More Ns on the march to ten ( Read more... )

This is why I love technology - I drove myself up to San Francisco this weekend with naught but a few sets of clothes and my trusty laptop. I had made no plans ahead of time; I did not even have a map of the San Francisco area to guide me. As soon as I left greater L.A., I was flying solo into the darkness. Upon arrival, I found the nearest Days ( Read more... )

It's time for the Ten Ns! Or at least the first two.

1. NaNoWriMo - Short for National Novel Writing Month. You can check it out here. It's one gigantic writing prompt to force you into actually doing something which you've always planned on doing but somehow never got around to - that is to say, changing that broken light bulb. (Not really. ( Read more... )

Time for something new. Or rather, something very, very old that finally caught my attention in my e-mail inbox. Some people whose writing I respect (or am forced to read because I have known them for a long, long time) not-so-recently went through a fad wherein they wrote about ten topics beginning with the same letter. Those who commented on ( Read more... )

I think it would be really, really fun to rob a bank some day. The only problems would be the breaking of society's moral code against stealing ahd the possibility of shooting or being shot by a cop. I think someone out there should buy an old bank building that has been closed down, open it up as a pretend bank, and then let people get together ( Read more... )

Charley just found a tarantula in our house. A small one. He knew it was a tarantula because he put his face a foot away from it and stared at its fur and its huge fangs clicking together. He said it squealed the first time he hit it because it was on the carpet and he didn't get a clean shot off. He killed it and threw it out, but the fact ( Read more... )

I went down to Santa Monica yesterday to enjoy the time I had off for Labor Day. I stopped at a Borders on the way in and was standing in line to buy some things when I heard the sales lady answer the phone, "Hello, this is Borders Hollywood." I don't think I've ever felt so glam in my life. It's not like I'm a really glam guy, though. Anyway, ( Read more... )

Aha! There was just another commercial on tv that I loved. This one was for NPR, and it perfectly encapsulated the standard reaction of any avid NPR listener to the end of a particularly intriguing segment - sitting in the car, staring at nothing, hand poised to take the keys out of the ignition. I couldn't begin to count the number of times I' ( Read more... )

I was driving home the other day last week, flipping through the radio, when I caught some actual reception from NPR. Generally, the few streets just around my house and the low-lying roads open to the east are the best for getting my daily dose of intelligent news. If I drive up into the hills or go anywhere near town, some crazy Mexican station ( Read more... )

I have to say, I love the commercial from the Barclay-owned iShares. I think it's only thirty seconds, but it shows cuts of people writing on post-it notes, jotting something down in a taxi, working against the glass of a revolving door as they walk in and out and in and out of building, writing on their hands, writing on a pad in the rain, ( Read more... )