The Human Chronicle

Why African-Americans Loath “Uncle Tom”
This has always been a curiosity to me, since Uncle Tom is a morally noble character in Stowe’s novel, meant to champion civil liberties. During the late 1850s, however, troupes began producing stage adaptations of the novel, replacing the morally noble character with a more stereotypical caricature. Unfortunately, the novel has [...]

Why don’t authors/poets ever possess the kind of voice you’d hope/want them to have? James Joyce reading from Finnegan’s Wake sounded like the Lucky Charms leprechaun. And Ashbery has such an academic’s voice—modest, yes, but also kind of feminine. His voice doesn’t match his face, and certainly doesn’t match the style of writing I would [...]

I just finished watching a Charlie Rose interview with Jim Courier about the 2008 Wimbledon finals. Rose and Courier both noted in Nadal one attribute I’ve heard echoed through similar interviews about Picasso, Hunter S. Thompson, and others—how hard they worked. With Picasso and Thompson, it was how hard, how often, and how much work [...]

Don’t pretend to follow this…just go with it, and enjoy the ride.
Electroma Trailer

I’m not sure when I became a hater. It’s a little frustration, a little bitterness—but all that comes with sharing air on this planet. When there are more people who believe Obama is a Muslim than there are regular readers of poetry, fiction, or drama, the intellectual curve of our society drops from bell-shape to [...]

Soft-core…for those Puritan prudes who only read in bed at night.

Hardcore…for those with a little kink, and who like it a little rough around the pages.

Smut for those who are dirty, filthy, naughty readers…

Illegal in the US full on froggy masochistic fetish word-fest

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/books/Haruki-Murakami-Solves-Your-Problems-Blog
 
He doesn’t do a good job, necessarily, of answering the questions…but he has heart. I’ll give him that much. My friend Crystal is a Murakami fanatic, and another friend sent me a Murakami joke one afternoon about a farting cat. I’m not sure what the interest is exactly, but the dude is wicked popular. He’s [...]

The Extremely Long Odds Against the Destruction of Earth
Though to most it may not sound like a big deal, it’s pretty exciting when you think about it. A few dozen Big Money types you don’t know in a part of the world you have no access to are funding a project you have no say [...]

Since my current day job is preparing to move an entire house across portions of three states, not much has happened at The Human Chronicle this past week, and even I admit the last three posts were a little weak. Light on content, heavy on getting paid. (On that note, I’m considering adding a donate [...]