Sunday, August 17, 2008
"She had the kind of body that made a man want to have sex with her."
Yes, that's right...it's time to read the results of most everyone's favorite literary contest, the annual Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest, in which aspiring wordsmiths vie with each other to see who can produce the most malodorous opening line for a novel. Personally, I like the unadorned directness of Barry J. Drucker's offering, which also serves as the title of this entry.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Friday, August 01, 2008
Sometimes I forget
...why I feel like giving up on talking to anyone, and especially on talking to anyone over the internet. And then, an article like this comes along and reminds me:
Does free speech tend to move toward the truth or away from it? When does it evolve into a better collective understanding? When does it collapse into the Babel of trolling, the pointless and eristic game of talking the other guy into crying “uncle”? Is the effort to control what’s said always a form of censorship, or might certain rules be compatible with our notions of free speech?
There are whole months when I can't see past the sense of impending doom. We are screwed. We are sick. Our brains have taken us to a place we may actually not have the capacity to understand. And there is nothing--nothing--a feeble art like poetry can do about it.
Believe it or not, the writing's been jogging loose in the past couple of months. But...in a spiral notebook.
Does free speech tend to move toward the truth or away from it? When does it evolve into a better collective understanding? When does it collapse into the Babel of trolling, the pointless and eristic game of talking the other guy into crying “uncle”? Is the effort to control what’s said always a form of censorship, or might certain rules be compatible with our notions of free speech?
There are whole months when I can't see past the sense of impending doom. We are screwed. We are sick. Our brains have taken us to a place we may actually not have the capacity to understand. And there is nothing--nothing--a feeble art like poetry can do about it.
Believe it or not, the writing's been jogging loose in the past couple of months. But...in a spiral notebook.
