January 2012
1 post
Selected article titles from the news feed I am...
“Building covered in coats”
“Map of pig nicknames from 1884”
“Accessorising with cats”
“Overnight holidays at a nuclear plant”
November 2011
1 post
“if you have to wait for it to roar out of you,
then wait patiently.
if it...”
– Charles Bukowski, So You Want To Be A Writer
September 2011
1 post
The air was dense. I listened to the rain blow in, predicted it hitting the glass. Cursed myself, for letting the association stir me. Sometimes you want to move on, sometimes you realise you have to move on—and then there are some who you know you may never be able to forget.
I often dreamed of our wedding day; but last night, for the first time, I couldn’t see her face.
July 2011
2 posts
“Tie those horses /
to the post outside /
and let those glass doors /
open wide...”
– The Mountain Goats: Damn These Vampires
“Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive...”
– Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
May 2011
2 posts
Catharsis
Imagine, for a moment, that you are a boy.
Imagine that you meet someone—a girl. Initially, she infuriates you. She is quick-witted and funny; frustratingly articulate, occasionally condescending. You do not yet realise that these are the things you will fall in love with; because you are just a boy.
Imagine now that some years have passed. The two of you have spent a lot of time together,...
The National—Exile Vilify
Oh, you meant so much
Have you given up
Does it feel like a trial
Does it trouble your mind
The way you trouble mine
Does it feel like a trial
Now you’re thinking too fast
You’re like marbles on glass
April 2011
1 post
“Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is...”
– Douglas Adams, “The Salmon of Doubt”
February 2011
3 posts
“In the end, everything will be ok. If it’s not ok, it’s not yet the...”
– Fernando Sabino
“For the first time in years the tears were streaming down his face. But they...”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, Winter Dreams
“The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that...”
– Stanley Kubrick
January 2011
2 posts
“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
– Carrie Fisher
Run-on sentence of true embarrassing truth...
thebosha:
When in Pennsylvania I sometimes see imprints in the middle of large expanses of otherwise virgin snow that could not possibly have gotten there and away without disturbing the surrounding snow and I think about space alien invasion or woodland ghosts or the preternaturally long leaps of werewolves then I remember groundhogs and that I lived in New York City for too long.
December 2010
3 posts
2010
This year has been a difficult one, perhaps my most difficult yet.
At the beginning of it, I spent my nights praying—to whoever might be listening—that someone would fall back in love with me. When that didn’t work, I prayed that I would fall out of love with her. All of my prayers went unanswered; I never really believed it would be otherwise.
I spent a lot of nights alone, drinking...
“Age is the dawning anticipation of consequences.”
– David Hepworth
“My dreams are going through their death flurries. I thought they were all safely...”
– Barbara Newhall Follett
November 2010
1 post
“Sometimes the little times you don’t think are anything while they’re happening...”
– Andy Warhol
October 2010
3 posts
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
– Soren Kierkegaard
To Dr B.
Hey mate, it’s me.
Just checking up, seeing how you’re doing. A lot of stuff has happened since we last spoke; many of our friends are parents now and another new baby is on the way. I’m still carrying the torch for singledom and borderline alcoholism—hey, we probably all saw that one coming—but it’s a really happy time for all of us and I wish you were here to share it.
I went to the pub with...
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it...”
– Groucho Marx
September 2010
1 post
“Film critics said I gave a voice to the fear we all have: that we will reach a...”
– Anne Bancroft, on playing Mrs Robinson in “The Graduate”
April 2010
1 post
“I still owe money to the money to the money I owe / I never thought about love...”
– Lyrics from “Blood Buzz Ohio” by The National
March 2010
1 post
The Comancheros
Paul Regret: How do you know you killed him? Ranger Capt. Jake Cutter: There wasn’t time not to.
February 2010
2 posts
“I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have...”
– Roger Ebert, from this interview with Esquire.
Diagram Prize
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the finalists of the 2009 Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year:
The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Collectible Spoons of the 3rd Reich
Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes
Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots
What Kind of Bean is this Chihuahua?
Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter
Vote at...
January 2010
1 post
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly...”
– C.S. Lewis
December 2009
2 posts
“Death is not the greatest loss in life.
The greatest loss is what dies inside us...”
– Norman Cousins
“The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of...”
– John Milton
November 2009
4 posts
Light and Dark
I knew the sound of her car’s engine. I remember I would listen out for it, then look down on to the street and watch her park; light headed with the anticipation of seeing her, holding her.
This town seemed bigger then. We ate and drank, laughed and danced; lived in every moment, enjoyed each other and all our possibilities. I was happy in a way I’ve never been, released of all...
“I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t...”
– Cormac McCarthy, interviewed by the Wall St. Journal
“Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of...”
– P. J. O’Rourke
October 2009
2 posts
How To Write Badly Well
A brilliant new blog from writer Joel Stickley, How To Write Badly Well serves a dual purpose: teaching the reader how to avoid bad writing habits and making them laugh out loud. From a post entitled “Skip blithely between tenses”:
‘Hello?’ I am going to have said. It is my boss; he was angry, but not as angry as I remember him being when I am handing in the work late, four days...
Pint Of Baileys
I don’t remember the day I first met Bar; these days I have trouble recalling what happened last week, let alone nearly twenty years ago. Despite that, I remember us playing together at primary school, and later him shooting me in the ear with a modified Super Soaker water pistol, which he’d reverse-engineered to make it more powerful. A lot more powerful.
We spent a lot of time in...
September 2009
3 posts
Letter
I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. Just to my left was a large block of retirement flats, and I could see in through the closest window; an old man sat at his desk, writing.
I watched as he stopped to lick the nib of his fountain pen, then continued with his careful, deliberate task. A letter, perhaps to his child, or an old friend; words to comfort, or stir memory.
“A ship in harbor is safe—but that is not what ships are built for.”
– John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic, 1928
“By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of man you wouldn’t want...”
– Duke Ellington
August 2009
1 post
“A cricket tour in Australia would be the most delightful period in one’s...”
– Harold Larwood
July 2009
9 posts
Oakfield, VII
We slept deeply on that first night of silence. I dreamt about the seventies, when Oakfield would still have been a hotbed of construction, filled with young families; the hope and optimism of their America not yet faded. My dreams were interrupted by Lea, gently kicking my foot.
“Hon,” she said softly, “do you smell something?”
“Go back to sleep.” I murmured. A moment later, I became acutely...
Oakfield, VI
It was late afternoon, on the seventh day, when the alarm finally stopped. I remember it clearly: I was sitting on our porch, painting a hand rail. We still hadn’t heard from any of the local authorities regarding the owner of the house. Perhaps the electricity supply had been cut, or the battery had finally quit; maybe the speaker simply wore out.
Eric popped his head out from next door,...
Oakfield, V
That Wednesday, nearly a full week after we first heard it, the alarm was still sounding. One of the neighbours had called the police at around four that morning; they heard a lot of noise in the street, and looked out to see Ed standing on the Millers’ porch in his robe and a pair of hiking boots, furiously trying to kick the door in. The cops wrote him up with a caution for disturbing the...
Oakfield, IV
Five days passed, without a moment of peace. The fire department were called out on two more occasions, but it was the same story both times: without permission to enter, there was little they could do.
We ate out most evenings just to get away from the house, but all we could think about was coming home to that relentless noise. Everyone was exhausted; the exception being Michael, who slept...
Oakfield, III
After four days, the house was still howling, loud and strong as ever. Sometimes it sounded like an abandoned animal, pining for the family who had left it behind. Evidently the alarm was getting power from some other source; our next beacon of hope was that the electric company would cut the supply to the whole house when they were notified that it was empty.
We’d taken to meeting on each...
Oakfield, II
Two days later, the alarm was still sounding. It turned out I was right: there was no fire: it had to be a malfunction of some sort. The problem now was that there was no way of shutting it off. We thought about calling Joel Miller, but nobody had a working number for him.
We were still calling it ‘the Miller place’, though the house itself was empty. The Miller family had moved out...
Oakfield
When I think about it now, it’s strange how much of that week is still so vivid. It was the day after Independence Day, and cheap plastic stars and stripes were still hanging from the eaves. We were sharing a family sized bucket of chicken; the kids were yelling at each other, fighting over the last Hot Wing. We barely noticed when the fire alarm began to sound at the Miller place across the...
“Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when...”
– Pete Seeger
The Corner House
Dr Campbell lived at the very end of the street, in a tall old house with high privet hedges, which were always neatly trimmed. His garden, or at least what could be seen of it through the front gate, was immaculate in every respect; the colourful flower beds were completely free of weeds, and the edges of the lawn were set-square straight. If it were not for the fact that nobody had ever actually...
June 2009
12 posts
Untitled
It’s been dry for six weeks. The heat and humidity are oppressive; a powerful sedative that saps all energy from both body and mind. The evenings are when we come alive now, the vermilion sunsets and the sweet, cool wind breathing new life into tired limbs.
As I walk I can feel the tarmac, sticky under the soles of my shoes. From nowhere, a brief tang of ozone fills the air, and all is...
Owen's Party
Adam says he can make it, easy. We’re all a bit scared he’ll end up in hospital or kill himself, but we’re still egging him on, and we’re most definitely still going to watch. He gulps down the rest of his beer, sprints between us out on to the balcony, and uses a patio chair as a vaulting spring to launch himself over the railing. A split second passes; it seems like...
Untitled
It’s around lunchtime, on one of those Sundays where the sky is white and featureless, and the light seems too tired to make anything look interesting. The kind of day that doesn’t make you feel guilty for letting it pass you by.
I glance out of the bay window, down into the street. A girl, probably in her mid-twenties, is walking unsteadily up the driveway to the door of the house...