I hope you all have a good holiday, get to spend some time with your loved ones, to look back on the good parts of the year that’s ending, and find yourself filled with pleasant hopes for the one about to unfold. (I’ll go back to cynical and grumpy in a day or two, don’t worry.) Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
I’ll call her Slim, if she calls me Steve
I’m not sure who the five most smoldering women in cinema history are, but I’m sure that Bacall in To Have And Have Not is one of them. Read more →
Utterly random points
So, I thought the barbecue sauce guy was weird, but he has possibly been surpassed by the eggbeater bandit. New Walter Jon Williams books are automatic buys in this house (as you know if you’ve been reading for a while), and now he’s not just selling me his books, he’s putting anime on my Ziplist. I may have mentioned that… Read more →
…as long as it catches the mouse
If you look at every one of these [derivative] products, they make sense. But in aggregate, they are bullshit. They are crap. They serve to cheat people. I have to say it: you have to do something about pay in the financial system. People in this field have way too much money. And this is not right. It hurts to… Read more →
Winter Storms
Just got power back after the first outage of this storm. Winter power outages make me unreasonably angry. I think this partly because I lived the first 20-some years of my life somewhere that winter brought a lot more snow and ice than we get here, and it wasn’t just taken for granted that any storm would result in power… Read more →
The natural reward of taking time to do anything well
“Demanding a significant investment of time and energy on the part of the consumer, it [the book] has always fit somewhat awkwardly into the world of mass entertainment.” You know, it seems like every one of these “end of publishing” articles has a couple of nuggets in it. Like Englehart’s noticing that the book is a much less easily consumed… Read more →
We are not beginners, we will not be fooled
“Books are not Hollywood, to the general astonishment of agents and corporate suits. They are intimate, unpredictable agents of delicious rebellion.” I’m not sure I buy the thesis in Osborne’s piece, but I really would like the believe I live in the world that this quote from it describes. Read more →
Yeah, that’s actually quite creepy
You know, I don’t think I ever really realized just how creepy the whole button-eyes thing in Coraline is until just now. I whipped that up with the tool at the page for the forthcoming Coraline movie. Sarah’s going to love that pic when she sees it. (I bought Coraline for myself when it came out, but Sarah and I… Read more →
It doesn’t matter if it’s good, it’s still genius.
So, we know that I like Revelations, especially some of the bits at the end, and especially including God’s no-modifications open license. We also know that I like Hal Duncan, and especially when he’s being his most over-the-top flagrantly intellectual. You might not know that I have a sentimental affection for historical surrealists and Burroughs, and thus, by extension for… Read more →
A Thought To Help Me Stay Calm
Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man`s nobler faculties. —Henry David Thoreau Read more →
Aside
I’m not sure who I feel more pity for: my poor wife, who suddenly has to spend (at least) three unanticipated extra hours in Pearson with our four-year old daughter, or my poor daughter, who has to spend three extra hours in an airport with my wife. And people ask my why I hate air travel…
Aside
Speaking of a geek hierarchy…
Language By Example
I like to think I have a pretty large vocabulary, and more than that I kind of pride myself on understanding why words mean what they do–what the history behind them is. Even so, there are lots of times I find myself using a word or phrase in a way that I’ve heard it used before, often many times before,… Read more →
War Crimes And Justice For All.
OK. Let’s start by quoting Glenn Greenwald, who I love to read at Salon, in an interview with Bill Moyers (himself much lauded around these parts). Let’s just quickly describe in the most dispassionate terms, as few of euphemisms, as possible, where we are and what has happened over the last eight years. We have a law in place that… Read more →
Aside
For the record, none of the 104 Chris McLarens on Facebook are me. I do not expect this to change. Also, at present, none of the 23 Chris McLarens at LinkedIn are me–although I expect this will probably change shortly. The top Google result for Chris McLaren, with or without the quotes, is very much me, however.
