Your lips renounce me. /
Still, I kiss their feathered tips. /
The edges of flesh.
Filed under Haiku to You Thursday, poetry by author, Uncategorized
Little by little, like evolution in reverse, the things that make your world start to fall away.
I was waiting for the Don Pardo obit like a horror-film audience member peeking through hisser fingers, but when it finally came it was still a shock. “A light just went out,” as they say when somebody important to you passes away. Well, one just did last Monday, an announcer so strong and true that he was still strappin’ on the cans at age 96.
Don Pardo had been active since the heyday of radio, but he was best known to those of a certain age for his work on tv game shows, especially THE PRICE IS RIGHT and the original JEOPARDY!, the network version hosted by Art Fleming. (The Alex Trebek JEOPARDY! is syndicated.) We knew his voice because it was rock-solid, and we knew his name because the hosts of those shows would often call out to him on the air: “Don Pardo, tell her what she’s won!”…
View original post 320 more words
Filed under Uncategorized
Quiz: can you identify these classic books by their covers? | Books | theguardian.com.
There is also a quiz science fiction book covers on this blog.
Filed under Uncategorized
A Newbie's Guide to Publishing: Fisking Lilith Saintcrow and the Hachette/Amazon Situation.
Sample of blog entry:
Fisking Lilith Saintcrow and the Hachette/Amazon Situation
People often disagree with my posts, and some do it in the comments section.
This promotes healthy debate and discourse. As long as people stay civil with each other, they can post whatever they like, including insulting me. I’ve only had to kick a few people out over the years, after giving them multiple chances to cool off.
One of the wonderful things about the Internet is the ability for people to engage with different viewpoints and test each others’ arguments.
I don’t know Lilith Saintcrow. She’s a writer with Hachette, and has just blogged about this situation. She’s wrong, which is fine. Normally that wouldn’t irk me. But in her comments section, she’s disemvoweling people who disagree with her (it’s a cute form of censuring where all the vowels are removed from the comment).
So now I’m going to bring the debate here, to A Newbie’s Guide, by explaining in detail how wrong Lili Saintcrow is. Normally I don’t take my peers to task like this, but I really dislike the way Lili is handling dissenters on her blog. She’s deliberately obstructing what could have been a healthy debate.
No offense intended, Lili. I’m sure you’re a wonderful person and a wonderful writer. And I do understand how you are frustrated at this situation. Your sales are suffering, and it is beyond your control, so naturally you want to place blame and voice your discontent.
But I believe you aren’t looking at the big picture, and cutting off comments on your blog isn’t how you, or anyone following you, can use this situation as a learning experience.
Blog post in its completeness: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2014/05/fisking-lilith-saintcrow-and.html
Filed under Uncategorized
The American Scholar: Ten Best Sentences – Our Editors.
Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
—James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
This private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its bamboos, pines, laurel, and maples were still alive, and the green place invited refugees—partly because they believed that if the Americans came back, they would bomb only buildings; partly because the foliage seemed a center of coolness and life, and the estate’s exquisitely precise rock gardens, with their quiet pools and arching bridges, were very Japanese, normal, secure; and also partly (according to some who were there) because of an irresistible, atavistic urge to hide under leaves.
—John Hersey, Hiroshima
Find the rest at: http://theamericanscholar.org/ten-best-sentences/#.U4K1USiootV
Filed under Uncategorized
30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself. #10 Is An Absolute Must..
Sample:
Marc and Angel, two passionate writers, life-hackers and “admirers of the human spirit,” have come up with an amazing list of 30 things to stop doing to yourself. If you like their list, make sure you check out their site and sign up to their amazing newsletter.
#1. Stop spending time with the wrong people. – Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you. If someone wants you in their life, they’ll make room for you. You shouldn’t have to fight for a spot. Never, ever insist yourself to someone who continuously overlooks your worth. And remember, it’s not the people that stand by your side when you’re at your best, but the ones who stand beside you when you’re at your worst that are your true friends.
Filed under Uncategorized
A poem about writing.
I write and edit, then write some more
Somedays it’s like breathing and others, a chore
At times I force it, a few words on the page
Then it flows in rivers, rapids that rage
There’s never a reason, rarely a rhyme
Most think it silly, a waste of my time
But still I keep writing the words I like best
Because in the end, it brings my soul rest
You don’t have to like it. I don’t need you to care
I do it for the moments that I crave it like air
Filed under Uncategorized
While I don’t think the ground hog’s prediction (at least not seeing his shadow round here) has come to pass, this is an interesting look at the holiday and a few others as well.
Filed under Uncategorized
General 'Jerry' Boykin Says Gun-Toting Jesus Will Lead 'Mighty Army' During Second Coming.
Are you ready for the “rough and ready” Jesus? One not feminized by the church?
And to think my tax dollars went to pay for the training and the salary of this “general.” God help us.
Filed under Uncategorized
Booker's Blog 