Sentential Links

Linkage....

:: In other words, part of the majority of gun violence is the attitude of "If I feel threatened, I can and should whip out my gun."

:: Every day I read things that suggest that our left-wing friends are trying to stamp out manliness. Just after 9/11, there was something of a resurgence of masculinity, of the traditions of manliness. (Two different takes on the shootings of the other day...needless to say, I find SDB's take rather, shall we say, odd. I'm on the left, and I have absolutely zero idea what he's on about. I'm almost reminded of a certain laughable blog post from back in the day by a guy named Kim DuToit....)

(By the way, it suddenly seems to me that any attempt to enumerate a list of qualities that are shared by 'real men' is a sign of a bad way of thinking about things.)

:: I’ve never been to a midnight, opening night showing of a movie. I’ve gone to premieres, though, and I do know what cinematic anticipation feels like. There’s just something about seeing something before almost anyone else that provides an unusual sense of satisfaction. Your view of the film is not colored by what everyone else says.

:: Chuck Klosterman once said something along the lines of not liking Billy Joel as a pop star because Billy never made him see a pop star or something to aspire to: "the only thing he's ever made me see is me." That's exactly what's so amazing about his music to me.

:: Writing a book ain't all fun and games, kids. Writing fiction isn't any easier than writing non-fiction, and vice versa. Both forms can be stubborn and maddening and offer a whole lot of seemingly insurmountable challenges--just of a wholly different sort. But the mountain itself is climbed, I've reached the peak. (Having reached one peak already, I'm now aware of the mists dispersing...to reveal another peak. Sigh!)

:: I am a sucker when modern characters are re-imagined into old style projects. (Me too...these are really cool!)

:: I’m kind of like Monk. Very anal. I have my writing space and I never write anywhere else. I have my stuff all carefully arranged, and I don’t like it if something gets moved. I have several recourses that I can turn to when I am stumped or bothered about a piece of writing to remove the so-called block. I always write in silence. No sounds, no music, no interruptions. This is all weird, but it beats lying in a coffin! (Patrick Rothfuss and Terry Brooks have been interviewing each other, and posting the results back and forth on each other's blogs. Cool stuff, from a 'peeling back the writerly curtain' standpoint. Follow the links from Rothfuss's blog back to the previous three parts.)

:: As a lover of words of all sizes, levels of subtlety, and countries of origin, I’d like to speak to you on behalf of the Citizens for Creativity in Cursing.

I’m a fan of cursing. Not just your standard, four-letter scatological words, crude words spoken without thought, words used by the drunken, the lazy, or the uninspired.

Why limit yourself to four letters? (Why indeed!)

More next week....