STL #119: Beginning Again

Reading a book of Donald Westlake’s nonfiction last month, I came across the fact I’d come across before—that Joseph Conrad didn’t begin writing until he was 45 years old. Westlake joined this well-known case with Rex Stout, the creator of Nero Wolfe, who also made his publishing debut at the age of 45.*  As a lazy man of letters nearing that age, I was compelled as I often am around my birthday (which coincides with summer and which means, for me, more time) to return to the idea of a daily writing practice. This time it might even stick.  

Back to the primal scene of this particular inspiration. Inspired anew every year at my birthday, I pledge again to start a daily writing practice. Just an hour a day, I vowed, as I wrote the first draft of this as a free verse poem over coffee, bread with honey. To sit for an hour a day and grind it out—to make something out of pure work. “To find my own mind and soul” I wrote. Then I wrote  “Maybe even leave a mark for my life.” 

Think of Westlake himself; a working writer since a teenager, running a squad of pseudonyms publishing a short shelf of novels every year.By the time he was my age, he had half a career behind him. But is that what I am after?

I’ve tried what I bracketed as “[the writing life]” before: dreck novels in a month; an abandoned screenplay; spurts of daily poems. What about my dissertation, or a handful of academic articles (stuff I really don’t care about). The truth is, writing is hard and what I write tends to be bad. 

But maybe at 45 years of age I start to understand my real reasons—not to get into libraries and living rooms like Conrad and Stout, but to make some shape and meaning for myself and this world.  And so I make another birthday pledge (belatedly, I needed some revision time): one hour of writing, every day, in any form. I started this as a poem because it said “ah me! hear my foibles! sing my weakness!” but it broke loose to discursive prose. Maybe tomorrow I’ll find a poem, or pitch for a comic book. I’ll get back to that academic prose too, and try to make it less bullshitty. 

My practice will be simply to write, in any format so long as I record it in my notebook. It can be first drafts or revision if so fitting. I’ll be back here on the blog on a weekly basis, for any writing that is appropriate for this particular forum. 

*(A little Internet research suggest that Westlake got his facts wrong) Rex Stout I knew little about, and it seems Westlake is being deceptive. Stout wrote for the pulps as a youth, retired to business, and published his first book at 43. The larger point is that he made his mark with 33 books published from his 40s to his 80s. There are other deceptive cases of later bloomers like Raymond Chandler (44) and Davenport. 

STL #100: Objects of Fascination and Agents of Revelation

It has taken 8 years to complete 100 posts; that's only a little more than a post a month. With my rededication to daily writing, I hope that I can return a bit closer to my weekly rate. In any case, I have decided to mark the occasion by writing in my favorite form: the list. Following is a varied list of things, mostly works of art but a few ideas or lifestyle accoutrements,  I've become familiar with during the life span of STL.  Some of these things I've written about, but most I haven't. The most significant thing I've noticed in compiling this list is that the books are all of my own choosing: I haven't been assigned a reading list this whole time. This list might be seen as a memoir of the last 8 years of my life, but then again that might be pushing it. I'll add a bit more commentary after the list.

1. Absu, "Ye Uttuku Spells"
2. Belgian ales
3. Charles Olson, Maximus Poems
4. William Gaddis, The Recognitions
5. Jack Green's Fire the Bastards
6. Kill Bill
7. Graham Greene, The Comedians
8. Guy Davenport, Tatlin!
9. Albert Ayler, Spiritual Unity
10. Reality-based politics
11. Jens Lekman, “A Postcard to Nina”
12. Eddie Campbell, How to be an Artist
13. "Lying In Bed On A Summer Morning," by Carl Rakosi
14. Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things
15. Deep Red
16. Halloween
17. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
18. Millennium Actress
19. Lost in Translation
20. Etre et Avoir
21. The Sopranos
22. The Wire
23. William Bronk
24. Watchmen, reluctantly
25. Seven Soldiers of Victory
26. Hendrick’s Gin
27. In the American Tree
28. Cy Twombly, Untitled (Say Goodbye Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor)
29. Bread crumb eggs
30. George Simenon
31. Django Reinhardt
32. Freaks and Geeks
33. My So-Called Life
34. Carson, NOX
35. Lee Ann Brown, Polyverse
36. Fiery Furnaces, Rehearsing My Choir
37. Tori Amos, From the Choirgirl Hotel
38. Something Said
39. Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man, Out of Season
40. Joanna Newsom, Milk Eyed Mender
41. Sleater Kinney, One Beat
42. His Dark Materials
43. Battle Royale
44. John Cheever's Collected Short Stories
45. American Elf
46. Black Riders
47. Robert Duncan, "Opening of the Field"
48. Gilbert Godfery in The Aristocrats [2005]
49. Goodbye Dragon Inn
50. Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41
51. Team America
52. The singularity
53. Tender Buttons
54. The Pound Era
55. Three Places in New England
56. Alban Berg, Violin Concerto
57. Matt Fraction, Casanova
58. The New American Poetry 1945-1960
59. The Hold Steady, Separation Sunday
60. Immortal All Shall Fall
61. Deathspell Omega Chaining the Katcheon
62. Wardruna
63. Girl Talk, All Night
64. Lair of the Minotaur, "Let's Kill These Motherfuckers"
65. Dope throne
66. Modern Life Is War “D.E.A.D.R.A.M.O.N.E.S.”
67. Mountain Goats “This Year”
68. Benji Hughes Love Extreme
69. Heartless Bastards, The Mountain
70. Opeth, Blackwater Park
71. Josephine Foster, Hazel Eyes I Will Follow
72. Cat Power The Greatest
73. No Thanks! Anthology
74. Haydn, Symphony 88
75. Robyn “Be Mine”
76. Spoon “Back to the Life"
77. Arcade Fire, Funeral
78. Dirty Weekend 
79. Old Boy
80. The Rothko Chapel
81. “Appalachian Spring”
82. Audition
83. Enter the Void
84. Y The Last Man
85. Marcel Dzama
86. Battlestar Galactica
87. John Porcellino, King Cat
88. Can These Bones Live?
89. Wicker Man
90. Blow Up
91. King Lear (Russian film)
92. Mozart, Symphony 40
93. Brandenberg Concertos
94. Garth Merenghi's Dark Place
95. The Grey Album
96. Community
97. Song of Ice and Fire
98. Siraccha and Earl Grey Ice Cream
99. O Paon

A few explanations are in order. With the exception of a few pieces of classical music, everything on this list is from the second half of the twentieth century or later. That is where my interests drive me, but as I was drawing up the list I made a conscious decision to make it this way to relieve me of the obligation to include things because I felt I should. Tom Jones, some Shakespeare plays, Milton, and other things I read for the first time in the last eight years might otherwise be on here. I felt that by keeping them off would cut away pretense and help me perhaps discover more of my true inclinations.  

Each work of art on this list was chosen because it keeps drawing me back in one way or another, offering more each time I revisit it. Some of the films (namely, Audition and Enter the Void) keep their claim on my psyche, but I doubt I will ever summon up the resolve to watch them again. What the works offer is different is each case: the goofy comedy of Garth Marenghi sounds different chords than Ed Dahlberg's jeremiad Can These Bones Live?. Dahlberg I'm sure would be mortified to be keeping company with much of this list--I notice that I trend lowbrow in much of my tastes. Looking over the list, I don't feel I can make any grand pronouncements, nor do I even understand why I include half a dozen foodstuffs and only two works of visual art. As with everything I write, this turns up more questions. Here's to the next 100 opportunities to figure out the answers.

(In case you are interested, here's a census of the list: 35 items can be classified as music, 18 as movies, 9 as poetry, 9 as fiction (therefore 18 as literature), 7 as comics, 7 as TV, 5 as criticism, 4 as comestibles, 3 as visual art, and 2 as concepts. The music breaks down as follows: 7 as metal, 6 as classical (including modern), 6 as folk (I can't bring myself to type "freak folk," but everything in this category is moody and eccentric, and with mostly acoustic instruments), 6 pop, 6 rock, 2 jazz, and 2 dj mashups.

STL #95: How do you blog about Shakespeare?

So I've been reading my way through Shakespeare's plays in my spare time over the last year and a half. I started with the comedies, which took six months, then hopped to the end of my Riverside Shakespeare to read the romances (essentially his late, and less straightforwardly funny, comedies) over winter break. I began this year with a chronological reading of the histories (by time of the plot, not order of composition), and now am halfway through the tragedies. I haven't mentioned this reading here for two reasons: 1) I hardly write about anything here anymore; and 2) how do you blog about Shakespeare? The words "blog" and "Shakespeare" don't combine promisingly. One is ephemeral, imperfect and the other (rightly or wrongly) signifies the eternal and blotless. My posts are somewhat developed for an unaffiliated Internet poster (and I avoid the words blog and blogger), but it's hard to imagine myself writing anything that isn't cant and trite. Given my relative laziness (I'll read the plays and maybe the introduction in my edition, but have done no serious research) couple with a lack of training (by no means am I a Shakespearian scholar), what insight am I likely to bring? Instead, isn't it far more likely that I'll embarrass my anonymous self and mislead the legions of readers of this blog out there?

But my objections, that I'll embarrass myself or mislead my readers, are defeated in stating them: I do this anonymously, far from my professional life, and this forum remains in blessed obscurity. The reasons I keep returning to this space aren't entirely clear to me, but I think the following apply: it's a kind of r&d lab in which I might strike on something brilliant that I can develop and use elsewhere; it helps me figure out what I think about topics that matter to me; I remember things I write about much better than things I don't write about; it's fun, after a fashion.

Would writing about Shakespeare be so different than my adventures through Don Allen's "New American Poetry" anthology? You remember, dear reader, the epic run of STL #65-91, my dogged commentary on each poet included in that book. Half the time I was talking out of my ass, so why is it any different if the topic is Two Gentlemen of Verona rather than "A Supermarket in California"? Is it just because I don't need a footnote to explain what the setting is? My gigantic scholarly edition has those anyway. Using the lab framework, there isn't much difference, though I think I'm less likely to ever write anything formal about Shakespeare.

What would I gain by the writing? Primarily, the act of composition would help be regain what I've already started to lose-- a recall of the plays. Which one is Olivia? Is she in the one in Illyria? What was it Hamlet said to Osric (I just read that one, but I can't really remember) about his "bonnet"? Writing even a brief note on each play would help me reclaim it in my memory--and each note could be a gesture toward what I want to retain. But if I write as an aid to memory, what am I trying to reclaim? Or, to put this question another way, what did I hope to gain by the reading in the first place? That is not a question I can deal with here--the majority of my interior life is based on a reading regime which I continue on the faith that it enriches my life. But that remuneration can't continue if I forget the material, whatever its nature might be.

Two of my favorite modes of operare deliberation and codification. I love to decide in writing, and I love to establish rules for myself to follow. So having determined that I can proceed, the real question is how should I proceed? Since the reading project has encompassed the whole body of Shakespeare's drama, I'd like to touch on each play, if only briefly. Since I'm nearing the end, that suggests a retrospective: I'm late in the tragedies, but began early in the comedies. This might be a good opportunity to put the plays back together in a way different than I read them: in the (supposed) order of composition. I did begin reading with one Shakespeare's first plays, the "Comedy of Errors," but my reading order led to seeing how his comedy developed. What if I reconsidered the "Comedy" as the play between Richard III and Titus Andronicus? Not that I'm in any position to expansively synthesize themes--such things have been done before I'm sure. No, this reconsideration is simply to help me think about the plays again.

So I'll return through them in order of composition. To further the concept of this writing project as a reclamation for memory, each piece will focus on something I find worth remembering about the play in question--a scene, an insight, or some piece of language. I know that I want to commit some few lines to memory, so I'll start with Shakespeare's first words as a dramatist.

Henry VI, a three-part potboiler, starts with a series of speeches bemoaning the death of King Henry V, who Shakespeare will chronicle later in a far better play. Henry VI is a clunkly, obtuse play, but right from the beginning we can see the playwright's verbal gifts. The Duck of Bedford opens the play:

"Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!

Comets, importing change of times and states,

Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,

And with them scourge the bad revolting stars

That have consented unto Henry's death.

King Henry the Fift, too famous to live too long!

England ne'er lost a king of so much worth."

Notice the sound patterns at play here--interlocking aspirant h and b in the first line, which introduces the liquid l that manifests in the l and r's holding together the middle lines. The kr of crystal turns around in the form of "scourge" which takes the returning b and a sequence of l and r's as its object. The rhetoric of the passage is interesting itself--using a astronomical sign to punish the engines of the fate, the "bad revolting stars" who are blamed for taking Henry V, and the fine line of saying not that Henry was the best king (and therefore better than the current king) but the best they have lost.

I'll let this happy beginning stand in for the entire trilogy. So having begun, I'll try to continue at a fairly rapid pace. Next week, I'll do address at least "Richard III" and "The Comedy of Errors."

STL #61: Numbers

Finding my place in the history of STL, and beginning again.

I promised this bibliographic essay on the numbering of the Simplest Things Last series in the then-unnumbered follow up to the "Test of Poetry." The problem at that time was how to account for my free-form, months long sporadic engagement with the poetry in Zukofsky's anthology. My obligation to my dissertation got the best of me, and I never posted under the title Simplest Thing Last again. Early this year, I claimed the blog spot that unsurprisingly no one had taken and began posting a handful of short essayistic pieces, but did not post them explicitly under the STL imprimatur. The Archives Series (and life, in the form of finishing the dissertation, landing and starting the job) overshadowed these original posts, but with that project over and the free time of winter break imminent, I'm finally ready to return to posting new pieces under the STL banner. First though, I want to sort through the very STL-ish pieces I've written and posted since June of 2005. Doing so will not only give me a number under which to file this, but will help me articulate my intentions for STL posts.

Following the demise of the first generation of STL, I posted (and have archived) 13 posts on my Locus site. The backstory of Locus is simply that it is a CMS created to give CWRL staffers a place separate from where the were posting class materials to work on personal or professional projects. The fluidity of the CMS allowed for powerful searching and sorting, but also broke down boundaries so that students might not recognize the difference between a personal blog post and course materials. My plan was to use Locus more as a notebook, to seed and build on future projects. After making an introductory sketch or blurb on a subject, I could search by tags later to add to or consult it. My 5th Locus post was simply notes on Other British Poetry compiled after reading the anthology by that name and denoting names of authors I'd like to read more of. These notes are then "other" than what I was doing with STL. They do not have a claim to completion nor the acknowledgment of a hypothetical reader. STL posts are nothing if not essayistic: they have some formal structure, a unified purpose or subject, and some notion of an audience. Locus notes thus do not qualify on any of these criteria, but the five posts tagged as "eleven" arguably meet them all. These annotated lists of eleven current enthusiasms do possess a formal structure and are written for an audience. Some clearly have a unified subject: Eleven for Free Comic Book Day is grouped around comics; Eleven from Best American Poetry 2005 is essentially a review of that book, just like STL # 7 reviewed the 2002 volume. The only Eleven that doesn't have an obvious unified theme is the one date 4/13/2006, number 7 in the series. Yet even this one traces a narrative from sickness to health. Therefore, I'm designating the following posts as part of the STL series:

STL 49/Locus 6 Eleven for 3/24/2006 (organized by nerdiness)
STL 50/Locus 7 Eleven for 4/13/2006 (sickness to health--not bad for a 50th post because it avoids the embarrassing pomposity I'd be predisposed toward)
STL 51/Locus 8 Eleven Poems from BAP 2005
STL 52/Locus 9 Eleven for Free Comic Book Day
STL 53/Locus 10 Basho's Narrow Road (selects 11 scenes from the problematic Cid Corman translation. This is a bit shorter and less developed than the others.)
I didn't record the date of Locus 10 and don't particularly want to go back to look. I know that it was summer of 2006, soon after I bought the translation in question on a trip to the West Coast. I bought it at a wonderfully shambly bookshop in Newport Oregon on the way down to San Francisco for a Charles Olson conference. (This will be important later.)

I got back into blogging with the current Blogger space, thanks in part to the conveince of Google gobbling up the company and in essence creating an account for me. (Flooding back to me at this moment is my "creative" blog buspoems which recorded poems I wrote while waiting for/riding the bus to work in the summer of 2005. Someday, someday.) In the current incarnation of STL, any essayistic post is by implication an edition of STL, since it was published under the heading. There must be exceptions: again, undeveloped notes do not count. By the tradition of the first post to the first blog, "meta" posts about what I intend to do don't count. Therefore, the first post to this incarnation, announcing the excellent goals

1. Catalogue my intellectual pursuits by reviewing various "cultural artifacts" like movies, books, and comics.
2. Articulate my critical perception of the world, especially in regard to aesthetics and information literacy.
3. Archive past writing from the aforementioned projects.

and Rules

1. Make one substantial post a week, on Tuesdays if possible.
2. Archive one previously written post per week, on Thursdays if possible.
3. Tag each post.
4. Review each quarter's posts to refine my taxonomy and revise these rules.
5. Eschew obsfucation.

(Yet this post is a meta post, is it not? It's more in depth then the first post or the "15 Minutes to Meta" post and it reflects on the cultural artifacts of previous posts rather than speculating on unwritten pieces. Yeah. That's it.)

Following the initial meta post, I posted 3 or 4 posts on appropriate topics and one underdeveloped post on teaching appropriately titled "Improvised Blather." On January 4 and 5, I posted "Reading Wang Wei" in two parts. After a gentle revision, this will become STL 54. "Three Thrillers" is a piece from which the properties of STL could be adduced. A loose structure drawing together related cultural artifacts, written in an affectedly "charming" style for the purpose of uncovering a personal aesthetic. "Three Thrillers" must be STL 55. The "Comics Round-up" is relatively unimpressive, but not in the manner of a note and so will be swept up as STL 56.

The "Blog Every Day Month" of November saw the end of the Archives Series, but also a few items of new content. Several of these are clearly notes or meta statements of practice ("meta statements of practice"?). Those that are not will also be incorporated into the STL numbering:
STL 57: Detachment (about getting rid of the materials objects of music)
STL 58: Horrorfest 2007
STL 59: Why Study Literature? The Usable Past
STL 60: 300 (followed by a note on a possible future post on the movie, which will certainly never be written)

I've written my way to the present STL 61, which re-institutes the Title/Description format. I do not intend to do the clerical work of editing the above posts in the near future, which makes this piece so important, dear reader. In the coming weeks, expect to see one or two posts on music listening practices, a reading roundup of some challenging and enjoyable novels, and the beginning of another Test of Poetry, this time based on Don Allen's New American Poetry anthology.

15 minutes to meta

I need to make a decision before I carry on with my November 'daily' blogging: Do I number my long Test of Poetry post as one STL post or more? And how many more, if that's what's needed? Since I have things I need and want to do, I don't want to spend more that 15 minutes on this task, so by the time "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" starts, I must be done with this deliberative post.

There's 7 or 8 posts in this category. However, many of these posts are far sketchier than any other STL post, which are closer to reviews or essays than blog notes (and there is no question of ever numbering the 'notes' I've posted in the STL series. The project as a whole is a bit off of the other STL's, with the exception of the reflective "Final Exam." The "Final Exam" then should be numbered separately, while the other parts will be STL #47.2 ect. To provide further infomatic flexibility, I'll tag each post "TOP" and "poetry." Titles will be Test of Poetry, Description will be the designated portion of the test.

"She's Leaving Home" just started, leaving me a few minutes to review and add further thoughts. [pause] Not really, but the decision does assume some unspoken definition of what an STL post is, which I may pick up next week.

Inane post

So anyway, it's a quarter after nine in the morning and I should start cleaning the house. We aren't having guests for Thanksgiving tomorrow, but it just seems wrong to go into one of the major domestic holidays with a dirty and cluttered house. In a few minutes, I'll put on some music and start sweeping. I'll at least do a general straightening and wipe down bathroom fixtures. I invited my friend M over over lunch to discuss class planning. We'll have ham or meatloaf on rye sandwiches, which reminds me I should run to the corner store to pick up some chips and beer.

This is a meta post. Other things I could post about: a follow up on 300 focusing on the problematic foreign policy of the Spartans(!); a plan for a blog/webzine devoted to the freak-folk scene (an idea I had a year ago--is the moment over); a meditation on how technology controls the way I listen to music; a review of Nicholas Mosley's Assassins; thoughts on Norman Mailer. But I did not post on them, and now I will go sweep.

Archives Project: STL #45

Title: Strategy
Date: 10 December 2004

The last post of 2004, and 2005 were not to be fabulous years for blogging. The post promises a lot of things I never did:
Best of years (I don't think I've done this in a long time)
Best movies ever
Definitive Buffy entry
Retirement of glenn mcdonal (though he still posts now and then)

I do still manage my projects by scholarship teaching service and personal.

I've got a little time on my hands: What should I do next?

For one, I'm going to revivify the blog. I like doing it, and more I like having it done: I can see exactly how I wasted my time a certain week. It's coming up on the end of the year, the season of best-of lists. I don't have the money or leisure to speak authoritatively on the best X of the year, so last I year I dropped the 50 bestest songs ever on you, and the bestest albums of the last two years (bigger sample size, see). What I lack in money and leisure I make up for with subjectivity. I found in my papers recently a 1999 of my favorite movies ever. In my next entry, I'll type this up for posterity, and make any revisions I see fit. After that, you can expect to see my definitive Buffy entry, since the text is now complete, and maybe a catch up of the last two years of cd's, though I'm not sure that I'm that active a music fan anymore.

Getting back to art, after 2 political posts, an unpublished post on the retirement of glenn mcdonald, and months of nothing, will be a notable return to "normal," if I manage it. I ground my teeth for so long since November 2 that part of a tooth fell out. Art as a refuge might not be that noble, but it keeps me sane. It's also easy to swivel, while immersed in art, to the political conditions of its existence. In fact, it's getting hard not to. During the present reign of terror, with its malaprops, lies, and degradations of language, intense devotion to literature is important, if only to keep language, liberal education, and the human spirit alive.

Next year I'm off from teaching (next year I'm off from teaching!) so I'll pour it on with my dissertation. One of the four categories that I use to manage my time (teaching, admin, research, and leisure) is going latent, so I need to redirect that energy, and I don't mean toward leisure. I hope to have the complete thing drafted next year. I can't say for sure whether A Round of Fiddles will play a role in it or not-- probably not, since I don't really want to get caught up in the rhetorical battles of the poetry blogosphere. I do need to create some other "information architecture" through which to route my work, though, since it took me two years to produce a 30 page prospectus (and my reading really isn't done).

In the face of this little pledge for activity, I should note that I'm about to take off on a two week, cross-country adventure with Willow. I'll be writing while I'm at my mom's I'm sure, but might not actually post again til 2005. But despair not, gentle reader, I shall return.

November Am Blog Everyday Month

I just found out today that I'm supposed to blog every day in November. Since I haven't been even keeping up with my Archive project, I have decided to take up the challenge. I hereby declare that every non-teaching day shall see an original post, and every teaching day shall feature an Archive post. Today shall be two posts, since it's the second of the month. I know not why I have adopted the arch formality of "shall," nor do I know why I used Bizarro-speak in the title. I really hope neither continues.

The return

So, it's been awhile since my last post. A lot has happened--I interviewed for a job, was offered and took the job, finished and submitted (but not yet defended my dissertation) and finished revisions of one of two articles. There's plenty for me to talk about in upcoming weeks, though I won't start today. I have drafted my "listening protocols" for classical music, accumulated a number of comics since my last round-up, and need to think about a future research program. I'll do all this (and more) as I return to regular posting.

I like this blog:
http://isola-di-rifiuti.blogspot.com/

Archives Project: First Post

As I mentioned, I'll be reposting older posts so that I'll have them collected in one place. The following is the first post from my first version of STL.

Title: "And then went down to the blog"
Date: 24 June 2003
Coming soon to this space, a weekly (or semi-weekly, or occasional) review of arts and culture. These mini-essays will be quick takes on what I've being reading, watching, hearing, etc. I'm simply trying to record my impressions without committing to a big undertaking or alternately losing them to time.

 
My concept of blogs and first blog posts hasn't changed much. I still want to blog more formally than most, and still on cultural topics. It's still implicitly a supplement to my awful memory: if I write up my thoughts I'll be more likely to have some handle on these things I find so important and spend so much time with. The rules are very loose and indistinct compared to my first post of this series. Formulating rules is something I have students in my writing classes do a lot. It gets them to think about goals and genre expectations. With goals in mind, you can then deduce what actions you could take to reach them.

Note on the title: A very humble allusion to the first line of Pound's Cantos. I love that book, but I no longer expect to imitate its scope in a blog (if I ever did).

Note on tagging: I opted for "old" to avoid confusion with the archives of new posts that I'll be making. "Series1" refers to the first go at blogging; "series2" will be much shorter.

Rules of the Game

This is the third blog-project I've started. The first Simplest Things Last began in the summer of 2003, and lasted about a year, and I flirted with a project called "Elevens" last year. You'll see content from both those projects republished here, since I'll be losing the server space where that material is stored soon. This first post is to formulate the goals and rules for this incarnation, which I hope will last.

Goals

1. Catalogue my intellectual pursuits by reviewing various "cultural artifacts" like movies, books, and comics.
2. Articulate my critical perception of the world, especially in regard to aesthetics and information literacy.
   
3. Archive past writing from the aforementioned projects.

Rules

1. Make one substantial post a week, on Tuesdays if possible.
2. Archive one previously written post per week, on Thursdays if possible.
   
3. Tag each post.
   
4. Review each quarter's posts to refine my taxonomy and revise these rules.
5. Eschew obsfucation.

Currently re-reading "A"; watching 24 (season 2); revising dissertation chapter 5; listening to Arctic Monkeys, Haydn, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, etc