I locate my roots in the left — with my nice middle-class suburban liberal upbringing — but lately, I’ve felt disillusioned by the left’s effete response to power’s abuses which I find indistinguishable from complicity.
Author: David Barker
Nanowrimo research pt I – Embalming
After day 1 of the National Novel Writing Month contest, I’ve completed 4,488 words of the 50,000 word target. However, I’ve come up against an important issue: research. I don’t know what I’m talking about.
NaNoWriMo is turning me into a Redneck
A friend once said a good reason for writing fiction is that, as you work on your characters, you work on yourself. (He may have implied that this was the only good reason for writing fiction, but I can’t remember.) It’s kind of like therapy.
Tomorrow it begins … NaNoWriMo
This year, I took the plunge. On the spur of the moment (one of a thousand clichés I’m sure to spew this month), I signed up for NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month contest.
Experience Survival
I saw this ad on Queen Street: Experience Survival, a Discovery Channel advertisement that shows a young bushman creeping through the grass with a bow and arrow.
The ebook piracy experiment
A couple weeks ago, in the Telegraph, Adrian Hon announced: “Your time is up, publishers. Book piracy is about to arrive on a massive scale.” He conducted an experiment: to see how long it would take to locate an unauthorized e-copy of a book he already owned but didn’t want to lug around. It took him about 60 seconds.
10 Words I Hate
Shard I hate the word “shard.” A shard is a sliver of glass or a scrap of shattered pottery, but we never use it that way. Now, we only use it as a simile to describe a state of mind: “His thoughts were scattered like shards of a broken window across the sidewalk.” People think it’s…
Art of Time Abbey Road Concert
Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the Beatles’ Abbey Road released on September 26, 1969. To celebrate, the Art of Time ensemble had performed a concert that went track by track through the album.
The Difference Between Paradox and Irony
Here’s a koanish question to twist your brain in a knot: if you push an example of paradox against an example of irony, is the resulting collision paradoxical or ironic?
Russell Williams and the Reputation of the Canadian Military
Russell Williams, graduate of Upper Canada College, decorated pilot, military academic and strategist, commander of a secretive base in Saudi Arabia providing support to troops in Afghanistan, commander of CFB Trenton, fetishist, cross-dresser, serial rapist and murderer.
From Narration to Perversion – How James Wood Thinks Fiction Works pt. II
This is the second post prompted by reading James Wood’s How Fiction Works. As I wrote previously, this is not a book review so much as a handful of supplementary comments and speculations. Go here for the first part of this discussion.
From Narration to Perversion – How James Wood Thinks Fiction Works pt. I
The literary critic, James Wood, strikes a fine balance in his book, How Fiction Works. Although it could, the book never strays into the purely theoretical (unlike I. A. Richards’ Principles of Literary Criticism which I looked at last week) or the mechanical (unlike Jack Hodgins’ A Passion For Narrative which serves as a manual for writers).
Poem: A Missing Button
The stack, a vertical grey against the blue,flinging strands—smoke?—but they’re white.Let’s be generous and say its steam.Birds wheel in play or in anger:What I saw; what I saw. The chair creaks, the wood beneath it groans;on the back, a cashmere sweater,draped where it was hung, eggshell,a button missing, swaying with the chair:What I saw; what…
Fluff American Style
I saw The Social Network on opening night but didn’t post anything here because after the movie was over I went home and promptly forgot about it.
No News Is – well – no news
Today we learn from the associated press (via the Toronto Star) that “The FBI and Homeland Security Department say they have no indication that terrorists are targeting the U.S. or its citizens as part of a new threat against Europe.” Come again?