January | 2017 | Kanlaon

#amreadingfantasy: AMERICAN GODS, p. 29

January 30, 2017 at 9:48 pm (Books, Conversations, Food and Drink)
Tags: fantasy, Mondays, novel, reading lists

“Taste it.”

The drink was a tawny golden color. Shadow took a sip, tasting an odd blend of sour and sweet on his tongue. He could taste the alcohol underneath, and a strange blend of flavors. It reminded him a little of sugar and water, but it was sweeter, and far stranger.

“Okay,” said Shadow. “I tasted it. What was it?”

“Mead,” said Wednesday. “Honey wine. The drink of heroes. The drink of the gods.”

— American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

Stay tuned.

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Quote of the Day: Andrew Marantz

January 30, 2017 at 8:03 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: advice, elections, Mondays, politics, The New Yorker, Twitter

What exactly is alt-right? Other than an inflammatory hashtag?

Here’s one definition. It’s in an essay called “Trolls for Trump,” by Andrew Marantz (The New Yorker, 31 October 2016):

a loose, on-line affiliation of white nationalists, neo-monarchists, masculinists, conspiracists, belligerent nihilists, and social media trolls. The alt-right has no consistent ideology; it is a label, like “snob” or “hipster,” that is often disavowed by people who exemplify it. The term typically applies to conservatives and reactionaries who are active on the Internet and too anti-establishment to feel at home in the Republican Party.

The essay then goes on to show how the alt-right is seeding social media with misinformation.

As if any thinking person didn’t know that already?

She never presses “like” anymore unless she’s vetted the tweeter. Whereas in the old days (pre-Nov. 8), she would just blithely follow back.

Then she’d discover — days, weeks, or even months later — that the person endorses the Muslim Ban and the Muslim Registry. And it fills her with so much shame.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

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“Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” (2007): Sidney Lumet’s Last Movie

January 30, 2017 at 3:12 am (Conversations, Movies, Recommended, Sundays)
Tags: film noir, performances, praise, San Francisco, Sidney Lumet

Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Andy, a plump, middle-aged real-estate wheeler/dealer whose world comes crashing down on him in a very big way, after he has the genius idea of knocking off his parents’ mom-and-pop jewelry store in a Westchester mall (It’s like Fargo, only twice as painful):

Andy to his brother Hank (Ethan Hawke):

It’s too late to think. It’s too late.

Also, Seymour Hoffman’s character is a cocaine addict. Watching him do a line is gut-wrenching.

Noir City: San Francisco’s 15th Annual Film Noir Festival, at the Castro

Stay tuned.

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#amreading: AMERICAN GODS, by Neil Gaiman

January 29, 2017 at 6:22 pm (Books, Calls, Conversations, Sundays)
Tags: fantasy, novel, reading lists

pp. 7 – 8:

Shadow knew that the phone companies whacked a three-dollar surcharge on every call made from a prison phone. That was why operators are always real polite to people calling from prisons, Shadow had decided: they knew that he paid their wages.

“Something feels weird,” he told Laura. That wasn’t the first thing he said to her. The first thing was “I love you,” because it’s a good thing to say if you can mean it, and Shadow did.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

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Repurpose 2: London and Rostrevor, Northern Ireland

January 29, 2017 at 6:09 pm (destinations, Links, Places, postaday, Sundays, Traveling)
Tags: British authors, fantasy, London, Northern Ireland, postaday, postaweek, Rostrevor, Wordpress

For this challenge, show us something . . . put to new use.

— Krista, The Daily Post

Shoreditch, London: Jack the Ripper was here!

Welcome to Narnia: Rostrevor, Northern Ireland

Twigs Am I: On the Narnia Trail in Rostrevor, Northern Ireland

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

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#amreading: Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker Article on Kellyanne Conway, “Taming Trump” (17 October 2016)

January 29, 2017 at 1:59 am (Conversations)
Tags: elections, essay, Hillary Clinton, politics, Saturday, The New Yorker

Conway went to Trinity Washington University, a Catholic college in Washington, DC, and received a law degree from George Washington University. She pointed out that, while Hillary Clinton failed the D.C. bar exam in 1973, before passing in Arkansas, Conway was allowed into the D.C. bar after passing the exams in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Conway said she thought about that during the first debate: “Boy, she really can cram a lot of information into her head for one performance. How the heck did she fail the D.C. bar?”

#thatlastquestion #snark

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

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2nd Quote of the Day: Kellyanne Conway

January 28, 2017 at 10:24 pm (Conversations)
Tags: interviews, politics, Saturday, The New Yorker, Twitter

“I’ve noticed a lot of people are very bold and blustery on Twitter, because it’s easy to do that with the poison keyboard and a hundred and forty characters.”

— quoted by Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker, 17 October 2016

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Quote of the Day: Jack Kimmich

January 28, 2017 at 5:46 pm (Food and Drink)
Tags: advice, California, Saturday

“You can never outrun an angry sow.”

— Jack Kimmich, who raises Berkshire pigs in on his farm in Hollister, in an interview with Rosie Parker for edible Monterey Bay, Winter 2016

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The Future Is Cold: Excerpt from Self’s “Ice”

January 28, 2017 at 6:23 am (Weather, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: fantasy, Fridays, Literary Magazines, short story

A journal accepted this piece two years ago.

It still hasn’t seen print.

In the meantime, self has been working on it, adding a sentence here, a paragraph there.

Here’a an excerpt.

It was true the boy’s eyes were strange, as if icecaps were growing in the irises. He tried to staunch the spread, but hour by hour the ice seemed to grow. Until, he hated to say it, the boy had gone completely blind. But he still pretended to watch the sky.

Halloooo came the cry across the frozen wasteland.