Wait, who's Arturo?

Coincidentally I am reading the McSweeney's anthology of 'Thrilling Tales', edited by Michael Chabon, that seems to be much in the same vein. Chabon's introduction is explicit about encouraging plot-driven, high-energy stories in opposition to the widespread form of gentle epiphany as is found in so many short fiction…

Over the last few years I've read a lot of the back numbers of the London Review of Books. Mostly because their web site is fantastic: clear, quick, delivers in two seconds a 5,000 word article that I can read on my antique iPhone. Half the stuff I read there I don't really understand: lots of arcane history and art…

Check out Cambodia in the 60s. It's un-fucking-believable if you visited around 2000-2005 or god forbid earlier. (It is getting better — corruption and graft are still massive but straight violence, mayhem, murder is rarer).

"…if one were I," please.

Read Clay's Ark, it's quick, a few hours tops. How do super-humans handle us degenerating apes and our disintegrating society? Are they truly better? Or are they parasites who merely exploit our failing world?

Yeah, the Guha book is one I've been looking through, seems solid. He has another book on the Gandhian period. I think The Last Mughal is at the library as well, I'll take a look.

I'm at last reading some Octavia Butler — I've been aware of her for ages but just never got around to it. At random I started with the novella Clay's Ark and followed with Fledgling. The books have a lot in common, featuring near-/super- human types leading hidden lives among the society they prey upon. Ark is brief…

I know a number of people, self included, who found it tough to start but that it really starts to roll aftr 200 pages or so, when you start seeing all the parts coming together.

God-dammit. I'm always so late to these things.

>'I just don't feel as if there's any purpose to me, anyone really likes me and that if I never existed I'd hardly be noticed.'

Maybe I'm over-extending the idea a bit to racist/classist etc (Oxford commas rule, by the way). I can't think of a particular example of 'Not to be racist…' that I would justify. But the more general 'No offense…', 'I don't mean to be rude…' I will continue to defend.

I don't know. I'm thinking of one time not too long ago when I felt I needed to step up and confront a friend about his foul breath. It was bad and evidently no else would say anything so I took it upon myself to say 'Hey man…' I don't recall my exact words, but it was along the lines of, 'I don't mean to be rude, but…

I don't like to be a pedant in public, but this thing really gets me. 'No offense…', 'Not to be rude…', 'I'm no racist…' '…but' — these are not excuses, they are acknowledgments. The purpose of these statements is, 'yes I know what I am about to say is rude, racist, whatever, but it isn't my goal to offend you so I…

The Interwebz attribute this to John Rogers because he put it in a list of "ephemera", but I'm pretty sure it's originally Anthony Lane.

First thing I thought of… definitely my favorite live Brown. Live in Dallas is ace too.

About half way through Stephenson's new Seveneves. It's all right, I expect to finish it, but not great. It has yet to grip or excite me in the manner of, say, Cryptonomicon. The whole premise is a bit ridiculous; every character is some sort of superbly talented, skilled, brilliant, multi-ethnic, polyglot technical…

"George Lucas’ Star Wars is easily the most famous cinematic embodiment of Joseph Campbell’s 'Hero’s Journey' monomyth"

Interesting recent article from the NYT on his history as athlete, writer, etc.

Brown noise is in fact a 1/f power distribution.