Category Archives: product
Everything Is Now A Social Networking Site
Everything is becoming a social networking site. At Men’s Health’s magazine site this morning, for example, I wanted information on a workout and was asked to create a user profile. This is also known as “my demographic stats for your … Continue reading
Filed under product
The Money Quote
From Sam J. Miller’s essay on the Short Story, over at The Quarterly Conversation: Many, including me, see a lot of positives in the digitization of art, don’t have a lot of sympathy for the RIAA when it complains about … Continue reading
Filed under animal savagery, art, books, politics, product, white collar sweatshops of the east coast, writers, writing
18% Winner, 82% Loser
You might wonder how [Chris] Matthews could simultaneously argue that John McCain would be a big winner if he got 18 percent of the vote and that if Hillary Clinton finished with more than 30 percent, it would mean she … Continue reading
Filed under meme, political art, politics, product
The Silent Majority Is Reading
The New York Times ran this piece Sunday about the pretentiousness of buying something like Herodotus for someone for Christmas. Let’s read along and translate it, shall we? Feel free to add your own translations in the comments. YOU would … Continue reading
The Joke That Tells You Your Future: Day 2 of the Literary Writers Conference
A few days before the conference, as I went through my magazine files, I found an old copy of Might. Might was a magazine Dave Eggers edited in San Francisco in the early ’90s, and in this particular issue, he … Continue reading
Filed under blogs, books, gossip, literary contests, media, MFA programs, novels, product, writers, writing
Your Questions Answered: The Amazon Kindle
Q: Tell me, what do you think of the Amazon Kindle? A: I think it’s an excellent revisable beginning. The tech stuff on it is great, also that Amazon is behind it, but I want to see it go from … Continue reading
Filed under ask koreanish, bookstores, current events, product
I don’t know, I just do.
On my visits to Korea, I felt very much like the wrong sort of grandchild, the lumpen half-breed, who couldn’t speak Korean and who couldn’t look Korean. How do you tell them apart, a cousin asked me, about Americans. I … Continue reading
Filed under author's own, fox demons, Korea, Korean America, Korean American, Koreanish, product, writers, writing
If you remember from reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the changes go slowly and then quick.
Amherst Coffee, 11AM, with my two students, Anna and Steve, in a Special Topics in the short story. Me: Did you see that Verizon is now blocking users from receiving text message alerts from NARAL? Anna: That’s like a story … Continue reading
James Frey: A Million Little Dollars, others
James Frey sells novel for two million to HarperCollins. Emily Gould at Gawker does a lovely job of explaining why she’s pissed: Frey didn’t just pull an Augusten Burroughs—it’s not like the lies were “discrepancies” attributable to “we all have … Continue reading
William Gibson on Second Life and his work
You recently did a reading in the virtual world of Second Life, where you are a kind of patron saint. I got shut out — I didn’t realize capacity would be an issue — but I caught up with it … Continue reading
