Adaptations are tricky things

But this short film based on Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" looks good:



It looks impressionistic enough, and they wisely choose to make a short film, instead of stretch it out to a feature-length movie.

A momentous day for me

I got paid to write something. I was asked to write a short piece on an upcoming play for Seven Days. It's just 400 words, and edited by others, and I really didn't think I would get paid for it. But today I was given a surprise check.

I am a paid writer. I never thought it would happen.

Also, I'm hungover today. I guess it just goes with the territory.

Another author leaves us

R.I.P. J. G. Ballard

You're not a writer

Last night I was chatted up in a bar by some dude. Yes, I appreciate socializing, but this person was just lame. After he found out I majored in English, he started talking about characters and writing and how he'd like to write something someday. Two sentences later he also used the line, 'I'm a student of life.'

Do I even have to comment that this was a horrible conversation? Let me begin with the most important point: Wake up, people. Not everyone is a writer; not everyone can do it; it's not as easy as you think. Let it go, do what you are actually good at, and leave the writing to those who even have a modicum of understanding of the medium and who strive and sweat and laugh and cry over the art-form.

And a 'student of life'? Come on. What are you, a 60-year-old hippie? Who, by the way would have way more cause to used that hack cliche than a clueless 20-something. Gain some actual attributes and the proper adjectives to describe them. Not for me, or those who have to talk to you. For yourself, really.

From John Updike, RIP

He was not one close to my heart simply because I have read v. little of his works, but he cannot help but be admired for his literary stature and output. I always find myself a little sad when any author dies.

“The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me.”

--from The New York Times

from Franz Kafka

Parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already.

From Women

"Just living until you die is hard work."

From Ham on Rye, re: wine

"This stuff may not be good for surgeons but anybody who wanted to be a surgeon, there was something wrong with them to begin with."

A webcomic

I read several webcomics, and this is one of my favorites, Octopus Pie. The author is still struggling to make it all work, so she's asked for plugs. Check it out--and go back to the beginning. You could make it through the archives in a couple of days. It'll be like a short story collection with pictures.