Justice for Caitlyn

Last night, I fired six queries for my new project off into the ether. I started with ten agents, but a full 40% of them were: a) not accepting queries, b) not accepting queries from unpublished authors, c) not accepting unsolicited queries, or d) not agents anymore. No rejections yet!!! (OK, no responses at all yet.) Thanks to those of you who responded to my last post - it really helped light a fire under me. More queries may follow through the end of the month. Then we'll see.

So if you're sitting around this weekend with nothing to do and would like to write the next best-seller, I've got an idea for you.

The book will be called Justice for Caitlyn. In it, the self-righteous ire of an entire nation reanimates the bones of a murdered toddler, which rises from its grave and - after obtaining an iPhone - breaks into jail and exacts bloody and brutal revenge on its attractive but disturbed mother, whose name is, um, Cathryn, while live-tweeting the whole thing. The entire nation watches as Cathryn is dragged away by demons to suffer eternal torment. Even after Cathryn's demise, the toddler continues to attract the attention of everyone it meets, so much so that they stop caring about their own kids and only worry about the dead toddler.

The book ends with the reanimated toddler testifying before the state legislature (also live tweeting the hearing, and posting Facebook status updates involving lots of indignation and crude ASCII art) about the utility of a new law against letting your kids out of your sight ever until they're 21...before reascending to heaven amidst hymns, angels, and a shadowy vision of a professional wrestler body-slamming Jesus.

Hinted but not fully revealed is that after Caitlyn reascends to heaven everyone will realize they have to start paying attention to their own kids again - indeed, they are now legally mandated to do so. And boy, will that piss them off.

I offered to set my wife up with unlimited Diet Mountain Dew, Cheetos, and red velvet cake from a nearby bakery over the next three days with the expectation that she'd show me a draft Monday or Tuesday, but she wasn't interested.

For any of you who would like to execute this brilliant idea, however...a small cut of the proceeds, or at least dedicating the book to the good old Lt. is all I ask in return. Just remember, you have about a week to write it, query it, and sell it before the real Cathy scoops you.

Straw Poll: Would You Query For A New Project Now...

...or would you wait until September?

It's exciting. My draft was finished in February. I revised and had the manuscript beta-read. I've been researching agents and just this past weekend spent a couple of hours at the big Barnes & Noble up the road looking for books "like" mine and making lists of agents and authors. I wrote a query that I tinkered with for a bit, and my wife has looked it over and given me some feedback to make it better. So, I need to finalize my list of agents to hit up initially, and then I am good to go.

But now the question has arisen in my mind: it's already July. It'll probably still take me another week or two to get my list finalized. Then it will be more than halfway to August, one of publishing's "dead times." Advice to the effect of "use July and August to write, and query in September" is starting to pop up on the blogosphere.

Of course I am excited for my new project and eager to get it out there. But I also want to be strategic and maximize my chances, especially since we know how the deck is stacked against cold queriers. I also have plenty of other writing and publishing related tasks I could do if I put this project on ice for a bit. So let me ask you, my fine readers, for your opinions.

What would you do if you had a project just about ready to query right now? Would you forge ahead, or would you wait a couple of months?

Your feedback would be appreciated, and might very well prove determinative.

"People Buy It So It Must Be Good"...Or Fox News Syndrome In Literature

I promised (threatened) a few posts ago to tackle this issue one encounters in the contemporary world of writing and publishing, wherein one person says: "X Book [or Y Author] is utter crap!" and another person rejoins: "Well, people are buying it [his/her books], so it [he/she] must be good!" One hears this, usually defensively, from fans of certain genres (and from agents, of course).

At a macro-level, this reasoning fails because it assumes that "good" is the equivalent of sales, and we know that literature is judged on more than just that one dimension. We also know that who gets published and who gets marketed is not a meritocracy according to any single dimension or dimensions, and that those things obviously correlate highly with sales for most authors.

This reasoning also fails because it's kind of like using a word in its own definition. This is the literary equivalent of the anthropic principle, and it makes the error of judging the cause by the effect. (It's like saying "The Mona Lisa" is a good painting because it is so popular. Or, God help us all, "The Jersey Shore" is a good show because lots of people watch it.)

The truth, though, is that in almost every instance - whether we're talking a book, an author, a band, a TV show, or whatever in our consumerist, generally democratic culture - there are two valid sides to the exchange, neither of which is being clearly expressed.

So let's parse a bit the well-known example of Stephen King's critique of Stephenie Meyer. King said Meyer couldn't write "worth a darn" but then went on to say:

"People are attracted by the stories, by the pace and in the case of Stephenie Meyer, it's very clear that she's writing to a whole generation of girls and opening up kind of a safe joining of love and sex in those books. It's very exciting and it's thrilling and it's not particularly threatening because they're not overtly sexual.

"A lot of the physical side of it is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that's a shorthand for all the feelings that they're not ready to deal with yet."

Now, King's dissection of the appeal of the books may not be perceived as terribly flattering of Twilight fans (especially those older than the target demographic!), but - even if true - it is a valid reason to enjoy the books (no matter who or how old you are). And regardless of whether you agree with the exact stated reason, Meyer clearly found some way to tap into what certain people want in a story (this is the "people buy it" part, and it is undeniable). But let's separate that from the writing itself. One can enjoy books that are not especially well-written, but it's counterproductive to argue those books are well-written when they're not.

Another great example is The Bridges of Madison County. It tapped into a vein with a certain demographic (one with very little overlap with Twilight fans, beyond also being largely female) but - despite its pomposity and faux-literariness - you'd really be hard-pressed to make the case that it is a well-written, or good (in any sense but tapping into that vein successfully), book.

Thinking for just a sec about TV, people watch reality TV because it taps into their curiosity or appeals in some way. But, even if you're a fan, you'll probably fess up to morbid or prurient interest as your motivator for watching, rather than make the case that it's the complex plotlines or amazing camera work that you really love.

(The Lt. will here admit a weakness for terrible action movies on hulu.com. There's a reason they put those things up for free. I watch these horrid movies and feel the adrenaline rush, root for the hero - especially when there's a vengeance element. I enjoy them. I'll keep watching them. But they ain't good movies.)

What annoys readers (and writers) like me is not when people buy Twilight or Bridges in sufficient quantities to make them bestsellers.

And it's not when they read them as guilty pleasures.

It becomes a bit annoying when that's the only kind of stuff people read: books that tap into them at a visceral level and reinforce what they already believe or want to believe (about themselves, about the opposite sex, about love, about politics, about society, about whatever). (This is one of my problems with certain - not all, but certain - examples of so-called "women's fiction" where all the the male characters are mere window-dressing or straight out of a Bud Light commercial.)

This is the fucking Fox News of literature. But isn't art supposed to challenge us? Maybe not every time, maybe not constantly, but at least occasionally? If you're scared to read anything that isn't self-reinforcing, why bother reading? Do you really grow by reading - over and over - protagonists that are just like you, facing situations you can well relate to (even if you are unlikely to encounter them yourself) and making choices that you approve of all the time?

And this moves from a bit annoying to supremely annoying when readers then go on to claim that such books are "good," by which they mean well-written and at least kind of deep. (Nor, by the way, am I arguing that well-written and deep books necessarily resonate with many people. Whether a book is "good" is not only highly subjective, it is also highly multidimensional.)

So I think what this post boils down to is an appeal (or several) to avoid the false dichotomy people draw from instances like King-Meyer:

First, let's stop equating best-selling with good.

Second, and more importantly, let's can the use of "good" if we're talking literature, and instead say what we mean.

And finally, let's us writers seek to challenge our readers, and let's us readers seek out a challenge (or at least seek to understand about ourselves why certain books do or do not resonate with us), at least once in a while.

I Have Read Some Great Books This Year

We writers, and readers, often bemoan the state of publishing today. I know I am guilty of this with some frequency. Stephenie Meyer, Snooki, Sarah Palin's kid, celebrity memoirs...it's so frustrating for those of us who put our all into what we write (under the constraints of our daily lives, of course) and yet hit a brick wall of rejection from agents who seem uninterested in anything that isn't by a celebrity, YA or focused explicitly on "women's issues." (I'm being slightly hyperbolic, as I every-so-often am wont to do, but surely you see my point: a focus on this ultra-specialized niche market stuff instead of literature that appeals to all of us as human beings.)

Sometimes, though, I like to reflect on the other side of things. There are many, many great books out there. Some of them are even being published now. It's about halfway through the year and I've put away around 20 books so far. I was thinking that I've read a lot of excellent stuff this year. So let me highlight a few:

--I just finished the legendary Kolyma Tales by Shalimov. What Primo Levi did for the Nazi camps, Shalimov has done for the GULAG, but via a series of vignettes that distill the essence of the hopelessness and the utter brokenness of a system that grew out of the dream of communism. Each tale left me breathless, or shaking my head, or simply grateful for the existence I have.

--Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad got so much hype, but the description never seemed interesting: who cares about the music industry? Not me. But I read it, and it was spectacular. A loose configuration of stories that form a moving whole, Egan uses deceptively simple language to draw complex characters interacting over time. Better than Freedom - it really is an amazing book.

--Paul Auster's incredibly insightful ruminations on fathers and sons (from both perspectives) The Invention of Solitude: made me eager to read more from an author who is so introspective, who can see so much in others and in himself.

--I am halfway through David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. My first foray into DFW (beyond reading a few of his magazine articles), I wasn't at all sure if it would agree with me. But it is quite brilliant in its own way. I'm a fan so far.

--Richard Russo's amazing Empire Falls, with its unforgettable characters and its portrayal of small-town life and struggles.

--The clever and illuminating novel The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin. We knew Stalin hated Trotsky, but who ever would have thought his paranoia ran so deep?

--The smart and insightful Proofiness, with its clever labels for the quantitative tricks politicians, the media, and advertisers use to trick or mislead naive people, would make a better high school math textbook than most any out there, while at the same time being orders of magnitude more readable and entertaining than any textbook could be.

--I cannot leave out the riveting Vietnam war novel Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. Now, finally, I feel like I understand the Vietnam War. And while I don't understand what it's like to be in combat, this surely is the closest I've come.

Six months of reading, and I've been blown away, awed by the language and the characters and the plot turns and the authors' investigations of humanity at all difference places, times, and scales. There is a whole lot of crap out there, but there is also plenty that makes reading, and trying to contribute as a writer, very much worth it.

A Note On The Lt.'s Discursive Style

My last post made me think (and I know what you're thinking - well, that makes one of us, Lt. - and to you I say shut the fuck up): imagine if I took all the shit in my posts that goes into parentheses and instead put it all in footnotes (even my footnotes would have footnotes).

(Leaving aside the fact that I have no idea how to make footnotes work on blogger) I'd be David Motherfucking Foster Wallace!!

Go, Lt.

Yes, go, you're thinking. Go already.

And this business of me telling you what you think/say is what my wife does to me. She has whole conversations with me where I don't have to say a word because she does my talking for me.

It's wonderful (as long as she doesn't veer off course from what I'd actually say, which she rarely does (which is kind of scary) <-- see - that's a place right there where there'd be a footnote within a footnote) because I don't have to pause in drinking my beer to respond.

One day soon she'll say to me, "That was a great conversation we had last night, hon."

And I'll say (because this time she'll wait for my response), "I wasn't home last night, darling."

And she'll say, "Yeah, so?"

I'm not sure where I'm going with this.

Oh yeah:

David Motherfucking C*cks&cking Foster Wallace!

(do i have any readers left at all?)

The Amanda Hocking Phenomenon

I demand that you read this New York Times Magazine profile of self-publishing (and now mainstream publishing) phenomenon Amanda Hocking. Now, I know what you are thinking: who in the fuck are you, Lt., to disappear from our lives so rudely, and then show up again one day making demands? But trust me, it's for your own good.

It's for your own good because the article goes on and on (just like my blog posts, though you have to admit you missed me and my discursive style) and yet winds up making Ms. Hocking sound kind of dumb (I'm not saying she is, but the portrayal was not flattering) and - much more importantly - explains absolutely nothing about her that would be of interest to anyone (and thank you, Sierra, for letting me know that bold, and not italics, underline, asterisks, or - god forbid - ALL CAPS - is what I should use for emphasis in cases like this).

For example, is her writing any good? Based on the article, my guess is that it is not. It's "candy," something people can turn to to escape from thinking. (And look, I know a lot of us don't have the perfect lives, but is being forced to think too much really the problem in contemporary America?) But maybe it is. After all, people are buying her books. (One day I want to address head-on this "people buy it so it must be good" thing. It's half-right but - like so much else - not very informative. And we can throw up our hands and say "good" is subjective but that's not helpful.)

Here's another: does she know what she's doing? Whether her writing is "good" or not, she's doing something that appeals. Does she know what it is and why it works? We learn a bit about the development of her style from the piece, but not enough.

Here's another: why did her books take off? The way the article describes it, she uploaded her first book and one day five people bought it, and then she uploaded more and soon thousands of people were buying them. So...um, did she do any marketing? I know, I know, you can't always explain these things fully. But with anyone being able to publish online, how did she get noticed? She doesn't come across as especially business savvy or some kind of social media guru. So what was the secret?

And another: why did she decide to move to a mainstream publisher? She is asked, and answers, this question in the article without really providing an answer. There's been a lot of handwringing about this in the blogosphere, but I don't want some guy's speculation about why she did it, I want to know from her why she did it.

And a final one: why did New York publishers reject her so much? (I put this one last because this is the one you and I, my friends, have already agonized over so much ad nauseum.) That being said, why did the reporter not ask Ms. Hocking to pull out some of her rejection letters, and call up some of those agents and ask them. Heck, maybe Amanda Hocking's big problem is that she just can't write a query letter.

So, was this article just extremely poorly-written (or written by a reporter with no analytical capabilities whatsoever), or are these questions somehow obscure or uninteresting to people? I've read it and understand Ms. Hocking's appeal and success no better than I did beforehand. Do you think Ms. Hocking is being deliberately obfuscatory about her strategies and techniques? Is the reporter just thick? Or - I know it's incredibly unlikely but I'll throw it on the table - is your intrepid blogger, the Lt., missing something here?

So Who Reads This Shit?

No, not my blog, wisenheimers. Those stupid "novels" celebrities are supposedly writing.

That's my question.

What If It Happened Here?

The ads on the Metro can be as wonky as the people who ride it. Stuff about federal retirement benefits. Advertisements for military and defense aircraft. Ads that essentially lobby for the wind energy industry or for net neutrality. Geez, even the literary ads can be a little weird.

But this ad, from stopthedrill.org, really caught my attention. They have them for San Francisco and D.C. too, but the New York one made my jaw drop.


Does this remind you of anything? Anything, um, not an oil spill in New York Harbor? You know, the sunny day. New York. Black smoke billowing high up into the sky. Anyone?

My first reaction to this ad, and to the "What If It Happened Here?" on top was: what the fuck are you talking about? It did happen here! Only then did I notice "stopthedrill.org" at the bottom and that the smoke was rising from the water, not lower Manhattan.

do you see my point yet or should i upload more pictures??

I understand what they're trying to do. I agree we need to be much more responsible with offshore drilling. I'd even say the oil spill in the Gulf was probably more devastating than a comparable spill in New York or San Francisco would be - I'm guessing here a bit, but at least in terms of the marine ecosystem and its effects on the economy (not to mention the ease of containment).

But these are wonky details. My point is: who approved this particular ad and how tone-deaf can they possibly be? I note the D.C. ad has them cleaning up birds in the Tidal Basin (during Cherry Blossom Festival, no less) and quite notably does not show a pillar of black smoke rising from what just might be the Pentagon.

Give me a break.

Reviewing Books

I am intrigued with the discussion going on over at the Fiction Groupie blog about writers reviewing books. It's of relevance to me because: 1) I frequently, and often quite critically, review books on this blog; and 2) I am finding myself with more "real world" (that means "real name") opportunities to review, often quite critically, mostly nonfiction so far, but that may change. It's a multi-dimensional discussion that got me thinking a little bit about how I do things.

First, there's the distinction between nitpicking and reviewing. I'd like to think that I review, not nitpick. (Anyone care to disagree?)

Second, there is the fact that I use a pseudonym here and this blog is not a marketing platform (God help me if it was). Chances are I would be a bit less critical were I using my real name, or at least go a bit less on my overall impressions and a bit more on easily-substantiated particulars.

That being said, as someone trained as a scientist, I am used to anonymous peer-review, which can be incredibly harsh. Anonymous peer review tends not to get posted on the internet (though some argue it should be), but it is simply par for the course. If your work sucks, people aren't shy about telling you. If that makes you cry or makes you not do science anymore, que lastima. I believe in being constructive to a fault, but I do not believe in coddling mediocrity. If giving criticism properly has become a lost art form, so has accepting it. And I stand by that.

At the same time, even here - safely hidden behind my pseudonym and an unknown and unpublished quantity, anyway - I have made the decision not to review several books on this blog whose authors were nice to me in person when I met them or with whom there is some other connection or some other reason I didn't want to or felt it would be unprofessional to.

On the other hand, do Emma Donoghue or David Eagleman or - for fuck's sake - Snooki really care what I think? Please - they are laughing all the way to the bank, and in a previous post I highlighted research showing that even bad reviews in prestigious venues (this blog clearly is not one) can boost sales for new authors. When you enter the public sphere by publishing a book, you expose your work to criticism. That is one of the things that makes publishing difficult. People who don't like that can: a) not publish, b) use a pen name, and/or c) not ever read reviews.

One of the most interesting aspects of the conversation in the comments is this distinction between readers and writers. Some were arguing that writers shouldn't be trashing other writers online because we're all writers. One commenter even likened it to bashing a co-worker publicly, which is a baffling analogy. Anyway, I've got two problems with this assertion:

1) If you look at (fiction) book reviews in major newspapers and periodicals, you will find many reviews written by people who are not professional critics, but whose qualifications are that they are authors. If you're telling me those reviews are buttered up with false praise (though I accept they probably sometimes are), then I'm no longer interested in reading them. Certainly in scholarly circles and even in much mainstream nonfiction, you want a reviewer who knows the subject, and their own publications are often their credentials.

2) This implies that readers and writers are somehow different people. But many readers write and many (should be all) writers read. We are consumers and producers at the same time. And I as a consumer am unhappy when I read a book that's a total piece of crap. (On the other hand, I'm less likely to review that book here because it's not worth it - I'd rather review books that are at least mixed.) What if I write YA but review adult, write mystery but review romance, write fiction but review non-fiction, write technical papers but review Jonathan Franzen? I mean, this is a fairly ridiculous argument.

I review books on this blog for two interdependent reasons: 1) I like to analyze literature and writing the analysis down forces me to solidify my thoughts, the exercise of which I think helps improve my writing, and 2) reviews can foster discussion...not just about reading, but about writing. I have, in the past, elevated comments that disagree with my assessment of books to make my readers aware of them (Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned comes to mind) because the thing I most want to do with my reviews is learn (not preach, instruct, bash or anything else).

If I review in other venues (where my name is attached), there is a third and selfish reason, which is to get my name out there. This requires that I think not only about my opinions about the work but about how they, and I, will be perceived. So those reviews are certainly prepared more carefully than my reviews here, though they may not be any less critical.

Now, all this being said, I think if I were Roni from Fiction Groupie - with a fiction publishing deal in hand, lots of followers (approximately 50x the Lt.), a blog focused on writers - I would do just what she does because, as she says, the cost-benefit is pretty clear. (I might make an exception if the New York Times asked me to review, vs. on my own blog.) Her advice seems designed simply to help novice writers avoid coming across as unprofessional by reminding them that publishing is a small world and the internet is indeed public. I thought it was funny to watch the discussion because she was arguing a pretty sensible middle ground, but the commenters kept expanding her meaning to extremes, and she kept reminding them what she'd actually said.

Anyway, a pretty thought-provoking discussion....

The Question On My Mind And The Rapture

The question on my mind this past week was whether it didn't seem like such a bad week to me because: a) I had just returned from vacation and actually felt like a human being, or b) it really wasn't such a bad week. I think a little of both. Cautiously, I predict the end of the ridiculous times at work for a while, which means a little more of the Lt. in your lives as we move towards the summer. Assuming, of course, that I can think of what to post about.

I can tell you that last year, when I returned from vacation, the peace lasted until around noon at my first day back at work, because by that point in my time at that place there was a person the mere sight of whom made my blood boil and made me want to grab the nearest hard object and start swinging it him. So as soon as I saw him, upon my return, all bets were off. There are aggravations in my current job, too, but nothing even within an order of magnitude of that in its acuteness. My peace lasted the first three days or so.

And this time, we won't wait a whole other year before taking another vacation.

On another note, it goes without saying, but the Lt. was not raptured on Saturday. I'm an atheist, but I didn't entirely dismiss the possibility, because truly: who can know the mind of God? I thought of a short story idea, though: God announces the rapture to a select few individuals and of course nobody believes them. The day comes and goes and nobody is raptured. It turns out this is because nobody can meet God's high standards - basically, we're all fucked. Even the "select few individuals," are just vessels for spreading God's word and not themselves raptured.

Alternatively, God announces on the airwaves, on Twitter, on everywhere that the Rapture is coming Saturday. He orders everyone to strip naked and prostrate themselves in the middle of a big field. The time comes and Independent Day-esque spaceships descend from the sky on a helpless, naked, prostrated humanity. Ha, ha! say our new alien overlords. Fooled you superstitious humans!

(There is, indeed, a good reason why I do not write short stories.)

WTF?

Jeez, Lt., what is the connection between these two threads in your post? you ask, assuming you are one of the stalwart few still reading. Oh, it's tenuous. Only that I feel like if God were to redesign Heaven, he might want to look at the resort my wife and I stayed at last week for some ideas. Because that's what Heaven is, right? Like a big vacation that doesn't end.

Have you ever seen those illustrations of Heaven from Jehovah's Witness literature? It's like everyone got dressed up and headed to a zoo without cages for a big picnic. Go ahead and tell me those are just symbolic representations, but I'm sorry, I don't believe it. I mean, there's no swim-up bar!

Humans: we really are such silly creatures.

Running Tally Of E-Readers?...And A Note On Philip Roth

Having said in my guest post on Sierra's blog that I don't read much about e-books because they just ain't my problem yet (which is true), I have to admit to the one exception to my lack of interest: my real life experiences.

To the point: as many of you know from my frequent bitching and moaning, Lt. commutes by Metro each day, and for months I've had the wacky idea of keeping a totally non-scientific tally of how many paper books vs. e-books I see people reading on the train.

What would this tell me? Probably nothing. Why don't I do it? Well, see answer to first question...plus, it'd be a lot of work because I'd need to think about it and write down what I saw each day, rather than just totally zoning out or fantasizing about pounding the shit out of my fellow passengers or whatever it is I might otherwise do. (Which does not include reading because, as I've mentioned before, the Lt. gets incredibly motion-sick if he tries to read, especially on a transportation system as herky-jerky as the Metro.) But the idea doesn't go away.

Of course I would have to exclude Bibles or overtly religious stuff, and I see people reading that stuff with surprising regularity. Perhaps people hope that such material will give them the spiritual and moral strength necessary to survive their crappy commute - I don't blame them. Might also have to exclude the folks who read management textbooks and other school type stuff on the train, though I admire their work ethic.

I also thought about this while we were on vacation last week. As you might expect, most people out by the pool or on the beach read paper books (and man, what a bountiful cornucopia of shitty authors were represented!), but I did see a couple of e-readers. (However, I probably saw more laptops than e-readers, and not more than three of each. And yes, my wife and I rolled our eyes at the people with laptops, until I considered perhaps they were using the time to write a novel. Then I made a nasty face at them. And no, I didn't see anyone stupid enough to have their laptop with them on the beach. But I saw one at the pool and a few inside the hotel.)

On another note, the only things I'll say about Philip Roth and the Man Booker: I like Roth but I'm by no means a huge fan. Three judges was a bad idea - there should have been a panel. The judge who resigned had what I consider a clear conflict of interest and never should have been asked to judge a field that included Roth. I know publishing is a relatively small world, but the people who set this thing up should have taken more care. Here's a piece on the situation I more or less agree with, though again - I think the real problem here is that the people who chose the judges did a poor job in only selecting three people, and not vetting for conflicts of interest.

The Lt.'s First Guest Post Ev-AH!

I am (very reluctantly) back from vay-cay after much sun and much cerveza and many hours spent floating in the tropical sea. But luckily I do not have to write a post because Sierra Godrey was nice enough to ask me to write a guest post, which appears today on her blog. It's about how I've tried to make writing a bigger part of my life than just trying to get an agent for my novel, and how that's helped me be persistent.

Go check it out (and on the off chance you don't already follow Sierra - she's a must if you're a writer)!

Throwback Week #4: Random

Some of you may remember this one, but it still makes me chuckle, especially the part about Jonathan Coulton and Haman.

Throwback Week #3: Must See TV

I hate the asininity of most TV, and I hate the way some people need background noise all the frigging time. Read about the fun I had one morning at my car dealership as a result.

Throwback Week #2: Breaking Down My iTunes Music

If you are me, you feel helplessly drawn to trying to do a quantitative analysis of just about everything in your life. Check out my attempt to extract meaningful information of some kind from my iTunes music.