provided by elves? A socialist workers’ paradise—ie, where no one expects to actually have to work? Is one even possible without robots to do all the gruntwork? Is there even a good definition of Utopia? Does it need to accord with John Rawls’ definition of a just society? Do we know what we’re talking about here anyway?
This is all prompted by the highly entertaining and interesting discussion this evening at the British Library, part of their discussion series that goes along with their Science Fiction exhibition. Tonight we had the redoubtable Iain M. Banks (and not, thankfully, Iain Banks, who writes different sorts of books entirely); Gregory Claeys, who has written extensively about the notion of utopias and whose Searching for Utopia has just been published; and Francis Spufford, general racounteur and author of three terrific and totally unrelated Full story »
| Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing. – Vince Lombardi |
I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating. – Sophocles |
| If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying. – Variously Attributed |
Ask yourself is it right or wrong and act accordingly. – Otto Graham |
There sure has been a lot of news about cheating in sports lately, hasn’t there? Full story »
 Sign carried by religious picketers during Mardi Gras 2011 Full story »
I took my family to the aquarium in Mystic last week, because it was Presidents’ Day. I’m lying. I took them because I like the aquarium. True, the price of admission is steep, the fish all look small and terrified, and the over-priced food isn’t very good, but we enjoy the beluga whales, and I can‘t look at penguins without cracking up. A penguin is Nature’s stand-up comic. But at the end of the day, I had to balance the joy of penguins by facing the horror of the gift shop.
“Dad? Can I have this stuffed shark?” Joey asked.
“No,” I said. “How much does it cost?”
“Only $44.95,” he said.
“Oh. Then I’ll change my answer. From no to Hell No.” Full story »
When I turned 16, all my friends assumed I would get a driver’s license. So did The Dad, my brothers and sisters and my girlfriend. The pressure was intense, but I resisted. There was no need for me to drive, since all my friends had cars and they seemed to enjoy driving a lot, so I just went along as the designated passenger. It was great. And since gas cost 27 cents a gallon in 1971, I saved literally dozens of quarters by not driving.
Still, I received lots of concerned stares from my classmates. They didn’t understand, and I couldn’t tell them. I was terrified of driving. I had only driven a car once, in 1972. David Simpkins and I were in the drive-through lane at the Dairy Delight, when he jumped out of his car to talk to some girls just as the car in front of us moved up. I sat there as the car behind me began to blow its horn. I waved at the driver, but he just honked his horn again. Probably an out-of-towner, I thought.
“Pull the car up,” shouted David. What choice did I have? There were girls present. I broke out in a cold sweat, slid over, threw the car into drive (I think it was drive. There was a D in there, somewhere) and pressed the accelerator. David‘s car jerked forward and plowed right into the side of the building.
“I’m OK,” I wheezed. “I’m not hurt.” Full story »
  If you’ve ever wondered what the twelve days of Christmas are—you’re in the middle of them. According to legend, the three wise men saw the Star of Bethlehem on Christmas and it took them twelve days of travel to get to the party. Their arrival, celebrated now on January 6, is known as the Feast of the Epiphany.
But what happened to them during their twelve-day trip?
According to novelist Paul Harrington, the “epic journey” was something like “Indiana Jones meets Lawrence of Arabia at a Lord of the Rings barbecue.” Full story »
We can’t stop. We have to keep going. He have to keep going. Don’t we?
Watch this. Right now. Then bookmark it, because I want you to come back and watch it at least once a week until you have it memorized. Also, I’d be grateful if you’d drop me a line every so often reminding me that I need to watch it again, too.
 Full story »
by Zack Witzel
Succinct. Compact. Crisp.
A successful short story can captivate. It can console. It can discomfort. And all in just one sitting.
In short fiction, writers must force themselves to choose each word carefully. The balance of a story can depend on every noun, verb and adjective.
Short stories and novels share many aspects, yes. Both, on a base level, tell a fictional narrative. Both showcase a writer’s talents. Both require a command of language.
But several things certainly differentiate the two genres.
Full story »
We are building a retirement home in Bloomington, Indiana. David is the foreman. Last week he went coon hunting, for the first time, with the masonry crew.
They pulled up to the property in trucks, and the men started unloaded the dogs from the cages in the back. Dave watched as they attached bulky collars to the dogs and turned them loose. The men then pulled out small electronic gadgets from the pockets of their Carhartts.
“What are those?” Dave asked. Full story »
 The Bankside Power Station was closed in 1981 leaving a handsome, and increasingly derelict, face-brick building in a prestigious spot by the side of the river Thames in the heart of the city of London.
After an expensive conversion the building reopened as the Tate Modern. “Modern” in that it features art produced since 1900. Here you will find works by Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. However, the Tate also commissions new work.
On 12 October they opened a major new installation in the vast – completely insanely gargantuan – Turbine Hall. Ai Weiwei is a 53-year-old Chinese ceramicist and his Sunflower Seeds is nothing less than 100 million individually crafted and painted porcelain sunflower seeds poured onto the floor. These were produced by 1,900 skilled artisans from the city of Jingdezhen, famed for its production of Imperial porcelain, over a two-year period.
Until Thursday you could happily walk and play in the seeds. Kids lay on their backs to make sunflower seed angels, businessmen shrugged off their patent-leather shoes and strolled back and forth in their suits, young couples picnicked. It was delightful.
Since Thursday it is a health hazard. Full story »
“Hollywood is so crooked that Mafia gangsters are entirely outclassed and don’t stand a chance. People in Hollywood are smarter. They have more sophisticated knowledge of money and deals and how to steal legally rather than illegally.” Who said it? Full story »
Scholars and Rogues does not often simply point readers in the direction of an article, but there’s an essay up at The Front Porch Republic that deserves a careful reading followed by long thought.
But it is difficult for me to believe that anyone aware of his habituation can remain “at home” in the world for long—I mean this scientized technological everything’s-for-sale world we’re habituated to. If the world isn’t exactly the dung heap (and we the maggots that crawl upon it) that Dulcinea pronounced it to be, it surely isn’t the sort of place we can look at and be particularly proud of or comfortable in. We may be at home, but we are at home only in a kind of somnambulant homelessness. Something needs remodeling, even if we aren’t exactly sure what it is.
But that “something” is precisely what’s at stake. So let us look about.
Read the rest.
 by Joseph Domino
As the quality of life continues to decline in America, I’ve been wracking my fevered brain for the single, perfect image to represent our downward spiraling dystopia. Like the “Grand Unification” theory sought by physicists.
There is a dark, comic film called Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006) directed by Goran Dukic based on a short story by Etgar Keret entitled “Kneller’s Happy Campers.” In the film suicides face an afterlife that is familiar yet diminished in quality. If they off themselves again, it just keeps getting worse. Think shopping at Walmart for clothing and jewelry instead of Neiman Marcus. Full story »
One Saturday morning in 1965, mom dragged us to the Western Auto Store on the Lewisburg square. I was 10 and Glenn was 12, so we were really too old to be taken shopping, but make a single mistake with a bottle rocket inside the kitchen, and suddenly you can’t be trusted.
“Why are we going to Western Auto?” asked Glenn.
“To see something,” said mom.
“What?” I asked.
“The future,” she replied. Full story »
 I’ve always admired the works of Damon Runyon. Drawing on the people he observed every day in Brooklyn, he created fictional characters that seemed more real than people I really know. There’s even an adjective to describe people who look like the characters in a Damon Runyon story: Runyonesque. I always wanted to be Runyonesque. And when I worked as a newspaper reporter, just as Damon Runyon did, I would have given anything to have heard someone say: “That Hargrove, he’s almost Runyonesque.” I told my wife about this.
“Why do you want to be onionesque?” she asked.
“Not onionesque, Runyonesque. You know, Damon Runyon? The writer?” Full story »
 George Steinbrenner is dead.
Let me begin by saying that I’m a Red Sox fan and a lifelong Yankee-hater who loathed Steinbrenner from shortly after I first heard his name. Let me further note that for the better part of the last three decades I have argued, passionately and to anyone who’d listen, that there were precisely three things wrong with Major League Baseball: domes, turf and George Steinbrenner. He was, in a nutshell, the Donald Trump of the National Pastime, and anyone who knows me even a little bit realizes that I don’t mean that in a good way.
Much has been said about Darth George and the Evil Pinstriped Empire, and much more will be said before the week is out, as the first shots are fired in the war for the man’s eternal legacy. Some of it will be positive, perhaps even worshipful. Some of it … not so much. Full story »
When I was young, summer always began with Memorial Day. Since I have a few moments between filling out applications, I thought I would enlighten the world with this sad but true tale of chickens and summer madness.
When we were kids, my brother and I had to sacrifice one week each summer to visit dad’s folks. That’s what we called them: dad’s folks. We did not look forward to the trip, because things are different out in the country.
In their middle years, dad’s folks were baked by the Great Depression, and they came out of that furnace overcooked, tough and hard. They used an outhouse, a decrepit structure I refused to enter. When people ask me why I’m so anal, I assure them there’s a reason. They drank well water that smelled like sulfur. They didn’t have a television, a car, a book, or anything else that could provide escape. Full story »
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