Tore up all your blogwatch,didn’t feel too clever.Spent the whole of Sundaysticking you together… Camassia: Fryblogging! Deuteronomy 30:16: Conversion-story-blogging. Now, with extra Hecate…. Read more

BRIEF INTERVIEW with me, here. Mostly on blogging and/vs. journalism. Read more

DISPUTED MUTABILITY replies to/comments on my whole long series on ex-gay stuff. Read more

VIA THE RAT: Description of a high-school-turned-prison-turned-museum, in Cambodia: …Many of the prison guards here were just children themselves, usually between the ages of 10 and 15, sometimes picked out from other camps. Literature from Tuol Sleng says the children usually started out quite normal but increased in their remorseless cruelty towards those they were charged with minding. Eventually these children were often killed themselves by other children that replaced them. Prisoners had to ask permission to do anything—from going... Read more

KITCHEN ADVENTURE: FRY COOK. I can make french fries at home!!! ph34r my l33t sk1llz!!! Okay, first I will give the recipe I was working from; then I will tell you what actually happened. Real-life cooking never replicates what happens in the books with the glossy pictures. I think you will do best to follow the recipe but keep my problems/modifications in mind, and adjust flexibly and quickly when things seem not to be following the plan. recipe (from a... Read more

SUMMER READING LISTS FROM “THE SMART SET”… and also me. Many thanks to Kelly Jane Torrance for letting me be a part of this fun project–and she’s still soliciting thoughts on summer reading, so go say hi! Read more

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone;I can see all blogwatches in my way… Mumpsimus: What’s wrong with infodumps anyway?, and other questions on exposition in fiction. (Be sure to read the comments, too.) Sed Contra is back! And, from the Asia Times: Economic growth hasn’t stopped repression of journalists, Buddhists, and Christians in Vietnam. (Via Colby Cosh.) ETA: Mansfield Fox on closing a rooming house in New Haven: “For the tenants’ own sake, we must thrust them... Read more

WHAT THIS COUNTRY NEEDS IS A GOOD FIVE-CENT FLOPHOUSE?: Interesting Weekly Standard piece on reducing homelessness by, basically, bringing back rooming houses. I do not know enough to comment on this stuff; if others have thoughts, send ’em in. Link via SRD. Snippets: …At a remarkably underreported conference in Denver in May, advocates for the homeless met to discuss a pattern of falling homeless populations across the country. In the past six months, New York has announced a reduction of... Read more

COMMANDMENTS COMEDIES: (I still haven’t watched Decalogue, no.) Dan Mansueto writes to suggest Divorce Italian-Style as a possible Ten Commandments-y movie. He notes that I don’t have any comedies on my list–might be interesting to do an all-comedy list. I also realized that not only is my entire list American, but virtually all of them are so intrinsically American that they couldn’t really be translated into other nationalities…. I’m not sure what difference that would make, but again, I’m still... Read more

ALL THINGS COUNTER, ORIGINAL, SPARE, AND FILLED WITH NINJAS: Dappled Things’ Feast of Sts Peter and Paul issue is available online here!–a very cool Catholic literary and cultural magazine, which had the dubious taste to publish one of my stories. And friend of this blog Joshua Elder writes to say that the first volume of his manga, Mail-Order Ninja, is available in comics shops and bookstores now. (Or here, for example.) It is about a kid who orders a ninja... Read more