Flash Fiction: Old School
George found it amusing, Martha’s attachment to old technologies. There was the grandfather clock in the living room with its big brass pendulum and the Latin inscription on its face—tempus fugit—or as Giuseppe the barber liked to say: Time, she fly. There was the old electric typewriter and pack of postage stamps at her work [...]
Continue reading...Cage Match: Jonathan Franzen vs. Ursula Franklin
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
It’s been a long time since I last held a cage match here at nouspique—where I throw disparate thinkers into collision with one another and see if anything shakes loose. With the furor which has arisen since Jonathan Franzen’s disparaging comments about ebooks, I have decided to resurrect the practice. And so … in this [...]
Continue reading...Blueshifting, a poetry chapbook by Heather Kamins
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Blueshifting is a physics phenomenon – the Doppler effect applied to light: if the source of the light is approaching, the light waves get scrunched together so they have a shorter wavelength (higher frequency) which shifts them to the blue end of the colour spectrum. Redshifting is the opposite; it happens when the source of [...]
Continue reading...Poem: There’s a thread runs through everything
Friday, January 27, 2012
There’s a thread runs through everything and a seamstress with a camel the size of a needle’s eye, though it’s not the eye that worries me, but the other end, a steel point that runs me through like the pin the entomologists use to fix their bugs to the mounting board. The Fates don’t clip [...]
Continue reading...Graffiti Mural Time-Lapse in Victoria
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
I recognize this wall from a visit to Victoria last September. At the end of the video, the camera pans the wall and you can see a face by the KWOTA crew on the side of the building. That tipped me off that it’s near Douglas and Bay St. There used to be circus themed [...]
Continue reading...Can Farm Animal Pasta be Vegan?
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Friends who know about my intolerance to gluten (and my love of irony) brought over a box of gluten free Farm Animals Rice & Corn Vegetable Pasta which is a vegan product. But is it really vegan? Once you cook it up and put it in a bowl, aren’t you eating animals? And how do [...]
Continue reading...Short Story: Harlan’s Finger
Friday, January 20, 2012
The vacuum cleaner wasn’t working. After three weeks on the road, Harlan wanted to clean out the van, get rid of the stray potato chips and gas station receipts and pea gravel tracked in from motel parking lots. He wanted to give the van a real going-over. But when he ran the nozzle across the [...]
Continue reading...Pico Iyer, Multiculturalism and Toronto
Thursday, January 19, 2012
I first encountered the name, Pico Iyer, last year while reading Geoff Dyer’s latest book, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition. Dyer refers to him while writing about the nowhereness of hotels and airports, locales that have become emblematic of the global era. To my chagrin, I discovered that Iyer’s is not a new voice; [...]
Continue reading...Did Julian Barnes Invent Google?
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Futurist is not the first word that comes to mind when describing Julian Barnes. However, after reading Staring at the Sun, published in 1987, one wonders if he might not have enjoyed a fertile alternate career as a science fiction writer. The novel starts as a straight-up realistic account of a woman named Jean Serjeant [...]
Continue reading...Box of Books
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
While walking my dog, I passed a box of books by the curbside. As is my habit, I paused to scan the titles and three caught my attention, not because I want to read them, but because my heart goes out to anyone who needs to. All three concern bereavement for the death of an [...]
Continue reading...My Neighbour’s Christmas Tree
Monday, January 16, 2012
Early last year, I had posted a photo of a neighbour’s lawn done with astro turf. The grass is indeed greener on the other side of the fence, even in winter. However, he has put out a real Christmas tree for the chipper this year. I would have thought a man who has an astro [...]
Continue reading...Thanks a shitload, Karen Armstrong
Friday, January 13, 2012
Thanks a shitload, Karen Armstrong. I mean, I’m happy for your diagnosis and all. I mean, not knowing is worse than floating in medical limbo. I get the stigma of epilepsy: how people can be cruel, even smart ones, with puppy words that never bite, at least not until they grow teeth. “No Karen,” she [...]
Continue reading...My iPhone Addiction
Thursday, January 12, 2012
During the Christmas holidays, I had my comeuppance. I had to face my family and confess that I had lost my iPhone. Two weeks earlier, while moving my daughter home from university for the holidays, she lost her Blackberry. She hadn’t even owned it for a month and it vanished in the parking lot of [...]
Continue reading...Writing advice from Bo Catlett (Elmore Leonard)
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Almost two years ago, The Guardian published 10 Rules of Writing from Elmore Leonard. Leonard is famous for his allergy to adverbs and his advice in The Guardian includes the usual harangue. But Leonard goes further and issues a fatwa against the word “suddenly” and against adverbs that specifically modify dialogue words like “said”. Being [...]
Continue reading...10 Reasons to Like Li’l Bastard by David McGimpsey
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
and by “Like” I mean “Like” as in feel great affection or affinity for, as opposed to “Like” as in click an up-turned thumb on a Facebook page. 1. The titles. Many of McGimpsey’s “chubby sonnets” should not be read without first pausing to savour the title. For example: “Song for Cardigans and Assholes.” Or [...]
Continue reading...New eFiction from David Allan Barker
Hogtown is my gift to the Occupy Movement. Download from Smashwords for free.
Sex With Dead People is an ebook collection of short stories. Download from Smashwords for free.
The Land is an enovel. Preview here or buy for your favourite ereader. Also available as an audiobook.
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Friday, February 3, 2012
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