Achenblog (Free subscription) | yesterday
I need to start reading again. I am ashamed to say that I read only one of the books on The New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2009 list. But it could have been worse -- I could have been skunked. And I'm glad to know that, in extolling the virtues of David Finkel's book "The Good Soldiers," I have been proved RIGHT ONCE AGAIN. [You may have noticed this pattern over time. I say...
ringtonia.com (Free subscription) | 12/01/2009
Spotted on boingboing , a video of Fiddler Tim O'Brien singing his song about the phantom phone call syndrome . From the lyrics : You feel it vibrate, you reach for the cell. But no one's there, that's how you tell . Related: -- Phantom vibration syndrome -- Ringxiety -- When you hear ringing and there's no one there
Textually (Free subscription) | 12/01/2009
Spotted on boingboing , a video of Fiddler Tim O'Brien singing his song about the phantom phone call syndrome . From the lyrics : You feel it vibrate, you reach for the cell. But no one's there, that's how you tell . Related: -- Phantom vibration syndrome -- Ringxiety -- When you hear ringing and there's no one there
Boing Boing (Free subscription) | 12/01/2009
Gnat sez, "YouTube video of national treasure/musician Tim O'Brien, singing his song about the phantom phone call syndrome. In the words of the song: You feel it vibrate, you reach for the cell But no one's there, that's how you tell Tim O'Brien: Phantom Phone (Thanks, Gnat!)...
The Industry Standard (Free subscription) | 12/01/2009
With Oracle 's proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems stalled by European Union deliberations , industry dignitaries offered mixed perspectives recently on the ultimate fate of the deal and what it could mean for Sun technologies if the deal falls through. The $7.4 billion merger is stalled over EU concerns over the fact that the commercial database giant would own the open source MySQL database,...
The Irish Times (Free subscription) | 11/28/2009
New regulations which will effectively require commercial premises to have an additional brown bin for biodegradable waste are to be signed within weeks by Minister for the Environment John Gormley,writes Tim O’Brien.
In Photos (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
St Mary’s Cathedral, Killarney in the background. We walked around the town a few weeks back but I didn’t have time to get down to the Cathedral this time. Still impressive, even from this distance. I wonder if “Tim O’Brien & Sons Furniture Carpets” is online anywhere? Related PostsNorth Cathedral FramedCobh boats and cathedralNorth Cathedral, Cork
Perpetual Folly (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
I had read parts of this book before, including the title story, which is widely anthologized. I’d also heard the author read the book’s final story, “The Lives of the Dead,” at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in 2008. It is a wonderful book, and if you haven’t read it I encourage you to do so. It is a fictional memoir, I suppose. The narrator has a lot in common...
KINETIC CARNIVAL (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
Among the glitz of the Las Vegas style show world, the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Expo 2009 held in Nevada gave kudos to the creators of the beacon of glitz of the older world at the turn of the century in Coney Island. Fred Thompson and Skip Dundy, who were the dreamers around a depression ara who dared to imagine and turn their dreams into a motion of lights and...
Perpetual Folly (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
I first read Jesus's Son in 2000 (it first appeared in 1992) and my reaction at the time was simple: I hated it. What stayed with me over the years was the excessive drug use and the violence. I understand that these things are real and it all seemed authentic enough, but it just didn't appeal to me. Whenever I told people that I didn't like the book, they gave me strange looks, as if I was out of...
The Storialist (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
The Zoo A city needs a zoo. We need to see animals in natural, simulated habitats. At the zoo, they are grouped into neighborhoods, continents. We gawk at their eyes, the giraffe's canopy of black lashes, the elephant's fatigued Bakelite. The zoo employees are dressed for safari, in rumped khaki. The animals feel quite comfortable, of this we are certain. They still roar and shriek, trill and grunt....
CBC Radio 3 (Free subscription) | 11/13/2009
Coming up today on Grant Lawrence Live , 2PM ET / 11AM PT on CBC Radio 3's web radio/Sirius 86 : Today's Guests: NOVELS world debut (featuring members of Tokyo Police Club, Will Currie and the Country French , Born Ruffians ) Old Man Luedecke A few days ago our good friend and Canadian independent music legend Dave Bidini let off a whole lotta steam in this article about the current state of CBC 2.0...
Black Shoe Diaries (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
Sometimes, the schedules play out better than originally planned. After two tougher-than-necessary weekends against West Chester and Drexel, the Icers found themselves in a full home weekend against West Virginia and then a road-trip against a not-as-talented Navy team. These two weekends aligned perfectly, as the Icers continue to fight the injury bug. Senior leader Matt Kirstein (MCL sprain - 3-5...
Kiko's House (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
A common experience of the men and women who served in Vietnam was the feeling that the war was an indescribable blend of fact and fantasy. Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried are two of the greatest books on the war. They are considered fiction, but their power lies how O'Brien plays off of that moulage of fact and fantasy. Here is an excerpt from The Things They Carried...
The Big Picture (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
New York Magazine’s gossipy exploration of the conflict going on within the New York Times’s business section has a lot of people amazed by Sunday editor Tim O’Brien’s full frontal assault on Sorkin’s talents as a writer: “When Andrew had a Sunday business column and he’d drop a thinly reported or loosely written piece on the [...]
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