For the millions (sic) of people waiting for me to continue on with TABOTD Part II and maybe even this blog, it’s in my mind to do it, but it’s not where my head’s at right now. I actually have 5 new chapters of TAB II written, but need to go through them, and [...]
My best friend in high school reminds me a bit of Jared Loughner. We smoked a lot of pot at 15, listening to Black Sabbath. We smoked with his mom. One night I wasn’t there, he dropped acid in the park on Temescal Canyon. “I saw coyotes,” he said, as if this experience had changed [...]
Another one:
Nucleomitophobia . . . is an exaggerated fear of being blown to bits by nuclear weapons. Bertie Rupp has it, and it’s driving him crazy. He’s tried meditation, yoga, vegetarianism, and The Society for the Preservation of Mankind. Nothing works, until he hears about “The American Book of the Dead”, a Zen guide to [...]
I like this image from this NY Times article.
The artist.
The American Book of the Dead: poems by Jim Barnes
So Juan Williams gets fired for being afraid of people dressed in Muslim garb and Yahoo writes it up saying this:
The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan wrote Wednesday morning that Williams’ statement about fearing Muslims on planes is an example of bigotry. “What if someone said that they saw a black man walking down the [...]
This American Prospect piece sort of makes the case for why I think Louis CK is the next George Carlin. It’s sort of a hard argument to make, because Louis CK isn’t overtly political. But he’s so great about knocking people out of their complacency and political correctness. He calls bullshit – and also calls [...]
I didn’t know this:
White Noise was published in 1984 and won the American Book Award in the same year. Its early working title, The American Book of the Dead, highlights the centrality of death in the narrative and the prominence of spiritual or sacred processes that must be undertaken to ensure safe passage into the [...]
The book’s been getting some bad reviews. What’s most striking about this is: I don’t care. At some point in my life, I might have seen the bad reviews as right and the good reviews as wrong. But now my feeling is – the book is meant to be enjoyed. Some [...]
Random things, mostly stolen from The Daily Grail.
Piece from the L.A. Times that’s similarly smug and dismissive as this Christian Science Monitor piece about UFOs. Book looks promising. Piece begins:
He’s not saying he was abducted by a UFO and probed or anything, but former President Clinton’s chief of staff John Podesta is lending his name [...]