Failbetter: “I didn’t merge the last two novels of the I. trio into one. The trio became a duo when McSweeney’s rejected the second voume of the work, then called 2. They rejected it, they said, because they were cutting back on their fiction. So I removed 2 from the trio, rewrote it in its entirety (something I’ve been doing a lot with my work the last few years), gave the I. character a name, and submitted the work, as Old Friends, to Melville House, which took it in a couple of weeks. Then McSweeney’s wrote, saying they were starting a new fiction series and they’d like to see 2. I said 2 was now Old Friends and unavailable, would you like to see 3, which was now End of I. and also entirely rewritten from first page to last? They did and they took it.” (via Moorish Girl)
Month / August 2006
Move Over Merrick & Baratz-Logsted — There’s a New Turf War On
CBS: “A new kind of book is flying off the shelves of local stores and libraries. Gangsta lit, much like rap, often centers around pimps, prostitutes and drugs.”
“Carried Away By the Moment” is the New Buzz Term for “Wild, Out of Control, Animalistic and Quite Possibly Gratuitious Sex Thrown In To Boost Ratings”
BBC: “The sex scene, broadcast on 1 August, showed actors Kellie Shirley and Joel Beckett ripping off each others clothes and having sex on the floor of a nightclub….Ms Harwood again apologised for causing distress, but argued that ‘any sexual activity was implied rather than explicit’. ‘The intention of the scene was to indicate the passion of a couple being carried away by the moment,’ she continued.”
Ugly Kid Joe, “Everything About Ned”
Are you the guys on the Hill who mock everything? Ewww.
Is this some sort of hip voting that I don’t understand?
I, hate the man’s sunny demeanor,
And I, I hate those kissing photos too, boo-hoo
And I don’t like a thing about the ballot, no, no
And I, I, I hate the Democrats too!
And I, hate everything about Ned!
Everything about Ned!
And I, don’t like a thing about his platform
And I, I hate Ned’s daddy’s guts too, boo-hoo
And I don’t like a thing about Ned’s pollsters, no, no
Cause I, I, I think this is overrated too
And I, I’ll be around in November
I, can’t stand to be around,
I, hate everything about Ned!
Everything about Ned, everything about Ned, everything about Ned
Some say I’m just a sore loser
But that don’t change the way I feel about Ned
And if you think this might be bringing me down,
Look again I’ll be an Indie with a frown!
Get down!
Or Perhaps Some Folks Need a Surrogate Baby Blanket To Cling To
Cato Institute (PDF): “In the end, it is not clear how one can deal with the public’s often irrational — or at least erratic — fears about remote dangers. Some people say they prefer comparatively dangerous forms of transportation like the private passenger automobile (the cause of over 3 million deaths during the 20th century) to safe ones like commercial airlines because they feel they have more ‘control.’ But they seem to feel no fear on buses and trains — which actually are more dangerous than airliners — even without having that sense of control and even though derailing a speeding train or crashing a speeding bus is likely to be much easier for a terrorist than downing an airliner. And people tend to be more alarmed by dramatic fatalities — which the September 11 crashes certainly provided — than by ones that cumulate statistically. Thus, the 3,000 deaths of September 11 inspire far more grief and fear than the 100,000 deaths from auto accidents that have taken place since then. In some respects, fear of terror may be something like playing the lottery except in reverse: the chances of winning the lottery or dying from terrorism may be microscopic, but for monumental events that are, or seem, random, one can irrelevantly conclude that one’s chances are just as good, or bad, as those of anyone else.” (via Boing Boing)