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Archive for October, 2008
November is National Novel Writing Month
Posted in News, Writing with tags Nanowrimo08 on 31 October, 2008 by S&Co.Unferth’s Faves
Posted in News with tags Deb Olin Unferth on 31 October, 2008 by S&Co.Here at Shakespeare HQ we’ve been mentally grovelling at Deb Olin Unferth’s ever-lovin’ feet after having had the unequivocal pleasure of reading her astonishing first novel, Vacation (McSweeney’s; $22), and so it was nice to receive this Unferth link from a friend.
Payback
Posted in Books, Excerpts with tags debt, Margaret Atwood on 30 October, 2008 by Jenna
I am not ashamed to admit that a new book on the “non-fiction side” of the store–Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth–caught my eye the other day, simply on account of the author: Margaret Atwood is hands-down one of the finest living writers of the English language today. After opening the book and discovering how culturally relevant it is, I felt it merited at least a brief blog posting.
How is it that just as when this global financial fiasco has just begun, Atwood happens, by coincidence, to have a book on the general topic, fresh off the press? Only goes to show, in my opinion, that there’s no doubt something super-human about this woman, as I have often suspected. In the author’s own words, Payback is a book about “debt as a human construct–thus an imaginative construct–and how this construct mirrors and magnifies both voracious human desire and ferocious human fear,” drawing from history, religion, literature, and current affairs. If you’re at all interested in the financial situation of the world right now, you need to take a look at this book. (It is, appropriately, a paperback: less likely to plunge you into the very situation that the book’s all about.)
“Debt is the new fat,” someone said recently. Which led me to reflect that, not so long ago, fat was the new cigarette-smoking, and before that, cigarette-smoking was the new alcohol-drinking, and before that, alcohol-drinking was the new whoremongering. And whoremongering is the new debt; and so we go in circles. What all these things have in common is that at one time or another each has been considered the very worst sin of all but has then gone through a period of being thought, if not totally harmless, at least fashionable. I left out hallucinogenic drugs, though they fit in there too.
– Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, by Margaret Atwood (Anansi, $15.95), IN STOCK
The Hypocrisy of Disco
Posted in Books, Excerpts, Writing with tags Clane Hayward, Hyprocrisy of Disco on 30 October, 2008 by S&Co.
This book, a memoir, by an Austin writer named Clane Hayward, is almost certainly good, possibly great, perhaps even brilliant. I’m not sure yet because I have not read enough of it to say for sure. But it has definitely, belatedly, one year after publication, caught my attention:
[p. 13] Andrew and Matt and Melena and their little brother, Jude, and their mom, Susan, they live in a house near us, near me and Haud and our mom and our little sister, Ki. We live near the river in a vacation cabin even though we’re not on vacation. Because it’s cheaper, our mom says, even if it is a little chilly and dark. Scott and Cynthia live with their mom across town. We haven’t lived here that long, we never live anywhere long, we move all the time. We come and go with no explaining, and all the people I know come and go with no explaining either. Maybe the only thing I can explain for sure is my name. When people ask how we got our funny names, and they always do, I say, with extra patience, Our dad is Claude and our mother is H’lane and it goes Haud and Claude and Clane and H’lane, get it? Then I say I also have a sister named Ki and a brother named Random, and they’ll ask, Key like in lock and key? and I say no. Ki means life force, it’s Japanese. Random like, by chance? No, duh, Random like Random House.
– Clane Hayward
Tonight: John Prendergast lecture
Posted in News on 29 October, 2008 by S&Co.
Who: John Prendergast, author (with Don Cheadle) of Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond
What: A lecture: “Stop Genocide”
When: Wednesday, Oct. 29th. 7:30 pm.
Where: University Congregational Church
John Prendergast is co-chair of the Enough Project, which (with a focus on Africa) works to abolish genocide and mass atrocities by promoting peace, providing protection, and punishing the perpetrators. He was involved in a number of peace processes in Africa while he was Director of African Affairs at the National Security Council and Special Advisor at the Department of State during the Clinton Administration. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Save Darfur Coalition.
Ah-ha!
Posted in Books, Excerpts with tags cooking, science on 23 October, 2008 by Jenna
Ever wonder why we have separate cup measures for liquid and dry ingredients? What the difference is between table salt, sea salt, kosher salt, etc.? The best way to defrost frozen foods? Robert L. Wolke’s What Einstein Told His Cook is gem of a book, both reference and pleasure. A mixture of cooking (What is cream of tartar?), science (Why is it okay to eat hominy, which is processed with lye, the same chemical used in drain cleaner?) and even some how-to (What’s the best way to open a bottle of Champagne without looking like a bumbling idiot or hitting the ceiling with the cork?), Wolke compiles of all the kitchen mysteries you can imagine, and then explains them. Recipes included. Come check it out–in paperback, and IN STOCK.
“I like my steaks and roast beef rare. But often there’ll be someone at the table who makes a nasty crack about my eating “bloody” meat. What can I say in my defense?”
Nothing. Just smile and continue to carve away, because they’re wrong. There is virtually no blood in red meat. Most of the blood that circulates through a cow’s veins and arteries never makes it to the butcher shop, much less to the dinner table…Blood is red because it contains hemoglobin, an iron-containing protein that carries oxygen from the lungs to the muscle tissues, where it is needed for movement. The color of red meat, however, doesn’t come primarily from hemoglobin. It is mainly due to another red, iron-containing, oxygen-carrying protein called myoglobin…Various animals contain various amounts of myoglobin in their muscle tissue because they have varying degrees of need for a reservoir of strenuous-activity oxygen…So animal flesh can be inherently red, pink, or white depending on the evolutionary need for sustained muscular activity in different species. Tuna meat, for example [in contrast to other fish, which are primarily white fleshed] is fairly red, because tunas are strong, fast swimmers who migrate for vast distances across the world’s oceans.
Now you know why chickens’ breast meat is white, while their necks, legs, and thighs are darker. They exercise their necks by pecking and their legs by walking, but that huge breast is nothing but excess baggage.
-What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained, Norton, $15.95
Taibbi Unbound: a diary.
Posted in News, Opinion with tags Matt Taibbi, Taibbi Unbound on 21 October, 2008 by S&Co.This is the greatest thing ever.
Sports fans out there, you know who Travis Henry is? That guy who played running back for the Bills, Titans and Broncos? Travis Henry made many millions of dollars playing football over the years, but we found out this fall that he’s broke and deep in debt because a) he fathered at least ten children by ten different women b) he’s got an apparently incurable drug problem and c) he tried to get out of his financial problems by dealing coke and ended up getting arrested doing it. Now those ten kids are really in trouble for about the next 18-25 years.
Well, Travis Henry would have done a better job of things than Wall Street did with the world’s wealth. These guys didn’t just bet the house on their investments. They bet fifty times the house! They bet a thousand times the house! They were absolute fucking madmen. All those brilliant ways they thought up to make four hundred different bets with the same dollar made them infinitely more dangerous to society than some coke-freak running back pumping his jism into two cookies on every road date. Think about that. If Travis Henry had been in charge of all that money, we’d be FINE now! Even Travis Henry couldn’t even imagine the scale of desperate irresponsible greed we’re talking about with these guys. They were like a bunch of rabbits on strychnine. You don’t get to an almost mathematically inexpressible financial collapse through merely ordinary greed and irresponsibility of the type you might encounter in your home life, or even on the Buffalo Bills. You need an advanced education to dig this big a hole.
– Matt Taibbi, Oct 17, 2008
Slingshot Organizer 2009
Posted in News with tags Slingshot Organizer on 20 October, 2008 by S&Co.
The 2009 Slingshot Organizers have arrived!
Pocket organizer: $5.95.
Full-size spiral bound organizer: $11.95.
Writers Group forming now.
Posted in News, Writing on 20 October, 2008 by S&Co.NOTICE: Kaet Morris and Peggy Miller are forming a “critiqueing writers group” for playwrights, screenwriters, and novelists. If interested, reach Peggy at highlandwinds@gmail.com or 541-7577.
Unlicensed Plumber
Posted in Opinion on 16 October, 2008 by S&Co.It figures the Republicans would come up with a plumber–and he would be unlicensed. It makes sense: Joe the Plumber as a perfect metaphor for conservative governance.
I am reminded of a piece of dialogue from an early scene in John Updike’s Rabbit at Rest:
“I think,” he says, “Dukakis tried to talk intelligently to the American people and we aren’t ready for it. Bush talked to us like we were a bunch of morons and we ate it up. Can you imagine, the Pledge of Allegiance, read my lips — can you imagine such crap in this day and age?”
