"Every song I ever wrote was written for you."
- -Belle & Sebastian, "Dog On Wheels"

"I've written pages, upon pages, trying to rid you from my bones."
- -The Decemberists, "The Engine Driver"

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Got any?

“I grew.

“I grew and stretched and raged around the room, filled the place with my fists and feet. I got my knees off the floor and walked. I hit the walls and clawed them. I broke through the clothes that were put on me. I wailed and cursed, hard words that came through the open window to me. I only stopped to swallow snot and any food that got ( Read more... )

A poem of mine, "Hassle-Free Sex!", was published in former-fellow-student Gina Abelkop-aka-lovebettie's brilliant and beautiful omnibus, "Finery".

Click on that link to purchase or trade a copy. Really. You should. Not just for my poem, but for everyone else's stuff plus the gorgeous design of it. I'm listening to the "Amélie" soundtrack right now and it ( Read more... )

"[John] Hughes was unforgivably remiss as far as multiculturalism goes. These are all suburban white kids, for god's sake! If The Breakfast Club were made today, Judd Nelson's part would be played by Tupac, and Anthony Michael Hall's by B. D. Wong. Ally Sheedy's character would be a lesbian, and the Emilio Estevez character wouldn't exist ( Read more... )

Nick Hornby is a phenomenal writer. I discovered him in Scotland (I hadn't known about his writing the novel "High Fidelity") with "How To Be Good". It is brilliant (in both the British and American definitions of the word), my favorite book of his, one of my favorite books/stories/works of words, period ( Read more... )

He's done it again. Wrote a novel that totally messed with my head, that is. It's really quite astonishing: many writers only manage to master the creation of one universe. This dude, on the other hand, creates a totally different world in each of his novels (I've read most of them). Not only that, but they're all convincing- even at their most ( Read more... )

"...Nobody becomes an artist unless they have to."- -Janet Fitch, "White Oleander ( Read more... )

I read this twice, with only a few weeks in between each reading. The second reading helped tremendously with my understanding of its non-linear narrative (I'm pretty slow). I've been thinking a lot about this book, in some form or another. I'm still processing the whole "inarticulacy" thing, but I'm pretty sure that it has put into words something ( Read more... )

rasp·ber·ry
Noun. Slang. A derisive or contemptuous sound made by vibrating the extended tongue and the lips while exhaling.

When I was a kid I was a voracious reader, and this definition of "raspberry" often came up in the children's novels I read. For example:

"'You're a jerk,' she said, and gave him a raspberry."I didn't know what the hell ( Read more... )