Janet Maslin demonstrates how you can write a redundant-laden lead about nothing: “The history of Texas would seem to be a natural subject for the popular historian H. W. Brands. For one thing, Mr. Brands, biographer of Theodore Roosevelt and Benjamin Franklin, is a professor at Texas A&M University. For another, the much-vaunted wildness and wooliness of Texas’ story would seem to lend itself to Mr. Brands’s accessible, personable approach.” That’s three mentions of Texas in three sentences and more adjectives than you can shove onto a Hometown Buffet plate. Hasn’t Maslin learned anything from Twain?

The Daily Californian has a modest Octavia Butler profile up. Apparently, Butler’s working on a vampire novel.

Who needs the amateurism of Writer’s Digest when you can hear the same obvious swill for free from romance novelist Debbie Macomber? Before her writing ritual, Debbie reads the Bible and devotionals. And of course, Debbie’s convinced that women aren’t interested in steamy sex scenes (and, as she states, what does she know about sex being married?). Yes, kids, Debbie’s that best-selling romance novelist that you can read in the break room without embarassment. Sexed up trash? What are you thinking? Pick up Debbie Macomber tomorrow. Remember, kids: a Debbie Macomber “airport novel” purchased from a Barnes & Noble is a purchase for America! You too can turn your head away from reasonable standards and become a published romance novelist!

“Tilda! The real Tilda! Tilda and her beautiful voice! The real Tilda and I meeting in a gay bar! Tilda! Tilda! Movie-life and real-life often do not bear any resemblance to one another, but Tilda!”

Don Kleine — quirkyalone professor? I hope not.

Kevin Smith’s on tap to write and direct The Green Hornet.

No less than four recently published books agree upon the notion of an “American empire.” And in the first half of 2004, 25 books critical of Bush will be published by commercial houses. Yee haw! It’s beginning to look like 1968 again, isn’t it?

Sarah Jacobson has passed on. She died last night. She was only 32. Cinetrix points to this forum for those as bummed out about this news as I am. And if you’re lucky enough to be in the East Village, tonight, there’s a screening of all her films at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater. Words fail me.

The Observer: Camille Paglia, who traded blows with Ms. Wolf in the early 1990’s over their radically different views on female sexual power, said she was no longer at war with Ms. Wolf, but was “shocked” to learn of Ms. Wolf’s accusations against Mr. Bloom, who is a long-time mentor of Ms. Paglia’s.

So I guess in Camille’s world, “you are either with us or against us.” I’m guessing here that Wolf is Oceania and Paglia is Eastasia. Either way, I’d love to see how Bloom gets out of this. This could be the Greer-Mailer matchup of our time.

And in the same article: Caitlin Flanagan’s been hired by the New Yorker to write pieces on “modern domestic life.” Would that involve how a well-to-do mother can blow $100,000 a year on child care? I think that’s something within everyone’s resources, don’t you?

Okay, back to recuperation.

Away for a few days or more.

Asimov’s somehow emerged as a magazine choice in a school fundraising drive. But one mother flipped through the magazine and was “shocked” to read about “young girls with no panties, young girls in white socks, young girls looking at his wank-mags with him, young girls doing it with one another while he watched.” What pisses me off about this is not only does Ms. Suburban Mom miss the point about what spec-fic is about, but that this perpetuates the impression that spec-fic is nothing less than stories about bug-eyed monsters and gender domination. A quick glance through the collected works of Urusula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler or Margaret Atwood (the latter having escaped the “science fiction” ghettoization) shows that it’s a lot more than this. And if Ms. Suburban Mom can rally against the “naughty” qualities of spec-fic, how dare she remain silent about the sexuality expressed on magazine covers, television commercials, album covers, advertisements that eroticize children, and the like. Fuck the yokels in Grandville, MI. And fuck ’em hard.

The New York Times interviews Anne Tyler by e-mail. Amazingly, she characterizes her work as “truthful.” Hey, Anne, I’ve got your truthful right here. It’s called five figures a year. Apparently, Tyler’s based in Baltimore these days. If that’s the case, please, Hag, beat some sense into her.

Following up on the Jacqueline Wilson news, the Guardian has the top 100 borrowed books in the UK up. It’s not inspiring.

Well, fuck me, the Globe has tried to examine “fuck” without mentioning it.