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Memoir

Annotations to Crap Books II: Son of Crap Book

This post is a bit late, but I got invited back to Podside Picnic to continue my conversation with Pete on what we jokingly call "crap books". This time, we circled back to talk a little bit more about the influence of D&D and the Satanic Panic on what I'm calling my genre (mis)education. Again, the latest episode is free to listen here if you haven't yet, and I also had some follow-up posts with annotations that build upon that first episode. Because the crap books conversations tend to flow, I may misremember stuff, so of course I'd name the wrong title of Leiber's Lankhmar books. I mentioned Swords Against Wizardry or Swords Against Deviltry, when the one I meant is simply called The Swords of Lankhmar. My interest in Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser was spurred by my friend César lending me the books, but I don't remember if this was...

August 15, 2020
Horror, Memoir, Reading, Uncategorized
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Update: Clarion, Curious Fictions and Ghost of Tsushima

This is the last week of the Clarion Write-A-Thon and I'll be honest: I am happy that I have several stories ready to revise and polish, but glad that as with all good things, it is coming to an end. That's not a knock; simply that I'm not sure I can keep up with that same pace for a longer period of time. It was good to stretch, to get out of my comfort zone and see what I can accomplish, if pressed. In the end, I'll have five new stories to get ready for submission, plus one that I haven't started yet. I missed my mark only on Week Four because the prompt (which I'll paraphrase as, "imagine a recipe for an impossible dish and write a story about it") didn't spark an idea until far too late, and even then, it's a full-length story and not flash. I'll...

July 26, 2020
Memoir, Writing
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Disintegration Loops

Some days ago, prompted by an online friend, I started listening to William Basinski's "Disintegration Loops". It was overcast, and quiet in the office as the musical phrase repeated, diminishing and distorting with each cycle. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjnAE5go9dI[/embed] I recognized it from the Radiolab episode, "Loops," which I'd listened to years ago, and as was often the case then, it flowed over me, but I didn't try to learn anything more about it. I filed it away as not much more than a curiosity. Until the other day, listening to the music, I decided to look it up online. Basinski recorded the ambient music fragments from old magnetic tapes from the 80's in an effort to salvage them. As Basinski played them, the ferrite on the tapes kept cracking, deteriorating with every loop around the magnetic tape head. The tapes kept tearing themselves apart in an effort to continue playing the music. He completed recording in Brooklyn,...

October 11, 2018
Memoir
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