Writerly Ramble. Spoilerly Alias stuff below. I vicariously watch Alias. That is, Lee’s watching it, and he sometimes tells me about what’s going on. As he’s telling me about what’s going on, I’m thinking, “there’s a pattern here.” The first seaon, the solution to many problems was something called “The Third Alternative.” That is, when […]

In Antiguaby Kerri Webster “In Antigua I am famous. I am bathed in jasmine and pressed with warm stones.” —Carnival Cruise ad in the New Yorker In Albuquerque, on the other hand, I am infamous; childrenthrow stones and the elderly whisper behind their hands.In Juneau, I am glacial, a cool blue where anyone can bathefor

April is National Poetry Month. If you go to www.poets.org, you can sign up for a daily poem in your inbox. I like today’s, especially the line about “no lover ever imagines them”: A Myth of Devotionby Louise Glück When Hades decided he loved this girlhe built for her a duplicate of earth,everything the same,

In the beginning… God created the heavens and the earth (The Bible) A long time ago… Luke Skywalker and Han Solo lead a rebellion against the evil empire(Star Wars)4,000,000BC Aliens leave monolith on Earth (2001: A Space Odyssey)1,000,000BC Loana faces dinosaurs to be with Tumak, a caveman banished from his savage tribe, and then from

The Wisdom of Terry Pratchett. Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life. Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind. People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad

Doubt it. Regarding “modernistic” architecture: “But modernism of the heroic period, from 1920 to 1939, is dead, and it died first in the blockhouses of Utah beach and the Siegfried line. Yet in its heyday between the wars, modernism was a vast utopian project, and perhaps the last utopian project we will ever see, now

Borg. Postmodernism Lesson Plans: Star Trek. A sample lesson plan for a Purdue U. class about examples of postmodernism in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Basically, explains the “We are You” statement the captured borg that gets the human name (Hugh).

Kitsch. You just don’t see the word kitsch flying around. I don’t think it’s because there’s any lack of kitsch — art that’s considered overly sentimental, pretentious, or mass-produced into clichedom. I think it’s because kitsch has taken over. Anymore, if it isn’t kitsch, art is considered “weird.” KITSCH: The reduction of aesthetic objects or

Will Rogers: “Everything is changing. People are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.”

Spam: “Drug for Confidents.” Psst!