tagged w/ Fiction
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My examiner.com article about my NY Journal of Books reviews of Dan Chaon’s "Stay Awake" and Nikanor Teratologen’s "Assisted Living," two dark and disturbing works of fiction.My examiner.com article about my NY Journal of Books reviews of Dan Chaon’s... more
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“Your wife is killed by a cashew (anaphylactic shock), but there isn't time to grieve because your toddler son is always at your heels—wanting to be fed, to be played with, or to sleep next to you all night long. A change of pace seems necessary, so you decide to visit your parents in order to attend your twenty-year high school reunion. What begins as a weekend getaway quickly becomes a theater for dealing with the past—a past that you will have to re-imagine in order to have any hope of a future for you and your son.”
--Mark Yakish, A Meaning for Wife
“Toward the end of the novel there is a gutsy shift in narrative tone that lends the ending a sense of closure. In recent years, women writers such as Joan Didion and Meghan O’Rourke have published nonfiction memoir accounts of grief. In his debut novel Mr. Yakich provides the male perspective. Recommended to anyone who has experienced loss.”
David Cooper, New York Journal of Books“Your wife is killed by a cashew (anaphylactic shock), but there isn't time... more
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Disturbing. Great story, but disturbing.
"I still can’t believe I got a dude with a harelip for a roommate. And his name is Roger. Fucking Roger. I walk in and he’s already claimed the top bunk, his computer the only thing up and running besides my blood.
He introduces himself as Roger F. McAlister the Third, son of douche bag blah blah blah blah. I stop listening."Disturbing. Great story, but disturbing.
"I still can’t believe I got a... more
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Milbrodt: I have always been fascinated by people who look different or those who don’t fit in. When I was a kid I was overweight and got teased a lot at school, so I often thought about people who were considered “different” or otherwise ended up on the margins of society. I also had a very independent streak from a young age, and was constantly asking why it was wrong to be different, and why I had to do things the same way everyone else did them.Milbrodt: I have always been fascinated by people who look different or those who... more
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To live in North Dakota you must like driving. You must value a landscape where there is never much between you and the horizon. The four of us grew up here so space is second nature. We are accustomed to towns such as Lost Point—six hundred people, a grocery store, a gas station, a bank, and a motel with one of those big orange flashing emergency road signs out front that no one uses because there are no road emergencies. The motel is full for two weeks every summer due to traffic to and from the Badlands and Montana rodeos. Fifteen or so years ago when we were still in high school we dreamed summer romances with young men from exotic places like Tampa and Fort Lauderdale, but we got sensible jobs at the bank and married people from here because everyone does.
The eyebrows, which might be considered our town’s only notable attraction, are not advertised in any tour book.To live in North Dakota you must like driving. You must value a landscape where there... more
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“At barely more than 100 small (four and a half by seven inch) pages in Andrew Bromfield’s excellent English translation The Hall of the Singing Caryatids succeeds both as a novella of ideas and as a science fiction work of fantasy, and is recommended to all readers enamored of thought provoking fiction.”“At barely more than 100 small (four and a half by seven inch) pages in Andrew... more
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Exploring public housing’s place in pulp fiction through Rumble at the Housing Project, published in 1960 by Ace Books.Exploring public housing’s place in pulp fiction through Rumble at the Housing... more
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PCW Politics is War on P-SPAN- Hour 2
Green’s Arena
Wakarusa, Kansas
Thursday October 20th, 2011
Host: Johnny Suave
Suave reviews hour one of PCW Politics is War on P-SPAN:
-Maroon 5′s Adam Levine comes out and complains about PCW using their music. PCW’s Extreme Equalizer Whiskey Tango Foxtrot comes out and complains about Levine’s actual existence. Kick to the groin. Grab to the throat. Chokeslam. Middle finger salute.
-Brooklyn Decker serves as ring announcer for the Dan Patrick/Colin Cowherd match. After the Mothership (ESPN) tries to use Corporate Might (R) to squash Patrick and his Danettes, Tim Tebow and Boise State QB Kellen Moore come to the rescue along with Adam Sandler‘s posse.
-Lindsay Lohan, doing her community service, pushes a bucket of water and a map to the ladies’ room.
-Independent Charlie Blackwell stands up to both Republican and Democratic partisans
-Callie Urban (D) shows ‘American Girl’ Sarah Mae Smith just what she’s going to do to her when they meet next- and uses Women for Women’s Code Pink and Emily List to get her point across.
BACKSTAGE
Lindsay Lohan exits the ladies’ room and bumps into PCW Women’s Champion Valora Salinas (I). Lohan tells her to ‘watch it, bitch’ and skulks off.
MATCH #3
Women For Women: Code Pink and Emily List (D) vs. The Pinups: Sabrina James and Alicia Rowe (I)
…Pink and List, already softened up by former PCW Women’s Champion Callie Urban, are no match for The Pinups.
WINNER: The Pinups @ 3:03
COMMERCIAL BREAK
An angry Nancy Pelosi comes out and calls Callie Urban (D) to the ring. She demands an explanation for what she did to Women for Women. Urban comes out with a microphone and tells Pelosi she made it explicitly clear that she did not want their assistance at PCW Lock and Load in her title defense against Valora Salinas.
From PCW Lock and Load 6:
Whip by Urban into the corner…here’s Code Pink and Emily List. Urban sees them and doesn’t look too happy. She whips Valora across the ring a second time. Then walks over to the edge and tells them to get lost. Valora roars out the corner towards Urban. Irish Whip by Valora…no, reversal by Urban and she whips Valora hard face first into the corner. Code Pink and Emily List climb up onto the apron. Urban comes in for a splash. GLITTER BOMB BY CODE PINK! But who got it? Valora is sitting on the floor. Urban staggers back and she can’t see. Valora swoops in behind her…TEQUILA SUNRISE! Arm trap single leg Boston crab! Urban’s trapped…SHE TAPS!
Pelosi tells her that she has every right to do what she sees fit to defend the Democrats and their titles. Callie’s response…”Keep them out of my way and I will bring back the PCW Women’s title.”
BACKSTAGE
John Kasich (R-OH) stands with Paul Ryan (R-WI) and his Raiders and Corporate Might: Big Oil and Kirk Walstreit- The Wall Street Market Analyst with the huge mancrush on ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit. Kasich addresses Independent Charlie Blackwell directly and calls on him to ‘do the right thing’ and support SB5.
“Can You Hear the People Sing?” from Les Miserables begins to play and Blackwell, his wife- Kenzie, and ‘No Frills’ Chris Escondido make their way over. Again, Kasich implores Blackwell to support his plan. But before he can answer, Big Labor (D), James the Jeep Worker (D), The California Teacher’s Union: ‘Foul Pole’ Andy Golatta and Malibu Dusty, and the Longshoremen attack Kasich and his supporters.
Blackwell and his charges lay back and watch as the Big Union group lay out Kasich and his group. Then Blackwell motions and out streams the Tea Party and they all attack the Big Union forces.
Blackwell gets on the mic and says ‘both sides are wrong.’ PCW is headed in the wrong direction and it’s high time someone came in to address the issues and bring people together. He announces the return of the…AMERICAN HEARTLAND PARTY! The crowd rises and roars as Blackwell and company clean out the ring.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
Women’s champion Valora Salinas drags a bound and duct tape gagged Lindsay Lohan to the ring. She rips off the duct tape and unties. Then she demands that someone rings the bell and a referee runs out…
MATCH #4 PCW Women’s Champion Valora Salinas (I) vs. (Li-Lo) Lindsay Lohan
…Valora slaps Lohan twice and slaps on the Tazzmission. Lohan taps out and that’s that.
WINNER: Valora Salinas @ :15
Valora grabs Li-Lo by the hair and whips her through the middle ropes. She climbs to the top turnbuckle and hits an Aztec Moonsault on Lohan for good measure.
Suave: “Main event, next.”
COMMERCIAL BREAK
MATCH #5
‘American Citizen’ Kevin Scott (R) w/Mitt Romney (R-MA)
vs.
Texas Jack (R) w/Rick Perry (R-TX)
vs.
‘Pizza Delivery Guy’ Josh Jackson (R) w/Herman Cain (R-GA)
vs.
‘The Right Reverend’ Randy Richardson (R) w/Newt Gingrich (R-GA)
Jackson finds himself under attack from the other three contestants in the ring.
…Jackson hits a jumping enziguri on Texas Jack out of nowhere. Springboard flying forearm follow up by Jackson. He tries for the Pizza Cutter. Texas Jack counters into a side-slam and nails a bulldog on Jackson. He covers Jackson and 1…2…3. Josh Jackson eliminated.
…down to Rev. Richardson and ‘American Citizen’ Kevin Scott. Rev. Richardson grabs a tool box from under the ring and tosses a wrench at Scott. Then he grabs a screwdriver and tries to gouge Scott’s face with it. Rev. Richardson lunges forward with the screwdriver but misses and stabs the turnbuckle instead.
Scott whips Richardson into the turnbuckle and the Right Reverend catches the wider end of the tool right between the eyes.
Suave: “HOLY CRAP!”
White Russian Legsweep by Scott and he covers…1…2…3.
WINNER: ‘American Citizen’ Kevin Scott (R) @ 11:31PCW Politics is War on P-SPAN- Hour 2
Green’s Arena
Wakarusa, Kansas
Thursday... more
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Jersey Shore Cast S.T.D. Rumors with Dr. Phillis
On this installment Dr. Phillis interviews, via satellite, some of the Jersey Shore cast members. Snooki, Pauly D, The Situation, and Sammi are questioned about the herpes outbreak situation. Further questioning involves to-the-point responses that only Dr. Phillis can deliver.
Dr. Phillis is a product of Chase McMullen's imagination and in no way are any of the responses fact, they are all fiction.
Shot By: Cory Phillips
Edit By: Chase McMullen
Precision Productions LLC
http://precisionproductionsllc.com
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http://PPflyersJersey Shore Cast S.T.D. Rumors with Dr. Phillis
On this installment Dr. Phillis... more
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Those who know me have listened to my carping literally since the 1980s about how our literature establishment – and the poetry establishment in particular – has gotten so homogenized as to be unreadable. Everything is the same. It’s so bad that I walked away from any attempt to publish for extended periods because I just saw no point.
I think those of you who share my interest in publications that move literature forward are, at the very least, going to appreciate the spirit and verve of Uncanny Valley. Everything about it takes a chance and genres aren’t only bent, they’re twisted into shapes that aggressively defy categorization.Those who know me have listened to my carping literally since the 1980s about how our... more
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56 million years ago a mysterious surge of carbon into the atmosphere sent global temperatures soaring. In a geologic eyeblink life was forever changed.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2011/10/hothouse-earth/kunzig-text
By Robert Kunzig
Earth has been through this before.
Not the same planetary fever exactly; it was a different world the last time, around 56 million years ago. The Atlantic Ocean had not fully opened, and animals, including perhaps our primate ancestors, could walk from Asia through Europe and across Greenland to North America. They wouldn't have encountered a speck of ice; even before the events we're talking about, Earth was already much warmer than it is today. But as the Paleocene epoch gave way to the Eocene, it was about to get much warmer still—rapidly, radically warmer.
The cause was a massive and geologically sudden release of carbon. Just how much carbon was injected into the atmosphere during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, as scientists now call the fever period, is uncertain. But they estimate it was roughly the amount that would be injected today if human beings burned through all the Earth's reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas. The PETM lasted more than 150,000 years, until the excess carbon was reabsorbed. It brought on drought, floods, insect plagues, and a few extinctions. Life on Earth survived—indeed, it prospered—but it was drastically different. Today the evolutionary consequences of that distant carbon spike are all around us; in fact they include us. Now we ourselves are repeating the experiment.
The PETM "is a model for what we're staring at—a model for what we're doing by playing with the atmosphere," says Philip Gingerich, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Michigan. "It's the idea of triggering something that runs away from you and takes a hundred thousand years to reequilibrate."
Gingerich and other paleontologists discovered the profound evolutionary change at the end of the Paleocene long before its cause was traced to carbon. For 40 years now Gingerich has been hunting fossils from the period in the Bighorn Basin, a hundred-mile-long arid plateau just east of Yellowstone National Park in northern Wyoming. Mostly he digs into the flanks of a long, narrow mesa called Polecat Bench, which juts into the northern edge of the basin. Polecat has become his second home: He owns a small farmhouse within sight of it.
One summer afternoon Gingerich and I drove in his sky blue '78 Suburban up a dirt track to the top of the bench and on out to its southern tip, which affords a fine view of the irrigated fields and scattered oil wells that surround it. During the recent ice ages, he explained, Polecat Bench was the bed of the Shoshone River, which paved it with cobbles. At some point the river shifted east and began cutting its way down through the softer and more ancient sediments that fill the Bighorn Basin. Meanwhile the Clark's Fork of the Yellowstone River was doing the same to the west. Polecat Bench now stands between the two rivers, rising 500 feet above their valleys. Over the millennia its flanks have been sculpted by winter wind and summer gully washers into rugged badlands, exposing a layer cake of sediments. Sediments from the PETM are exposed right at the very southern tip of the bench.
It is here that Gingerich has documented a great mammalian explosion. Halfway down the slope a band of red sediment, about a hundred feet thick, wraps around the folds and gullies, vivid as the stripe on a candy cane. In that band Gingerich discovered fossils of the oldest odd-toed hoofed mammals, even-toed hoofed mammals, and true primates: in other words, the first members of the orders that now include, respectively, horses, cows, and humans. Similar fossils have since been found in Asia and Europe. They appear everywhere, and as if out of nowhere. Nine million years after an asteroid slammed into the Yucatán Peninsula, setting off a cataclysm that most scientists now believe wiped out the dinosaurs, the Earth seems to have undergone another shock to the system.
During the first two decades that Gingerich labored to document the Paleocene-Eocene transition, most scientists saw it simply as a time when one set of fossils gave way to another. That perception started to change in 1991, when two oceanographers, James Kennett and Lowell Stott, analyzed carbon isotopes—different forms of the carbon atom—in a sediment core extracted from the Atlantic seafloor near Antarctica. Right at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary a dramatic shift in the ratio of isotopes in fossils of minuscule organisms called foraminifera (forams for short) indicated that an immense amount of "fresh" carbon had flooded into the ocean in as little as a few centuries. It would have spread into the atmosphere too, and there, as carbon dioxide, it would have trapped solar heat and warmed the planet. Oxygen isotopes in the forams indicated that the whole ocean had warmed, from the surface right down to the bottom mud, where most of the forams lived.
In the early 1990s the same signs of a planetary convulsion began turning up on Polecat Bench. Two young scientists, Paul Koch of the Carnegie Institution and James Zachos, then at the University of Michigan, collected half-inch clumps of carbonate-rich soil from each of the sediment layers. They also collected teeth of a primitive mammal called Phenacodus. When Koch and Zachos analyzed the carbon isotope ratios in the soil and the tooth enamel, they found the same carbon spike seen in the forams. It was becoming clear that the PETM had been a global warming episode that had affected not just obscure sea organisms but also big, charismatic land animals. And scientists saw that they could use the carbon spike—the telltale stamp of a global greenhouse gas release—to identify the PETM in rocks all over the world.
Where did all the carbon come from? We know the source of the excess carbon now pouring into the atmosphere: us. But there were no humans around 56 million years ago, much less cars and power plants. Many sources have been suggested for the PETM carbon spike, and given the amount of carbon, it likely came from more than one. At the end of the Paleocene, Europe and Greenland were pulling apart and opening the North Atlantic, resulting in massive volcanic eruptions that could have cooked carbon dioxide out of organic sediments on the seafloor, though probably not fast enough to explain the isotope spikes. Wildfires might have burned through Paleocene peat deposits, although so far soot from such fires has not turned up in sediment cores. A giant comet smashing into carbonate rocks also could have released a lot of carbon very quickly, but as yet there is no direct evidence of such an impact.
The oldest and still the most popular hypothesis is that much of the carbon came from large deposits of methane hydrate, a peculiar, icelike compound that consists of water molecules forming a cage around a single molecule of methane. Hydrates are stable only in a narrow band of cold temperatures and high pressures; large deposits of them are found today under the Arctic tundra and under the seafloor, on the slopes that link the continental shelves to the deep abyssal plains. At the PETM an initial warming from somewhere—perhaps the volcanoes, perhaps slight fluctuations in Earth's orbit that exposed parts of it to more sunlight—might have melted hydrates and allowed methane molecules to slip from their cages and bubble into the atmosphere.
more at link56 million years ago a mysterious surge of carbon into the atmosphere sent global... more
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New York Jewish fiction writer Susan Daitch's third novel Paper Conspiracies, which was published last week by City Lights Books, takes an indirect approach to late Nineteenth Century France's Dreyfus Affair by way of peripheral minor actors in the scandal and via cinema pioneer Georges Mèliés' contemporaneous dramtized documentary film L'affaire Dreyfus. The novel's six sections alternate between 1990s New York and Paris in the 1890s, 1930s, and 1968.New York Jewish fiction writer Susan Daitch's third novel Paper Conspiracies,... more
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This is not to say there is no place for enjoying a spoiled story. The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense, Fight Club – these are all great movies (and in some cases books) made no less great upon your second viewing. But would you really want to give up the excitement of that initial viewing? I still enjoy The Usual Suspects but remember the surprise I felt at the twist when watching this for the first time late at night in my parent’s living room. I am happy to save the increased enjoyment for the second viewing. Increased enjoyment is too high a price to pay for not letting the storytellers take you on their journey during that first reading or viewing.This is not to say there is no place for enjoying a spoiled story. The Usual Suspects,... more
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In my New York Journal of Books review I describe the book as “. . . a plot-driven novel conveyed in crisp, descriptive, and thought-provoking prose via an engagingly intelligent third-person narrator. . . . an auspicious debut” and recommend it to both adult and precocious young adult readers.In my New York Journal of Books review I describe the book as “. . . a... more
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