I’m sorry for all the sparks recently, but I couldn’t resist this one. Enjoy!

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“Could It Be? Did Hollywood Execs Get The Memo?” speculates on the reason for the number of movies-about-women (which seems to correspond with movies-by-women). I would take issue with her assertion that Mama Mia! or Kit are any great leaps forward for womankind, but I’ve not seen either, so I won’t get into that here.

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I’ve been watching

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I was listening to this the other day while packing and it made me cry (as it always does). If anything could make me a pacifist, it would be this song: Don McLean’s the Grave

This line, particularly:
When the wars of our nation did beckon,
A man barely twenty did answer the calling.
Proud of the trust […]

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This weekend I attended an exercise in gender. One of my cousins is getting married next week & her sister threw her a party designed to piss her off. It didn’t work, but we all had fun regardless. There was a penis cake, a penis wand, penis straws (in fact, somewhere an aunt of mine […]

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(overheard between a drunken John & a drunken xJane at last night’s Abney Park concert)
Background: Yesterday, xJane was sitting around, slightly ill, and generally feeling sorry for herself. Whilst innocently watching Emmy consideration DVDs, she received a call from John, who asked if she was busy (she was not) and if she was interested in […]

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By now, many of you will have heard that one of the Vatican’s astronomers has indicated that there might be life on other planets. Even that they might be without sin. Many of my favorite science fiction books involve the intersection of religion and space travel (Dune and Ender’s Game chief among them). But really, […]

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(Hello, this is Zach Alexander — you may have read my Leaving the Garden post, and this is the first of a few guest articles I’m posting while John is otherwise engaged.)

“The stuff that really brings people together, and makes us happy to live together, originates from a caring and thoughtful mind that’s been exposed […]

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A fantastic set of artistic works that capture, in a snapshot (I use the term loosely, more often in a 60′x40′ canvas) the kinds of things that get through out daily, weekly, every five minutes, &c. Many of these I would love to buy prints of (I especially like Paper Bags and Jet Trails).
Spark is […]

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We’ve covered ultra short SF stories. Now, to memoirs. The specific topic is green memoirs but I think any memoir will do.
Mine:
Courtyard: a communal herb garden. Gone.

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