And John Hawkins is a pro; listen to him.

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Why pay for content when you can just copy it from people who are trying to make a name for themselves for little or no money?
This is f’d up. Shame on CNN.
The post I wrote did well, getting picked up by Veronica Belmont and BuzzFeed among others, and garnering close to 20,000 visits at last [...]

Posted in Around the 'Sphere, The Writing Life, + Novels 1 Comment »

. . . to Almost Everything.
That book looks like a blast. Maybe after I’ve caught up on most of my other reading, and put at least one of Father Keating’s books away. {{{Sigh}}} If only one didn’t have to take time out of one’s reading life to interact with other humans, try to make a [...]

Posted in All About Meeeee!, Around the 'Sphere, Faith and Faiths, The Writing Life, + Novels 1 Comment »

Da TechGuy will cover your event from his blog for $1000 a week, plus expenses.
And, yes: the Rockford Files joke has been duly made in his comments. But it would be difficult or impossible to find a place in Paradise Cove—or anywhere in Malibu, California—that would be compatible with that income level. Even in a [...]

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He includes a searing indictment of editors and copyeditors. (Or, as he calls us, copy-editors: the anti-copyeditor lobby likes to accuse us alternately of being too hyphen-happy, or of being hyphenophobes. The rule is that whatever we are doing, we are supposed to be doing something else.)
That is not an undeserved attack, though I naturally [...]

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All lentils really need is some leftover garlic, a bit of sea salt, freshly ground pepper, and a topping of parmesan shavings.
Of course, it helps if you’re a former vegetarian who really, really likes lentils. And, admittedly, I’ll probably add a bit of leftover steak, sauteed with some onion, before I serve this up [...]

Posted in Ain't This the Life?, Apronics (household hints), Culinary Concerns, The Writing Life, + Novels 4 Comments »

At least, I was today—workin’ in the salt mines at the Fabulous, Amazing New Super-Bitchin’ Client’s digs.
Did you miss me? I missed you.
* No Concrete Blonde: You Tube will not cough up a satisfactory video of that song. Would you settle for X?

I took Franklin home, and finally realized why I wasn’t able [...]

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Everyone still seems pretty exercised about this. Don Surber thinks outing a pseudonymous blogger is just fine, which boggles my mind. North Dallas Thirty (in addition to linking me in a way that made me blush) understood the germane issue, though: Ed Whelan’s intent was to bully Publius for hurting his widdow feewings. He wanted [...]

Posted in Americana, Around the 'Sphere, City Life, Family, The Writing Life, + Novels 12 Comments »

and its pitfalls (other than knee procedures, of course):
Ran three miles today, completing the last mile in 7:57. I haven’t run a sub-eight mile since last August. This will be a positive memory to take into recovery.
In addition to massive legal documents, my paying job has a well-defined chain-of-command that includes the [...]

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online with my high school/college friends a few weeks ago regarding whether (or to what degree) we can read each other’s books, articles, blogs, screenplays and the like in anything approaching an objective fashion.
I copped to being 100% subjective, most of the time. A bit less, perhaps, with David’s book. A good deal more [...]

Posted in Americana, Around the 'Sphere, Attila, Girl Reporter, City Life, Golden State, The Writing Life, + Novels No Comments »

And it’s hot. And the NRA is having its annual meeting. My plan is to race through the exhibits, and hand out a bunch of business cards; then I’ll dart down to Scottsdale, so I can figure out how to ditch a body in one of its canals. I mean, for a book. For a [...]

Posted in Americana, Attila, Girl Reporter, Crime, Happiness Is a Warm Gun, NRA, Ordnance for Fun and Profit, The Writing Life, + Novels, politics 3 Comments »

I’m not as much into the pronunciation of words as I am into their structure; I wasn’t raised in the kind of house wherein we know how to pronounce every word in our respective reading vocabularies. (And given the sizes thereof, that would have been unlikely in any case. We read a bit.)
I know that [...]

Posted in Around the 'Sphere, Editorial Endeavors, The English Language, The Writing Life, + Novels 16 Comments »

This is why it’s fun to work in a creative field: the tax codes is even more kerflooey when your income varies a lot.
Taxes are particularly unfair in Hollywood. You may hardly work for years - ahem! - then sell something for a big score. The government taxes you at the highest rate, as if [...]

Posted in Animation, Around the 'Sphere, Economics, Entertainment, Golden State, The Writing Life, + Novels 1 Comment »

From the WaTi review of Roger L. Simon’s Blacklisting Myself: Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror:
The lack of quality material created by conservative filmmakers — atrocities like last fall’s An American Carol come to mind — compounds the more insidious problem facing those on the right in Hollywood, namely a bias [...]

Posted in Americana, Animation, Around the 'Sphere, Attila, Girl Reporter, Blogkeeping, Books, City Life, Entertainment, Golden State, Highway to Hell, History, On the Telly, Patriotism, The Political is Personal, The Writing Life, + Novels, politics 4 Comments »

they’ll get you every time.
David Linden used to regale us in the 1980s with stories about how tetrodotoxin was packaged for lab use: I’ll spare you the details, but the boxing arrangement was the cardboard-and-polystyrene equivalent of Russian dolls, with a huge appliance-size crate arriving in the lab that brought boxes within boxes—all bearing sternly [...]

Posted in All About Meeeee!, Americana, Around the 'Sphere, Culinary Concerns, Education, Family, Terrible Terrorism, The English Language, The Writing Life, + Novels No Comments »

. . . on the collapse of the Pajamas Media advertising network, effective in April of this year.
So does Ann Althouse, whose point about the focus on PJM TV is probably correct: video is not something one can discreetly watch in a cubicle while having one’s mid-morning bagel break at work. (And even those of [...]

Posted in Absolutely Academe, Advertising, Americana, Around the 'Sphere, Attila, Girl Reporter, Blogkeeping, Business & Management, City Life, Drive-By Media, Economics, Editorial Endeavors, Entertainment, Freedom of Speech, Media, Obama Administration, Patriotism, Terrible Terrorism, The English Language, The Writing Life, + Novels, Uncategorized, new media, politics No Comments »

That would be Paul Rugg of Freakazoid! fame. Excuse me: Steven Spielberg Presents Freakazoid!
Don’t get me wrong. I love Cubans. I married one. I still am married to one. But I have come to the conclusion that they’re insane. Not criminally or anything like that. None of them have ever held me hostage or taken [...]

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