BLAZE

Stifle is an anagram of itself

The multiverse is quiet, so quiet. Rain is falling softly down. Do you know where the willows grow?

So, what's new? How about some one-liners?

• Goth's not dead — it just looks that way.
• Talk minus action equals zero.
• No matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of beers.

Moments to consider: As I was growing up, my father used to say there were only two things he couldn't fix: a broken heart and the crack of dawn.

This has been the century of mass storytelling. We live under a Niagara of stories: print, television, movies, audio, and the Internet deliver to us far more stories than our ancestors could have imagined, and the number of stories available to us seems to grow larger every year. This phenomenon, the rise of industrialized narrative — storytelling that's engineered for mass reproduction and distribution — has emerged as the most striking cultural fact of the twentieth century and the most far-reaching development in the history of narrative.
...
A broader question springs from the high density of storytelling in our daily lives. Mass culture and mass leisure have given all of us the opportunity to spend far more time absorbing stories than any of our ancestors could. Has this been to our benefit? Has it made us larger people than we might have been otherwise, or has it so filled us with aimless fantasies that we are emotionally and intellectually constrained? In this context, storytelling becomes an issue in the history of human development and democracy. Does our habit of seeing the world as stories make us understand ourselves better? Does it make us better citizens or worse? — Robert Fulford, The Triumph of Narrative: Storytelling in the Age of Mass Culture

A lovely thing happened. While surfing the other day, I dropped by a student's live journal. Her current entry was the answers to one of those 100-question surveys that make their way around by e-mail from time to time. Anyway. Here are two of her answers:

27. FAVOURITE SCHOOL SUBJECT? Sadly, grammar. (Hush! I am going to be an editor!!!)
29. FAVOURITE TEACHER? L—— V——

Awwww!

Tired, tired. Almost finished with school. Looking forward to two months off. Well, not really off. I have plenty to do, after all.

Now reading: City of the Beasts, Isabel Allende. The Spooky Art, Norman Mailer. Words, words, words.

... but that I love thee best, O most best, believe it.
Leslie