On HU
I’m really pretty thrilled with everything we got to post this week on the blog. Just thought I’d mention that.
Featured Archive Post: Kinukitty on Joann Safar’s Le Petit Vampire.
I wrote on Nicki Minaj and the pros and cons of multiple personalities.
I wrote about Django Unchained and what black people know about violence in America.
Robert Stanley Martin with the first part of his massive reconsideration of Jim Shooter’s tenure as editor-in-chief at Marvel.
Charles Reece on Django Unchained and white folks watching black folks fight.
Katherine Wirick on Kent State, the docudrama, and the obscenity and allure of fiction as history.
Domingos Isabelinho on Fred’s Le Petit Cirque, with tons of gorgeous images from the comics.
Qiana Whitted on moral freedmen and dangerous slaves in Django Unchained.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At the Atlantic I reviewed Alisa Valdes memoir The Feminist and The Cowboy, in which she talks about the joys of traditional gender roles.
Later in the week Valdes revealed that the cowboy had abused her, so I wrote a follow up piece.
Also at the Atlantic I wrote about how Jeffrey Eugenides’ advice to write like you’re dead is stupid.
At Splice Today I demand filibuster reform now!
Also at Splice I argue that writers should sometimes take no for an answer.
Other Links
James Romberger interviewed about his comic Post York.
James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook discuss their work on 7 Miles a Second, the comic they did with David Wojnarowicz which is being re-released by Fantagraphics.
Tucker Stone on the best comics of 2012.
Feministing on Dear Prudence and rape denial.
Amanda Marcotte on why a viral rape infographic is misleading.
A detailed and depressing explanation of why Congress sucks and will always suck.
Amanda Hess defends Zooey Deschenal.
This Week’s Reading
Finished The Feminist and The Cowboy. Also finished 50 Shades of Grey, thank god — possibly the worst 1600+ pages I have ever read in my life. Also read Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch, which is pretty great.
Enjoyed the writing advice pieces. I made some decent money back in the day, writing recipes for magazines. My writing friends poo-pooed it as ‘not real’ writing, but the checks cashed just fine (as opposed to their rejection slips). I wish now I’d kept it up as opposed to listening to their advice to switch to writing great big fantasy novels that had little chance of selling.
I haven’t read much this week, mostly because I’m too busy working on my upcoming HU project, but I did have to imbibe several articles on change management that made me want to poke my eyes out (for work, obvs, I’m not a masochist).
Writing recipes sounds like a pretty fun job.
It definitely is! Plus, you get to eat the results, which is a nice bonus. Hard to eat first drafts of other genres!
I’m reading Raina Telgemeier’s Drama and what I think is the latest volume of The Drops of God (it’s the first installment of the latest English-language incarnation of the series, which skips forward in the series’ timeline so as to cover wines from the United States, and thus presumably appeal to American readers).
I haven’t watched much in the way of movies lately; I’ve been more focused on marathoning TV on Netflix, including more Doctor Who and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I also watched the pilot of Buffy, since I’ve been meaning to finally watch that series for a while, but I don’t know if I’ll dive right in to the rest of the series right away. And I’ve watched a bunch of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia lately; that show is hilarious.