Month: April 2007

  • Subpopular lips

    A few years back, when Christopher Rowe and Gwenda Bond were starting up their question themed zine “Say…” they asked a bunch of writers to respond to the first issue’s question, “Was that a Kiss?” I wrote a story called “Lips” and it was the anchor story for the issue. The story is my homage…

  • Interfictions give-away

    Small Beer Press is giving away some free copies of the new Interfictions anthology, but the free copies are limited, and here’s the way you get one for free:  reply fast to his post on the Small Beer “Not a Journal” website, review the book online or in print, interview one of the authors in…

  • A real writer

    I have been working at one of those put-it-together-yourself shoddy desks since I moved into my apartment last summer, because it was cheap and I needed to use my money for things that were more essential at the time.  But writer friends sometimes talk about their desks and I’ve always felt like I wasn’t a real…

  • Beginnings and endings

    I came across this really good interview with my city’s mayor (click on the February 8th Smart City radio interview under the Broadcasts section), talking about the history of Youngstown and the current situation here, as the community attempts to restructure and revitalize after decades of economic and political disintegration.  It’s a very different story here…

  • Something Awful

    Bob Mackey is funny.  He’s a local internet writer who just graduated from Youngstown State University and will be heading off to graduate school this fall.  In this piece, the world of temping and the world of Youngstown buildings that haven’t been kept up meet and marry like an internet version of Kafka.  Call it The…

  • From a previous notebook

    I’ve had several “journals” online and one that was short-lived but managed to capture in the two months I used it an interesting turning point in my life (at least looking back on it retrospectively) was the one I kept at Journalscape.  On a whim, looking back through that small pile of posts tonight, I came…

  • Talk about something coming back to haunt

    Reading this story from the New York Times about the woman who resigned from her dean of admissions post at M.I.T. after it was leaked by someone she never received a Bachelor’s Degree oh, about thirty years ago, which is required for her job, and which she seemed to have lied about having years ago,…

  • My daemon

    I think WordPress won’t allow me to embed the visual results for my Golden Compass daemon quiz results for some reason, so instead, you can find my results here, if you like these sorts of things. Actually, the site will ask you to rate the results of my quiz, and if people perceive me differently…

  • Weightless

    This made me tear up today.  I hope his flight is amazing. 

  • Advice we should take now, too

    Gwyneth Jones is so smart: Much of the science-fiction establishment hated the cyberpunks. Science fiction was supposed to be about progress, and how advances in technology will inevitably create a better world. But they were right, and the truth they told is highly relevant to this new century of sci-fi come true. If a child…