To mark the Marshall McLuhan centenary (a day late), I offer a photo I took on Wednesday (a day early).
Category: Elbow
The category, Elbow, is for posts that make us laugh.
Coming Out as an Author
I did an English degree in the 80′s. Or it did me. I don’t know which. This was the age of Reaganomics and Thatcherism. Alex Keaton wore ties to the dinner table and poked fun at his hippie parents. I had thought I might go on with studies in literature or classics, but felt the conservative wave wash over me, so I went to law school instead.
Michel Foucault discovered leather SM in Toronto
Yes, you read that rightly. The famous French philosopher, Michel Foucault, had his introduction to leather SM in Toronto. He discovered bathhouses here too.
Unwanted Erections And Adolescent Writing
Writing stories is not a recent obsession for me. It began in my early teens with a story about the end of the world. Planet Earth gets sucked into a black hole. Balls and holes. The scientist who announces Earth’s fate to his colleagues does so while standing beside a pool table holding a cue stick.
The World’s Most Boring Story
Explanations follow new phenomena like tails follow dogs, or so Dean claimed as he did his loquacious best to pitch the idea of a symposium to the chair of the English Department. Dr. Fenton was a portly man twice Dean’s age who had a reputation for driving his underlings to the point of collapse then stepping in to assume credit for their toils.
Knuckleheads, by Jeff Kass
Knuckleheads is a guy book. Knuckleheads is also a derogatory term. But here, Kass uses it in a more generous spirit to describe your average straight male who has enough insight to know that his sexuality demands more work of him than it does of a silverback mountain gorilla, but not enough wisdom or experience to know how to begin that work.
Life Imitates The Land
I’ve made no secret of the fact that, in writing my novel, The Land, I used my brother-in-law’s organic farm as a rough model for the setting. And while the characters — husband, wife and two boys — bear a superficial resemblance to my brother-in-law and his family, it doesn’t take too many pages before any resemblance evaporates.
Virgin Alerts Infected Customers
To those who insist that there is such a thing as a literal reading of text, I offer a headline posted today by the BBC: Virgin Alerts Infected Customers.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Story: Urine Love
When Chuck fell in love with Camilla, it struck him at a visceral level. Maybe visceral is the wrong word. It suggests that Chuck felt his love in the gut whereas, when he examined his feelings, he discovered that he felt his love most keenly in the nose. Or (since Camilla would never allow Chuck to speak so crassly): Chuck’s feelings for Camilla stirred up olfactory associations.
