It’s fascinating to observe what counts as news. Posts on the Gay Girl in Damascus blog counted as news when they were sensational. When they sold papers. Amina’s posts ceased to count as news when they ceased to be factual.
Author: David Barker
Poem: Toxic Tree Juice
Unshaven unshoweredhoodie soul-patch leash-tautdog-dragging morning stumblepast the local school. SUV retinuegas-chugging polished momsleery of child-snatching fiends,scary looking men like me. Veering off the sidewalkinto the cool tree-shade parkdoggy does as doggy-doobaggy swallow the shit. Drawn up short, I see itabandoned near the swing set:purple plastic tricyclebroken handle cracked wheel. Toxic tree juice in disguiseburied a…
Full Catastrophe Reading
The title for this post comes from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book, Full Catastrophe Living, a landmark piece on mindfulness and the art of living well. Why (I ask myself) can the same principles of mindfulness not also be applied to the art of reading well?
Charles Dickens Admits Fake Orphan Blog
In a startling revelation today, Charles Dickens confessed to maintaining a blog about an orphan popularly known as “Oliver Twist.” Mr. Dickens admitted that there is, in fact, no such person as Oliver Twist and that he made him up simply as a way to draw attention to the plight of children in industrialized Britain.
Story: Death of a Publisher
When Igor entered Boris Panofsky’s office, it felt more like he was descending to a crypt than climbing to the pinnacle of a publishing empire. The famous shelves of signed first editions stood in a gloom. The only light came from a banker’s lamp on Panofsky’s desk.
Six Metres of Pavement by Farzana Doctor
Periodically, I like to feature local books which, in the case of nouspique, means books with a connection to Toronto and environs. I do this, not to tout the virtues of my hometown, but to help cultivate the local in a global medium. I feel bound by an unwritten contract: I blog Toronto books in exchange for the pleasure of reading about other people in their locales.
Speaking in Fake English
What is Tom Waits saying in his song Kommienezuspadt? It sounds vaguely German, but as far as I can tell, none of it is real.
Feeding The Trolls
I’d wager that virtually everyone of Western European descent remembers listening when they were children to the tale of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. Although Norse in origin, this story of goats and a troll spread far beyond the borders of Norway. It was the medieval equivalent of a viral video.
The Importance of Shit Lit
If you’ve followed my blog for any time at all, you may have noticed that I have a scatological fetish. Or, to be more prosaic about it, I have a fascination with shit. You can smell traces of it in poems I’ve squeezed out. In stories. In parables. In essays. In criticism. And in literary reflections.
Charactered Pieces, by Caleb J. Ross
This is yet another installment in my ongoing and idiosyncratic effort to curate decent indie, DRM-free, (did we mention decent?) ebooks.
Paul Quarrington’s Civilization and Its Part in My Downfall
Imagine all this and what you have is the late Paul Quarrington’s wild Flying W of a novel, Civilization and Its Part in My Downfall, whose most notable feature (apart from its good-natured fun-poking tall-tale yarn-spinning, is its sheer delight in language.
War on Graffiti Produces Civilian Casualty
The Toronto Star reports that the city has painted over a mural that the city had paid $2,000 to produce.
The IARPA’s Metaphor Program
The Atlantic Monthly reports that a tiny secret U.S. intelligence group, the Intelligence Advanced Research Project Activity (IARPA), has inaugurated The Metaphor Program with the mandate to develop a computer program which can scan large chunks of text and, regardless of the text’s language, generate an evaluation of the author/speaker’s mindset based upon their use of metaphor.
Story: St. Theresa of the Dandelions
Not being a particularly religious man, I don’t know how one goes about nominating a person for a sainthood. So how does it work? Is it like the Oscars? Maybe that comparison is too crass. The Nobel Peace Prize, then? Are there nominations and then deliberations?
Parent Seeks to Ban The Wars, by Timothy Findley
According to the Walkerton Herald-Times, the parent of a grade 12 student has filed a complaint with the Bluewater District School Board calling for removal of Timothy Findley’s novel, The Wars, from the curriculum. According to the article, Carolyn Waddell, a professional counselor, alleges that there are parts of Findley’s novel which are “depraved”. She…