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Fear of Death Wins Minds and Votes, AP article July 29 2004 [archive text] This study on the nature of fear and politics is about a common sense idea expressed succinctly in terms that are quantifiable. There is new/additional scientific...

Posted by Stephen at 03:48 PM
Posted to CoolReading

So, how did I spend my Friday night, completely exhausted and in a fog from the work week? Odd, but I finished a story that I started earlier this week. This oddly segues with an earlier post from Jen about inspiration: the whole thing started from ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 06:19 AM
Posted to LitBlitz

I was talking to Mrs. Slidge, and she is having a difficult time trying to figure out why Bush appeals to so many people. She points out that Kerry is engaged in a lot of activities that most people would normally find pretty cool -- snowboarding, ...

Posted by Slidge at 08:47 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

This is classic. The Bush Administration today released its projections on GDP, saying that they expect real GDP to increase to 4.7% this year, and slowing to 3.7% in 2005. This projection would normally make sense, as last quarters GDP was 4.5%. ...

Posted by Slidge at 08:45 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

The new campaign motto for President Bush is the extraordinarily weak "We're turning the corner. There's no turning back." Well, Mr. President, I know what's around that corner. It's a pretty seedy part of town. I, personally, would like to go ...

Posted by Slidge at 08:34 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

According to the Associated Press, George Bush has a "narrow" lead over Kerry in the electoral votes. My own tracking poll shows a quite different result, with Kerry leading Bush 229 to 196. Bush actually went down 5 points today due to ARG's poll ...

Posted by Slidge at 08:14 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

Okay, so today I am commenting on an older issue of Gargoyle. Who says I'm not a little OCD? It's Gargoyle No. 39/40, which happens to be the 20th anniversary issue, which by my calculations, means it's the 1996 issue. How much has changed in a few ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:14 AM
Posted to LitBlitz

The Daily Howler, the premier website monitoring our Media (although Media Matters is another great website at exposing the Media's ability to lie baldfacedly with no shame), gives its take on the supposed "flip-flop" of John Kerry voting to ...

Posted by Slidge at 09:27 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

LadyLitBlitz, the author of a fine blog on writing, has asked whether we are going to have another "hanging chad scenario" in Florida, due to a recent report about Florida touch-screen voting booths not working. My take? Probably. There is a ...

Posted by Slidge at 07:17 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

Only one poll out today, and that is for New Jersey. The poll was conducted by FD Public Mind and has Kerry leading Bush 45%-43% with a 3.5% MoE. According to Public Mind: "John Kerry has been relying on George W. Bush to give people a ...

Posted by Slidge at 07:09 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

But first, a few administrative notes.  First, let me apologize that I haven't been able to post pictures for a while.  We're still running at less than our normal household complement of computers (can I tell you ...

Posted by Summer at 12:51 PM
Posted to Summertime

A friend of mine turned me onto a site called Strange Horizons, a site that specializes in speculative fiction. Really, he pointed it out because the site has one of the most exceedingly specific -- one might even say anal -- sets of guidelines I ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:59 AM
Posted to LitBlitz

Only two polls out today: Kentucky and North Carolina. No change in the totals, Kerry still leads 244 to 201. Bush maintains his lead in North Carolina, and some have pointed out that this spells trouble for Edwards since it is his home state. ...

Posted by Slidge at 08:14 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

Dorian does not yet have full command of the English language, so he frequently communicates with us via gesture and association.  When he wants us to go outside or just do Posted by Summer at 04:55 PM
Posted to Summertime

Vice President Dick Cheney blasted Kerry and Edwards today for voting to authorize the President to use force in Iraq, but voting against the $87 billion appropriation bill to fund the forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Having seen this ...

Posted by Slidge at 04:47 AM
Posted to GoFYourself

All right, so one question I've wondered about recently -- and encountered other short story writers with the same question -- is, at what point is autobiographical short fiction okay? You know, "all the names have been changed to protect the ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:30 AM
Posted to LitBlitz

The argument over whether or not Kerry will be strong on national defense against terrorism has the anti-Kerry people engaging in a spectacular display of 'doublethink' (defined by George Orwell as the "mental capacity to accept as equally valid two ...

Posted by Slidge at 07:57 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

New polls out for a lot of states: Florida, Louisiana, Ohio, among others. There are two polls out for Ohio. The CNN/Gallup poll has Kerry leading 51-45 (MoE: 5), and the Columbus Dispatch poll has Bush leading 47-44 (MoE: 2). I'm going ...

Posted by Slidge at 03:58 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

I have a date tonight. I'm going out to a swanky restaurant with my hot husband. You see, it's DC Restaurant Week, when many of the finest restaurants in the city offer fixed-price three course meals at the bargain rate of $20 for ...

Posted by Summer at 02:59 PM
Posted to Summertime

So, now that I'm in a lull, having just finished a boatload of good reading described in the last two posts, I thought I'd comment on something I've seen in the past -- when good writers quit submitting their stories because of a few rejections. ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:05 AM
Posted to LitBlitz

So, having finished the fiction section of Gargoyle, it was basically all so great there's really no point in listing out every story that rocked the house. Almost all of them did. I mean, it might be easier to just list out the stories that didn't ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 06:57 PM
Posted to LitBlitz

Taking a day off after traveling all weekend for a party. I will update the electoral vote tracking poll tomorrow (I believe some new polls came out over the weekend). Listened to most of the Yankees-Red Sox series on crackly AM radio this ...

Posted by Slidge at 05:25 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

Sunday, 25 July 20047:45 pm -- Dorian goes to bed.8:00 pm -- Dorian cries piteously, requires administration ...

Posted by Summer at 08:50 AM
Posted to Summertime

Three days of enormous excitement, all rolled into one blog entry!Ok, maybe the excitement isn't ...

Posted by Summer at 02:01 PM
Posted to Summertime

I've got a great magazine to report on, as I hinted at earlier, but this is going to be a two-parter. Just because I haven't gotten through the whole thing yet but it's THAT exciting to share immediately. I got my hands on Gargoyle, No. 47, and so ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:55 AM
Posted to LitBlitz

So, you might argue that there are many places that could serve as writers' meccas. Say, the corner coffee shop (even Starbucks, with its lone readers reading, or booting up their laptops over a latte). Or, the independent bookstore, with its ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:16 PM
Posted to LitBlitz

Okay, I've been on here for about a week, and I'm sure one question that might come up would be, why the hell is this woman bent on remaining anonymous? Who cares? Is she just a paraonid looney? (Shut up there in the peanut gallery, haha!) Well, ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 09:46 PM
Posted to LitBlitz

A few new polls came out today: California, Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania. For those polls where the results are outside of the margins of error, Kerry loses four electoral votes, leaving him with a 239-181 lead over Bush. ...

Posted by Slidge at 08:39 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

I just love this picture.

Posted by Slidge at 07:33 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

Today President Bush is out courting the African-American vote. The thesis of his address is found in this statement: "Does the Democrat party take African-American voters for granted? It's a fair question. I know plenty of politicians assume ...

Posted by Slidge at 07:08 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

Here is the report in HTML, courtesy of kottke.org. You can also view the PDF of the Report, courtesy of the Washington Post.

Posted by Slidge at 04:51 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

I've added some links to the sidebar of my page, with much blundering around, being the blog novice that I admitted to being in my first post. Looks like I may have to tweak them somewhat. First of all, I added Freak Blog, which is an aggregated ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:21 PM
Posted to LitBlitz

So, where's the Glimmer in Glimmer Train? For the uninitiated, Glimmer Train is one of the magazines that serves as a market most beginning writers covet. It pays, and pays WELL. Plain and simple. And it has a good enough rep, but given the fact ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:47 AM
Posted to LitBlitz

According to ESPN, union officials have told the Montreal Expos players that the decision as to where the team will be playing is near, and that it looks as if the team will be relocating to the Washington, DC area. If they do move to DC, I hope ...

Posted by Slidge at 11:10 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

I was talking to Mrs. Slidge last night, and we both feel that the Republicans are going to win this election solely for the reason that they don't plan on losing the election at all. We've all heard the conspiracy theories as to how this is going ...

Posted by Slidge at 09:54 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

I have, purely for the sake of curiosity, created an Excel spreadsheet which I am using to track the various state presidential polls. At this point, I'm really only interested in the number of electoral votes Bush or Kerry has gained in states ...

Posted by Slidge at 09:22 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

#!/usr/local/bin/perl print "Hello, world!\n";

Posted by Slidge at 09:05 PM
Posted to GoFYourself

Arctic Grail, by Pierre Berton I first read this book in 2000 when it was out of print and tracked a first-edition copy down through the used book network, which then got ruined suitably in a flood. It has since...

Posted by Stephen at 07:07 PM
Posted to CoolReading

After spending several hours yesterday perusing hairstyle websites, I think I've come up with an idea for a somewhat drastic haircut. Let me show you some pictures of what I'm thinking about.I'm ...

Posted by Summer at 10:31 AM
Posted to Summertime

We have reached the magical number of 100 entries to this blog. How nice! Even nicer is the grin that Ben Franklin is giving me from the $100 bill sitting on my desk, and nice-nice-nicer still is knowing that he's ...

Posted by Summer at 11:57 PM
Posted to Summertime

A recent thought that keeps crossing my mind is whether works deemed particularly "literary" -- as opposed to your Grisham or Steele bestsellers -- are doomed to failure at times because of literature's reputation for being, in a word, pompous. ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:17 AM
Posted to LitBlitz

As you can see, we've got a new look here at Summertime.  I've been fiddling around with templates for a while, and had an all-lavender number ready to go, but when I posted it last night I realized that I don't ...

Posted by Summer at 04:06 PM
Posted to Summertime

As I mentioned before, the Zoetrope site has a great thing going for new writers. But one of the most exciting discoveries was the work of a writer named Alicia Gifford, whose stories always gave me a jolt and woke me up. She's got a quirky, ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 10:25 PM
Posted to LitBlitz

If you'll look down and to your left, you'll see a new sidebar blurb that reads: "This site is featured on FreakBlog. Visit it!" This bears some ...

Posted by Summer at 02:20 PM
Posted to Summertime

Here's my rant for today. Magazines that never, ever respond to submissions. Literary magazines have quite the reputation for putting themselves first and writers last. For example, magazines that demand "no simultaneous submissions." Simultaneous ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 08:29 PM
Posted to LitBlitz

Upon scavenging the Internet, I've found a promising new literary site. Namely, Barrelhouse, which seems to highlight some high-quality new writers. Sex and Pills: A Love Story was an enjoyable read, as was Ryan Seacrest Is Famous. Check it out. ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:15 PM
Posted to LitBlitz

Just a short note, tonight, and not a rant at all. Any beginning writer should read Stephen King's On Writing, it's absolutely crucial. Regardless of what you think of King as an author -- and I know people have mixed feelings. I used to read all ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:05 AM
Posted to LitBlitz

Cod: A Biography of a Fish that Changed the World, by Mark Kurlansk. My Dad, an old sea salt, handed me this book and I rolled my eyes like how interesting can a book about a fish species be. The...

Posted by Stephen at 03:52 AM
Posted to CoolReading

Really, this should be two separate entries, but when am I going to have the time to post two separate entries? Entry 1: Babies! The Summertime Fertility Donation Scheme is working well. Monica, the very first awardee and the ...

Posted by Summer at 01:07 AM
Posted to Summertime

It seems that bitching about the flies in my last entry has resulted in the immediate vanishment of all flies from my house. Poof! Just like that, they're gone. When I went downstairs yesterday morning, there wasn't a fly to be found. ...

Posted by Summer at 07:26 PM
Posted to Summertime

So, if one more person says how much they loved The Davinci Code, I'm going to scream! I'm not sure I've ever read a worse book. It might make beginning writers feel better abut themselves, for example, if a book with such stereotyped, hollow ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 11:01 PM
Posted to LitBlitz

All right, here goes -- and this is a rant this time. For centuries, literature has been at the forefront of political and social changes. So what's going on now? So here it is, the 21st century, and we have the most amazing new medium in AGES -- ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:09 AM
Posted to LitBlitz

As an aspiring fiction writer (and semi obsessive type, occasional insomniac/narcoleptic, and relative blog novice), I thought there could be some use and interest in a blog that could help out other aspiring writers, sharing finds, as well as ...

Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:41 AM
Posted to LitBlitz

This afternoon I'm taking Dorian to the doctor so she can look at his foot. My mother and I have already unofficially diagnosed a plantar wart; there's a family tendency to get them, but we're still impressed that he managed to pick ...

Posted by Summer at 03:42 AM
Posted to Summertime

The First World War, by Michael Howard The First World War is recently making a renaissance with a flood of books coming on the market on the heels of new material previously unavailable to historians and new revisonistic theories to...

Posted by Stephen at 01:43 PM
Posted to CoolReading

The Corporation, a film by Mark Achbar. Winner of Sundance awards. The film brings to light the internal contradictions of corporations such as human rights, the environment, patents and also looks at the history of the Corporation and how it...

Posted by Stephen at 02:14 AM
Posted to CoolReading

Open Source Everywhere, by Thomas Goetz, Wired Magazine November 2003 [archive text] This is one of the better articulations of just how broadly the idea of open, collaborative, distributed innovation can be used. Open Source is a revolution across ...

Posted by Stephen at 02:28 AM
Posted to CoolReading