Month: April 2011

Some Stuff to Check Out

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Stories: That New Yorker story about the AD&D gaming group… what? Yes, really, and it’s pretty good, too. (Thanks for the link, was it Ben?) Some MP3s narrated by Miette: Alfred Jarry’s “The Passion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race” and the story it inspired, JG Ballard’s “The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race.” Okay, this is just a book review, but I loved this book, and have had it in my mind often lately, for reasons obvious to those who are in the know, but which those who don’t know might guess wrongly about. …

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The Smell of Progress, On Various Scales at Once

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Progress. I’ve made some on a number of fronts, but the one I’ll mention is writing. I’ve been busy in the past week or so–grading, preparing a few lectures, baking, handling some stuff that needed handling–but I’ve made significant headway with writing. I haven’t leapt into the project I was hoping to get into this semester–though I will, hopefully later this month, or early next–but I have made significant progress toward getting a few new short stories, or reworkings of older ones, finished and ready to go out. For the record, I’ve: heavily revised “Asshole Island” (previously “Instead of Pinochets”) …

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Made, Chez Nous

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So this morning, I made some bread: Crusty dinner buns, to be exact. They’re not perfect, or even as good as the first time I made them (for a burger dinner, when they turned out amazing!) but I’m pretty pleased with them. I’ll be digging into Peter Reinhart’s book The Bread Maker’s Apprentice this month, which I expect will give me some of the knowledge and skills to build on making bread the way I want a little more effectively — darker, crustier, lighter, fluffier, and so on. I figure I’m limited by my small toaster oven, but that’s all …

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Traneing Up…

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Some John Coltrane-related links, because yes, I’m working on that story that involves him again: John Coltrane, Avant Garde Jazz, and the Evolution of My Favorite Things is a thesis by Scott Anderson which he has generously (and stylishly) put online. It traces the development of the Coltrane Quartet/Quintet’s handling of the tune “My Favorite Things.” Also a wonderful example of how a project-focused website should look. A link I discovered on the above site, which is also amazing, is to Improviz, a project by Jon Syndal to render visual representations of jazz improvisations. There are links to various PDFs …

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Brian Lumley’s Titus Crow: The Creeping Discomfort

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So, a few years ago in an expat bar, I found a pile of hardback books in the pile of books left for anyone to take. Since I’d left a few books there myself, and since I was so shocked, I grabbed the books and made them my own. The books were the hardback Tor reissues of the Brian Lumley Titus Crow books–three volumes of them. About a year ago, when I was ill, I read the first trilogy, and, well, I didn’t really enjoy it. I packed up the books and took them to my office, putting them on …

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