Category: Criticism

  • Dog is Life/”Hell Hound”/”Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance/More on Authenticity

    I I got a dog a few months ago, and she’s taken a bit of my focus and attention. She’s also brought with her a bit more of a regular structure to things. Dogs are strange, in that they are creatures of routine, but also creatures who very much seem to live in the moment.…

  • Authenticity/”Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”/Other ephemera

    I- Moaning, the ukulele, and podcasts The reason I haven’t written anything in a moment is because, well, I haven’t been inspired to. It’s a kind of failure: if you’re writing, you should write.  I play the ukulele, an instrument that gets a lot of crap for no particularly good reason. I’m an intermediate player,…

  • “Between Two Fires”/What I am Reading/What I have Finished

    Regular readers of this blog will know of my fondness for the band Cannibal Corpse. And, to be honest, one of the things I like about them is a consistent product. When you buy the new Cannibal Corpse record, you’re going to hear Cannibal Corpse songs. The newer albums will have better production, and they…

  • On not Finishing a Book/”The Luminous Dead”/What I am Reading

    I want to talk a little bit about not finishing books. My last didn’t finish was “Angkor and the Khmer Empire: A History of Cambodia’s Legendary Temple Building Civilization” which wasn’t a history of anything, but rather a poorly written guidebook which looked like it had been translated via google translate. It was awful, and…

  • “The Thing in the Snow”

    It’s kind of hard to write about a book like “The Thing in the Snow,” as a lot of what happens in it is very unimportant. By design, this book recounts the absurd and dull. It concerns itself with three caretakers at a remote facility in a perpetually snow bound landscape who perform absurd tasks,…

  • Dread Process/Kindle Scribe vs Kindle and Remarkable/What I am Reading.

    A little more about dread process; a quick look/review of various gadgets.  We’re going to get extra nerdy and picky here. As I have mentioned, I’m a bit of a gadget hound. It’s something I have inherited from my father, I suppose. But I have come to see the value in ‘single use’ devices; I…

  • Series/”Otherland”/What I am Reading/Future Plans

    Let’s talk a little bit about series. I have a predilection for long works. I’m not sure what this says about me, but if you’ve written an 1,500 page novel, I kinda want to know it exists. If it’s some weird literary nonsense, I probably want to read it. But it doesn’t have to be…

  • Bangkok/What I Read on the plane/What I am reading

    This isn’t a travel blog, but I am in Bangkok right now; it’s just after breakfast time. I had a big bowl of Jok with pork and eggs, and the aunties who run the stall apparently find my lumbering frame and desire to eat Thai food adorable. Bangkok is a unique place; things grow and…

  • A Break, Finished/”Titan”/What I am Reading

    An observant audience will notice I took a little time off; ironically as I had time off from work, I found myself a bit lazier. I also had some home projects to work on, etc. I did do some reading, however. There appears to have been a point in 70’s-80’s sci-fi that was just… horny.…

  • “Dr. No”/What I am Reading.

    I’m about 65% of the way through “Dr. No”, which I started on a whim after someone on Reddit mentioned it and… it’s a thing. The first set of Bond books had some of that good-old fashioned 50s racism– outdated terms and descriptions, but I never saw them as ‘racist’, per se. Fleming used the…