October 2010
29 posts
On Hallowe'en
I loved the costumes: my brother and I would start discussing them in the summer, late at night in the enormous lumpy bed that we shared at our granny’s house. He was creative: one year, he made a mandrill mask out of papier mache and teamed it with a smart shirt, tie and trousers; another, he was ‘a man with a sword through his head’ which involved aluminum foil and for some...
Watch“Your camels look really good!”
Great quote on writing from Slavoj Žižek
brokenbottleboy:
“I hate writing. I so intensely hate writing — I cannot tell you how much. The moment I am at the end of one project I have the idea that I didn’t really succeed in telling what I wanted to tell, that I need a new project — it’s an absolute nightmare. But my whole economy of writing is in fact based on an obsessional ritual to avoid the actual act of writing.” – From...
On not blogging
Getting a full-time writing job that I actually enjoy has proved to be just a touch bittersweet - it is making me sad how blogging all day makes me less inclined to do proper blogelsteining. (Making nouns in to verbs is totally fine, according to Stephen Fry, although I maintain my view that ‘gifting’ is wrong, somehow). I feel guilty! I will try harder! Exclamation mark!
WatchSebastian Meyer: the next Anderson Cooper?
On libraries
I haven’t been a member of a library since 2005; not unless you count my membership at the Wellcome Library, and I don’t, because I just go there because they have nice big desks with powerpoints and free WiFi (much of my book was written in the Wellcome Library - I’d be pounding out paragraphs about love affairs and look around at the social scientists and medical specialists...
“In the last 30 years, I spent the first 15 being born and being a child (I hope...”
– englishman in new york: The big 3-0
Quite lovely words on the thought of turning 30 from my friend Dan.
“I first came to MFK Fisher as an eater, not a writer – assured by my most...”
– MFK Fisher and the dangers of overcooking books | Books | guardian.co.uk
(by me)
“It’s hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we’ll be looking to...”
– ‘Oral sex’ definition prompts dictionary ban in US schools | Books | guardian.co.uk
Scramble the dictionary censorship team! We’ve got a live one!
On the scent of autumn
This is how it smelled at the bus stop on October mornings: of dew evaporating off cold moulding leaves. It’s not yet cold enough to wear my winter coat - not because it’s not cold (it is) but because it’s important to keep something to upgrade to when the only smell in the morning is my own breath, turned back in to my nose by a scarf tied around my face. So I am shivering, with...
“SCARLETT made for a good target. The daughter of a Williamsburg artist, she wore...”
– Cultural Studies - Mean-Girl Bullying Trickles Down to Grade School - NYTimes.com
Sent by my dad today; sounds not unlike the kind of bullying that started at my school in kindergarten (oh, how we would run away from the girl in my class who must have been severely learning-disabled, not that it...
“I am dismayed to realize that much of the advice I used to parcel out to...”
– Susan Orlean (via annieatkins)
Now that Sebastina has been stolen I think about going to law school an awful lot.
gavin james bower: penny hardaway →
shallowandprofound:
my first pen-friend was a french boy called jean-pascal. j-p, for short.
we met on a family holiday in ibiza; my parents and i taking our first trip away together as a three, without my older brother – older, not dead; hence not on holiday in ibiza with his parents, destined to spend ten days…
Wonderful, moving piece by Gavin James Bower that he read at last...
“Unless, like al-Qaida, you feel there’s something abnormal about the...”
– Sex survey comprehensively charts Americans’ bedroom antics | Life and style | The Guardian
WHOA.
“The moment in which I turned the pan over and let the cake (or muffins, or a...”
– Baking, the sweetest stress cure I know | UK Food Network Blog – Locally Sourced
