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2009 September
From the monthly archives: September 2009

Meanwhile…

By On September 11, 2009 · In As I Am Now

Other people have things of interest to say, and I have less than zero desire to leave the house in this monsoon. Maybe I’ll start writing again when the rainy season is up.

Lindsay wittily dissects Judith Thurman’s oddly vituperative review of the Amelia Earhart biography:

I’m noticing a degree of absurdity creeping in to her deliciously catty, un-official “Takedowns Of Famous Heroines” series.

My friend Rosie wrote a great piece for the Foundation titled “In Search of the Auden Martini”:

I don’t want to lump Auden in with the cocktail consumers I’ve seen belly up to bars at innumerable happy hours, lean their elbows on the polished wood or marble or zinc, and, with an air of sophisticated authority, order an extra-dry vodka martini with extra olives. I want to pry away their drinks and replace them with real martinis—made with gin and considerably more than a rumor of vermouth, and garnished, if garnished they must be, with clean, curly twists of lemon peel. It’s much the way I feel when, riding the subway some evenings, I catch sight of someone reading Atlas Shrugged, and want to tear the book from his or her hands and replace it with Paradise Lost or The Prelude.

My friend Will (with whom I just reconnected after many years away from “Camden”–and he can probably attest to some of the shenanigans in my essay) has started a compelling blog where he muses on negotiating life and love as a transman:

It makes me feel like I am a boy in sheep’s clothing, as if I am trying to pull a fast one on someone I hope to date, or the world at large – as if I am a fraud, or poseur in my transgender life now. I assert my identity as a transguy because I believe that I am where I am supposed to be – trans meaning “to span the distance” between the genders. I don’t believe it’s a polarized view of man versus woman, and not even an oversimplified line between the two. I think all of us pick and choose what fits for us as individuals, and that generalizations are then made from seeing patterns and loose consistencies in how society defines masculinity versus femininity. But they are not prescriptions for the only acceptable ways to present ourselves.

Dear friend and muse Maud wrote a post called When Is a Book Not a Book? (A topic on my mind these days, what with the thesis and all.)

Will literary magazines continue to spring up online? Will control of publishing, as William Gibson implies, shift dramatically? As the reading experience changes, what will happen to stories themselves? Could hyperlinks and interactive maps and theme songs and video games undermine or even destroy the fictional narrative as we know it?

Edited to add: Didn’t see this until this morning! The awesome Justine Larbalestier, whose book Liar comes out in the US in just a few short weeks, posted a recording of the beginning of the book.

Go read [edit: and listen to] these things while I sit here getting later and later for work.

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Baking all those every day loaves of laughs

By On September 2, 2009 · In Adipocere

I don’t presume to speak for everyone (although I’d volunteer, if asked), but I am positive I’m not the only person who hate-reads certain blogs and Twitter feeds. Not on a daily basis or anything, right, but…there are a couple. One might say that’s counterproductive. Unhealthy. If I hadn’t been reading some fatuous beauty blog post, however, about styling products (something said blogger was clearly compensated for), I would never have found the awesome Randy Wilfried, who might just end up being my new favorite journalist.

It was totally a happy accident, I might add. Some idiot sycophant who linked to the payola hair product post on his Twitter also linked to one of Randy’s articles.

Randy runs a website called Recent Articles On NET, a compendium of short articles on every imaginable topic. Breast cancer? Teen hairstyles? Resurfacing your driveway? Indeed. And he gives these gems away to anyone who wants to publish them. The only drawback (or selling point, I guess) is that they’re nearly unintelligible.

…and, as such, totally hiLArious.

Initially, I scolded myself for laughing at his maladroit English. Hell, I thought, he’s probably some poor recent émigré whose ingenuity and stick-to-it-iveness are leaps and bounds ahead of his grasp of the language–but that doesn’t stop him from grabbing for that brass ring. Good for you, Randy! Now I hate myself.

But then, after I dried my tears of mirth/self-loathing, I took a closer look at Recent Articles On NET and noted the odd cadence of the language:
It’s not ESL Follies after all. It’s someone who’s taken other people’s articles and meticulously (or robotically) converted them into “original” stories…by replacing nearly every word with its third synonym in the thesaurus. It’s kinda brilliant, really. Very Flarf.

Randy weighs in on topics such as

How I write funny:

- For a setup we longed for to indicate which we was starting to enrich politicians by observant they had a lot of imagination. So we thought, “With a volume of aptitude politicians have ….”

- we attempted to consider of a proceed to in a roundabout way contend someone has no imagination. My proceed was “… they should validate for supervision subsidies.”

The benefits of home schooling:

As time has past, it has been taken for postulated which removing a great credentials and nurturing a tutorial and seductiveness trail of most young kids is successfully achieved by a institutionalized propagandize systems of a states and cities.

Why praise matters:

Which of these things have we perceived more of in my veteran life?

Which of them motivates and inspires me to essay for larger feat and aloft performance?

And right divided with your coachs shawl on, consider about these questions:

Which of these things do we share more often?

Which will assistance me many enthuse and be a cause of others to strech their potential?

Clothing tips for men [I can't even begin to figure out what any of this means]:

Men sauce tips for an interview

Avoid wearing any horse opera group grave wear
Pick up right tone garments and have a great multiple of your commercial operation fit and tie.
Avoid wearing stand in breast coupler for a interview
Long sleeved T-shirt would be a many resting choice
Silk Tie can do wonders to your wardrobe style

Another Recent Articles On NET author, Jennie Claud, has a suspiciously familiar writer’s voice. She’s clearly an industry veteran though. Perhaps Randy is her protegé.

Here are her tips for writing successful articles:

Proofread

This is intensely important! Nothing will spin off a spectator more fast than an article which is feeble created and which is grammatically unprofessional. A elementary run by with spell check is a great start, though should not be a usually process which we have use of to check your work. One pretence which most try in sequence to proofread their work is to review it out loud. This allows we to listen to a difference instead of simply celebration of a mass a words. But in any case of how we check your work, it is necessary to have certain which it is spotless!

This is one of my personal favs. Are these the worst articles ever?:

However, carrying review a couple of of them, we have to contend we have not review so many crap in my life. Anyone who puts this on their website around an RSS feed or by duplicating a article indiscriminate is unequivocally being stupid. Very couple of of these “articles” have been anything more than keyword-optimized web pages created to lift in poke engines, or undisguised adverts.

Why no, Jennie (Randy?), no no no. These are the best articles ever.

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