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Familiarity Breeds Contempt? Not Hardly
Several members of my online writing group are in that most frustrating part of the writing cycle where they are sending work out to agents and publishers, waiting on pins and needles and dealing with...
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Some Readings for the Lugubrious (Bahrain, Occupy and More)
I’ve been shamefully lackadaisical in my blogging habits the last few weeks. I was searching for a word to describe my sluggishness and I thought of lugubrious. I wrote it down. Then I realized I had...
View ArticleFive Things to Read About Syria
A friend emailed me yesterday, "I'm trying to figure out what we should support in Syria. Can you suggest anything to read?"I have been worried about that myself. Some of the more inane leftists here...
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Comcasted!
“Thank you for choosing Comcast.”I will be hearing that phrase in my sleep for a long time; I’ve heard it at least 20 times in the last week, because it’s the cheery closing of every call.It’s a bitter...
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Israel, Palestine and the meaning of "complexity"
A few years ago, some friends and I were working on a series of posters to hang in San Francisco buses. The project faltered for a number of reasons, but one of them was that we couldn’t agree on the...
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If It's "Increasing Personal Effectiveness", Why Am I Doing It at Work?
I spent the last two days in an Increasing Personal Effectiveness training at work.I am generally pretty skeptical about such things, especially in the workplace. First, they reek of “quality of work...
View ArticleAurora: Who Can Make Sense of the Senseless?
I’ve been obsessed with the Aurora theater shootings. Possibly even more than the fact that the shooting occurred was that in the reporting on it, I learned about at least two other mass shootings...
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Why am I wasting time watching the Olympics?
Watching the Olympics is definitely a guilty pleasure. I feel like I shouldn’t watch them, but I can’t stop.Here are the reasons not to watch:1. The commentators – they tell us what we already...
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Too Many Martyrs and Too Many Dead*
A friend texted me the other day:“Blog topic: How the Sikh massacres managed to stay on yahoo news for one day compared to colorado days and days.”It's a question a lot of people have been asking,...
View ArticlePussy Riot: Feminist or Foe
A couple weeks ago, I did a radio piece on the trial of three members of the Russian feminist punk band “Pussy Riot.” For anyone who spent the last month on the Curiosity or somewhere, Pussy Riot is...
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The Battle of the Buses: Another Round for These Freaks and These Soldiers
Okay, I paraphrased that Joni Mitchell lyric. And why am I suddenly stuck on song lyrics from my youth forblog titles?A little while ago I wrote about ad wars that have broken out around the country,...
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Four questions about elections
Warning: This is not a blog for those of you who are already sick to death of election talk ... The other night I went to the 30th anniversary party of Urban Stonehenge. It’s a peeling pink house...
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Teen Dating, Arranged Marriage, and Hating on Women's Bodies
Two best things I've read this week: An Anti-Teen-Dating DiatribeSyrian-born, U.S.-raised author, poet and scholar Mohja Kahf, on the double standard applied to "teen dating" and "arranged marriage"...
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An Anarchist's Yom Kippur - If Not Now, When?
Wednesday, September 26, 2012What does a Jewish pagan atheist do on Yom Kippur?I fast, for a complicated series of reasons – tradition, memory, connection with a community, and because I look forward...
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Don't Drink the Cool-Aid: Yes on 34
As some of you have noticed, I've been on a blogging holiday, but I just have to respond to some of the things that have been circulating recently from progressives opposing Proposition 34, to repeal...
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The Week After the Day After
Unable to beat Obama with tried and true tactics – racist fearmongering, voter suppression and the grand coalition of pissed off white men – the Republicans are apparently going for the one thing that...
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9 (Sort of ) Revolutionary (Sort of) Gifts for the Holiday Season
A number of my friends have the misfortune to have birthdays very close to Xmas. It's a misfortune because it’s hard to schedule parties and because people like me, who hate shopping, avoid it even...
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Does Mental Illness Exist? Yes!
I was trying to write something very different, something much more cerebral and complicated, about Newtown and alienation and Occupy and The Book of Mormon, which I saw the other night. Maybe I still...
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Newtown, Occupy and The Book of Mormon
1. When I first heard about the school shootings in Newtown, I didn’t have a particularly strong reaction. I saw the headlines, I saw the number 20, then it became 26, but I didn’t read the details....
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Gillian Flynn and the Myth of the Murderous Moms
Recently a coworker who knows I like mysteries handed me his copy of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. I was ambivalent it because, one, I had read Flynn’s Sharp Objects, and didn’t like it that well,...
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