Summertime, and the linkin’ is easy. Just click “more”!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: July 17, 2009”
What It Is: 7/13/09
What I’m reading: Killshot
What I’m listening to: LP
What I’m watching: Just The Tall Guy (one of my favorite movies back in college, but one I haven’t watched in at least a decade), and this week’s Deadliest Catch. Amy had a pretty late work-week, and I tend not to watch a lot of stuff by myself.
What I’m drinking: Plymouth & Q Tonic.
What Rufus is up to: Making his first foray into a lake.
Where I’m going: Back to the office! Eek!
What I’m happy about: That I managed to reduce my daily caffeine intake by more than 50% during this vacation! (Also, that I managed to clear around 225 square feet of my backyard by pulling up rampant forsythia, cleaned out my garage, took care of a ton of other items on my to-do list, and still got to spend time with my brother & his family.)
What I’m sad about: That the downstairs freezer and the washing machine both crapped out last week. We got a new washer on Sunday and have a repair guy coming next week for the freezer.
What I’m worried about: Getting back into the rhythm of working at my office, as opposed to working at home.
What I’m pondering: How much of my Top Companies issue will be out of date by the time it sees print.
Unrequired Reading: July 10, 2009
Stay-at-home vacation links this week! Just click “more”!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: July 10, 2009”
What It Is: 7/6/09
What I’m reading: I finished The Hunter
What I’m listening to: My new Mad Mix CD, “Stix Stigma,” which I’ve started sending out to select friends.
What I’m watching: Apollo 13, Roman Holiday, and Federer’s impossibly long Wimbledon finals match against Andy Roddick. Congrats, Rog!
What I’m drinking: Plymouth & Q Tonic.
What Rufus is up to: A little of this, a little of that. Basically, back to the old days. I even left him for a full work-day (about 9 hours), and he was just fine.
Where I’m going: Maybe down to the shore for a day with my brother and his family. Maybe to the Frick or the Met, to see some art.
What I’m happy about: That I finished the July/August ish of the magazine last Thursday and then managed to win my Fight With the Forsythia over the weekend! Since I’m taking this week off from work, perhaps I’ll engage the Battle of the Mulch. (Actually, I have a To Do list of about 20 projects, chores, and errands; I’ll have to juggle those with spending time with my aforementioned brother and his family, who are here to visit for the week.)
What I’m sad about: Even Gil Thorp has a Twitter feed, and I still refuse to use that site/service. It really is my first “you goddamn kids and your crazy new technologies!” moment. Our IT dept. set one up for each of our magazines, so I evidently have to start posting things there during the workday, in order to boost traffic to our site. I’m thinking posting “Whoa! I’m editing now!”, “I should probably cut down on the office pretzels”, “I’m going to stand up now.”
What I’m worried about: That something going tragically awry if I rent a chipper to take care of the forsythia branches. That said, I did manage to reclaim around 225 square feet of my backyard, so I’ll take the risk to life and limb.
What I’m pondering: If I stop posting on this blog regularly in order to focus on a few topics that deserve long-form essays, will I discover that I’m not really capable of insightful writing and be forced to admit to my own puerility?
0-fer of the week: Grass-unfed edition
In keeping with last week’s 0-fer of Ezra Pound (and as inspired tangentially by this Bourgeois Surrender post), I offer up my latest literary 0-fer:
Now I really have to get back to work.
Unrequired Reading: June 26, 2009
No doubt about it: these links suck. Just click “more”!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: June 26, 2009”
Worse than Ezra
Ahoy, ahoy, dear readers! I’m way too busy reading pharmaco financials and analyst reports to spend much time blogging. Updates will be pretty light until July 4thish. (Of course there’ll be an Unrequired Reading this Friday! Don’t be silly!)
Just so you get your fix, the 0-fer of the week is . . . Ezra Pound!
Now I gotta get back to work. Later!
What It Is: 6/22/09
What I’m reading: Plutarch’s lives of Timoleon and Aemilius Paulus, and Seth’s amazing comic about Canadian designer Thoreau MacDonald (it’s in an anthology called Kramers Ergot 7
What I’m listening to: Greatest hits collection of Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, after reading this short post by Ta-Nehisi Coates. (He thought she was high yellow?)
What I’m watching: The Original Kings of Comedy, Big Night, Futurama: The Beast With a Billion Backs, Manhattan and Hot Rod, the latter of which was inspired by its recent My Year of Flops writeup.
What I’m drinking: Miller’s & Q Tonic
What Rufus is up to: Getting the last of his stitches out, learning how to hang out by himself again, and building up his stamina. I can’t believe we went 3 weeks without a walk outside of the yard. I’m glad it’s not hot out.
Where I’m going: Pharmaland. Lots and lots of Top Companies profiles to write!
What I’m happy about: That it’s not raining right now.
What I’m sad about: That my dad got pasted with an attack of gout this weekend, which means we have to put off our Father’s Day lunch till next Sunday. And that we’ll have to take the red wine off the menu.
What I’m worried about: Getting all of those profiles written and then laid out in time to put the issue to bed by July 2.
What I’m pondering: Whether crystal meth would help with that.
0-fer 20th century edition
Because I’m not some commie pinko, I don’t listen to NPR. So I don’t know if Dick Meyer has worthwhile literary opinions or not. What I do know is that he posted this list of his top English-language novels written last century.
He organized the list in terms of “how much the book hit me, moved me, made me see — and how it stuck with me.” He listed Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man at #1, and History of Love by Nicole Krauss (0-fer!) at #100.
I, on the other hand, reorganized his list in terms of whether I’ve read ’em, whether I’ve at least read something by the author, and whether they’re on my 0-fer list.
Since some authors have multiple books on his list, the 0-fer numbers won’t add up to 100, but hey:
I’ve read 32 of the books on his list, at least something by 12 other authors, and my 0-fer list is a remarkable 50 titles! (but only 45 authors, because of dupes)
Wanna see what’s what? Just click “more”!
Continue reading “0-fer 20th century edition”
BEA 0-fer
This NYTimes article on Book Expo America was pretty funny. On the one hand, e-books on the Amazon Kindle are ridiculed by Tina Brown for costing “that paltry, pitiful sum” of $9.99.
On the other hand, Sherman Alexie is a complete douchebag:
At a panel of authors speaking mainly to independent booksellers, Sherman Alexie, the National Book Award-winning author of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,†said he refused to allow his novels to be made available in digital form. He called the expensive reading devices “elitist†and declared that when he saw a woman sitting on the plane with a Kindle on his flight to New York, “I wanted to hit her.â€
First thing: a quick Amazon search shows that several of Alexie’s books are available in Kindle editions.
Second thing: he is, to reiterate, a complete douchebag and I’m glad to say I’ve never read a word of his writing.