(I really should just leave the post as is because, dude, that’s a title that speaks for itself. But if Mrs. F can get paid for cranking out reams of bullshit, then I can do that and more for free. Because I love you.)

We’ve had a subscription to The Atlantic Magazine for a while, and its monthly arrival is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, we get the excellent long form journalism of James Fallows and Mark Bowden, articles that discuss the big wide world and all the weirdness within. And on the other, we get a bucketful of stupid from Mark Steyn, Christopher Hitchens, and Caitlin Flanagan. The first two I can usually ignore, but Mrs. Flanagan’s writing is, to me, the literary equivalent of a chemical plant fire: breathtaking in its power and beauty, yet full of noxious fumes that make me dumber the longer I stand and watch.

(more…)

Filed under: Spleen Venting






    

“To Plant a Tree,” my Jack London tale of divorce, spacesuits and nanotech canines, got honorable mention in the ol’ Writers of the Future. That’s better than my last entry did. Closer…

Filed under: Scribbling






    

I hope you enjoyed your workout. I also hope you get some sleep; the bags under your eyes were big enough to pack up the gear from a Cirque du Soleil touring company.

The reason I’m writing you, madam, is that I didn’t appreciate the way you waltzed up to my lane, whistling tunelessly and giving me a “Are you gonna hurry up and get the hell out so I can do my aqua-jogging, you lap-swimming low-life?” look the entire time. I realize that you don’t swim, but I’d like you to know that I was absolutely fucking exhausted after this morning’s workout and not in the mood to hurry. The next time, I’d appreciate it if you did me the common courtesy of asking if I minded sharing the lane rather than hovering above, just waiting for me to haul myself out of the pool. Maybe if you swam instead of just bouncing from one end of the short lane to the other, you’d learn that.

Love and kisses,
-A.

Filed under: Spleen Venting