Square Pegs

First, we suggest you sit down because we are going to shock you. A major United States newspaper has managed to publish an entire article about romance novels without mentioning the B-phrase. In fact, if we had stuck with just the Yahoo! feed, we would have awarded the article our extremely rare Responsible Journalism plaque. Alas…the USA Today website features a caption with a gratitious B-phrase. Such is our good humor today, Ms. Cranky will not complain. We deem the article acceptable reading for all ages and genders. Strong, sexy women save the day, get their man

We thought, what the heck, this John Sayles interview is short, we’re playing with a few short stories…besides, it’s not like we’re eager to hit the freeway for another day of meetings. If we’d followed the advice of Ryoko (the cat who informs us when we’re not living up to her expectations — she talks a lot), we would have overlooked this article. And that would be a shame because we will now spend the rest of the day in the bubble known as Hollywood: My short stories are immersions into very specific worlds. There’s this idea implicit in my

If you had to make the choice, would it be books or food? Man, we’d love to say books, but to go without Chinese noodles? That’s a rough one. However, as evidenced by our garage (the repository of all that won’t fit in the house) and our office (the place where we lied to bring more bookshelves into the house) and our living room (room where we tuck extra books in unexpected corners) and our bedroom (where the unconfessable is not what you think), we have an issue with books. We take some solace in the fact we’re not alone

Back in the day, when this Worldwide Web thing was so new you could mention it to your friends and get blank stares (huh? why would you want to do that?), we would spend Friday evenings, uh, chatting with likemineded geeks located in San Francisco and Oakland (this was, oddly, the only time they ever got together, albeit in separate locations). This was a lot of fun because it was so unique: hey, ma, we’re talking over the computer! Around this time, Snow Crash was released. Actually, earlier, but the husband read it first — he’s never been one to

We admit it — we expect the worst and hope for the best. When the USA Patriot Act was passed, however, we pretty much stopped at expecting the worst. Don’t get us wrong, modern crime requires modern law enforcement techniques (hence states trying to figure out how to handle drugged drivers…statutes only cover drunk drivers). But when major legislation is passed with no debate and no consideration, it terrifies us. Especially when it’s passed in a state of heightened emotions. We’ve talked about librarians and their opposition to section 215 of the Act. We find it disturbing that our records

Seriously, we thought the British got all the fighting out with the War of 1812 (yes, but were there hearts really in Crimea?). On the other hand, it’s worth joining English PEN just for the conversation: Suspicion, distrust, backbiting, smear tactics, simple loathing and sometimes extremely unliterary abuse have come to characterise a struggle that has been waged until now behind the closed doors of London’s literary salons. Writers at war Them’s Fighting Words

We often hear about the power of the human spirit, etc, but what about the worm? Why is the worm so ignored? Talk about a species that goes to extraordinary lengths to survive. If you want perseverance*, we say go with the worm. We note this because it is inexplicably rainy (inexplicably in that it has persisted far too long for October in SoCal). There comes a point when even the worms cannot take the soaking. Inevitably and dangerously, they make the long trek from the lawn to the patio, up the back stairs — they always take the stairs

But we keep on adding to our dictionaries. None of that dead language thing for us. Nope, we believe the dictionary should never be done, only resting. We do derive some comfort from the knowledge that many words come and go — we remain hopeful the aurally displeasing bling-bling will enter the Abandoned Words Home. English has been the fastest-moving language for 100 years, says a new book, Larpers and Shroomers, the Language Report. The cool century – 100 years of being hip