Category Archives: arts

musical generations

I’ve had this conversation more than once. I’m chatting with a cashier half my age. A song circa 1967 is in the background. Me: “Is that song familiar to you?” Cashier: “Um, yeah.” Me: “When I was your age, if … Continue reading

Posted in music+verse | 3 Comments

there are domains and domains

keenspace.com, a free hosting service for comic strips, changed its name (not long after it was founded) to comicgenesis.com; but the old name still works, as do comicgen.com and (I just learned) toonspace.com and webcomicspace.com. Well, mostly. Mostly it doesn’t … Continue reading

Posted in cartoons, neep-neep | 2 Comments

second-guessing by halves

Early strips of some webcomics carry the author’s much later comments. Christopher Baldwin (Bruno) and David Willis (Roomies!) are reposting old series that ended. David Morgan-Mar’s (Irregular Webcomic!) schedule these days is two new strips and five comments on old … Continue reading

Posted in cartoons | 4 Comments

And so it reiterates

In the last couple of years I’ve looked at thousands of webcomics. Sometimes I wish I’d kept a list of those whose first page is captioned “It begins” or “So it begins” or “And so it begins.”

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less than fifty years later

I’ve read Heinlein’s Red Planet three times, starting at age seven or eight, and each time I soon forgot most of the plot. One thing that stuck with me was that the school’s new head signaled his evil by ordering … Continue reading

Posted in heraldry, language, prose | Leave a comment

questions of emphasis

In Sherlock episode “The Lying Detective”, the phrase serial killer is uttered many times, always stressing the first word – as if the second were a given, even when (for the speakers) any killings are hypothetical. That impaired my enjoyment of … Continue reading

Posted in cinema, language | Leave a comment

a sort of conlang

I’m re-reading Strugatsky’s Hard to Be a God. (I read it thirty-odd years ago and forgot nearly everything.) This is a newer translation, by Olena Bormashenko. At one point the protagonist eavesdrops on conspirators, who say: “The chonted will shlake, … Continue reading

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