The Pulp Renaissance
In the late 1950s, I came across a copy (1912; an original edition, I believe) of Edgar Rice Burrough’s first published novel, Tarzan, The Ape Man, on my parent’s bookshelf…
writing
Profundity
In 1923, William Carlos Williams wrote one of the most profound poems in the English language: The Red Wheelbarrow. It reads like a Japanese Zen haiku: so much depends upon…
The inspiration for The Fridgularity (discussion post)
A bit of a departure for today’s Skwib. I’m currently engaging in a lively discussion of The Fridgularity over on Goodreads with The Next Best Book Club (TNBBC), and I…
Rappin’ with Atwood and Moore
My Twitter feed has been fun the last few days, including an exchange with one of my favorite authors, and a literary legend. I was also surprised to discover that…
Enter Christopher Marlowe – Again
Back in the late 1990s, I wrote an essay about the “controversy” over who actually wrote the works of Shakespeare. I wrote, then, Not everyone agrees that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.…
9 old words for the modern age
vocabulation The use or choice of words. This post is a meditation on vocabulation, particularly, old words that we may want to revivify for our current age of the Internet…
The Consolation of Literature
For Boethius, it was the Consolation of Philosophy*. For me, it’s literature. Not to write about it so much as to read it. Consolation from the act of reading. And…
To sleep, perchance to dream
Aye, there’s the rub. To sleep in, one weekend morning, when there are no pressures for meetings, work, deadlines. To roll away from the soft light that filters through the…
10,000 words too many
Been working the last two-and-a-half months on my latest book for Municipal World. A bit of a challenge, actually – trying to combine marketing, branding, advertising, public relations and communications…
Scaramouche
He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. That has to rank among the best opening lines in a novel, up there…
Perfect Sense
I have always liked sandbox stories; tales in which the author could stretch his of her imagination, place ordinary characters into a seemingly normal situation, then see what happened when…
Propaganda, PR and Spin
What is propaganda? The word gets thrown around easily by people who obviously mean “anything we dislike or don’t agree with.” It’s a pejorative often used by a small group…
Forgery!
Forgery. It’s something that one normally associates with criminals; passing counterfeit bills, scammers, online pirates, people selling fake relics or fake ID. It’s something I would not normally associate with…
Another day on the job in Paradise… chapter one
Mayor Ralph “Bosco” Hearne, whistling softly “Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City” under his breath, gazed at the wood-and-polished-brass, 19th-century front doors of town hall and nodded slightly in…
Not the expected blog post, I’m afraid
Sorry to disappoint those readers who expected this to be a blog post on ukuleles, tequila or our beautiful Mexican Sister City, Zihuatanejo (“Zee-hwa” for those in the know). I…
Foolish words that still resonate
Foolosopher. What a wonderful word. Not much in use these days, but it ought to be. It is a portmanteau word, first used in English way back in 1549*, according…
A Council Christmas Carol – part 1
STAVE ONE. It was one of those long winter days. I was back in town late, that Thursday, well after dark, driving down the main street watching the heavy snow…
Selected Media Fads Through the Ages
24,000-22,000 BC: chunky fertility goddess statues (pictured at right: notice the prominent and large brains.) 10,000 BC: cave painting 4,000 BC: ziggurat construction 3,000-1,250 BC: pyramid raising (later revived by…
How Landon, Ontario got its name
Here’s a little snippet that didn’t make it into The Fridgularity. I cut the description of Landon, Ontario’s founding because it doesn’t really add much to the story, though it’s…
Fonts of The Fridgularity
TYPOGRAPHY One of the ideas that I play with in The Fridgularity is that the entity Zathir — you know, the one that takes over the Internet and promptly locks…