// Is trying to catch the 4 o’clock bus.
// Is trying to catch the 4 o’clock bus.
Category: general
// someone’s cellphone is ringing in the other office… answer it, please.
// redux… why was the guy on the bus trying to sell a stolen credit card TO passengers? (I’m sure I ordered a double lattee. Where’s my brain this morning?)
// back at the office… why was the guy on the bus trying to sell passengers a stolen credit card? Idiot.
// listening to Morphine play over The Drip’s house stereo system
// making final revisions to a childrens book that is supposed to go to press today
U.S. Media Revenue Rises 4.6%
From AdAge:
The nation’s top 100 media companies saw a 4.6% revenue boost in 2007, their slowest growth since the recession year of 2001.
Media’s tempered growth mirrors that of the economy: GDP last year recorded its most tepid growth (2%) since 2002 amid signs the economy was heading into recession.
Media’s biggest winner is no surprise: digital, with revenue up 10.8%. Cable-network growth was close behind, at 10.6%. The biggest loser: newspapers, down 6.8%.
The right way to slack off at work
1. E-mail can wait.
2. Saying ‘no’ won’t get you fired.
3. Don’t multitask.
4. Give yourself a break.
5. Don’t eat lunch at your desk.
6. Schedule some “me” time.
Oh, really.
The idea is not the story
Does one really create ideas? I suspect I know what this writer is attempting to say. However, writing prose is about the story not the idea. Ideas embedded in the story make it great, but the idea itself won’t sell the story. The etymology of the word “idea” is “figure, image, symbol” and “to see.” A great idea is nothing unless it has a narrative substance. Besides, does one create an idea or does one have an idea?
Overheard on the bus
Bus rider: Yeah, last night there was another fight at the gas station. This time is was two women.
Overheard @ The Dripolator
Barrista: So you like spending money on higher education? What, you like got your degree lit… and… now it’s like sweet, I can’t get a job anywhere.
From Print is Dead blog:
…even though I wrote a book called Print is Dead, even I don’t think that publishing is over. Rather, it just needs to change and be willing to embrace new ideas and business models.
Link
sunili:(via theoisjonesing: tightgrip: thenausner)
Awesome! Analogue Sunday can’t come quick enough.
How Fat is The Long Tail?
Didn’t just write about this?
From Publishers Weekly:
“Some products belong in the tail not the head,” Elberse [Anita Elberse, associate professor at Harvard Business School] said.
Link
Poets Teaching Poets
This weekend I picked up a copy of Poets Teaching Poets at Malaprop’s. It is the only required book for the advanced poetry in which I am enrolled. I read the introduction and first few pages of the opening chapter on the bus ride back home. I hope the class is as engaging as this book.
The first class is Tuesday and I have a few predictions about the class:
- male students will be a minority
- students (regardless of gender) under 40 years of age will be a minority
- half (if not the majority) of the students will have had taught in an educational capacity at some time during their adult life (and now that they have retired want to write and publish poetry)
- the majority of the students will write in confessional lyric verse
This sounds a bit cynical, but I’ve taken a few classes like this in recent years and that tends to be the trend. I’ll share the results of these predictions later in the week.
An email from the class teacher arrived this afternoon as instructed all students to bring the following to class this week:
- one of your own poems
- and one of your favorite poems
writing a poem a day
I made a personal goal of trying to write a poem per day for the month September; or at least a sketch a day. Reality is a harsh master. A presentation project I am working on has kept my brain occupied with details regarding photo selection and event branding. I’ve only been able to compose a poem every other day. Normally, this would bring on a fit of frustration and depression, but not this time. Even a small sketch, the second one I composed, reminds me that patience and perseverance is essential and pursuing master of this craft. Here’s the second poem I wrote this month:
Half a pint down
eight minutes to go
half a porter to go
eight minutes ’til I leave
It’s a spare sketch; something in the vein of a hybrid haiku or tanka.
This excercise is to prepare me for an advance poetry class that I am taking. It begins this week.
The New York Times reports on Google’s newspaper scanning efforts
Google has begun scanning microfilm from some newspapers’ historic archives to make them searchable online, first through Google News and eventually on the papers’ own Web sites…
From Print is Dead:
Google will then serve up scans of newspapers either via Google, or on the site of the originating newspapers, which provides income for Google (in the first example) and/or traffic and visitors (and potentially income from advertising) for the original newspapers (in the second example).
Things you think of when petrol is $3.79 per gallon
- What a deal. A monthly bus pass is only $15. Except it takes three times as long to get anywhere around town.
- Wow, it’s cheaper to by a six-pack of beer than a gallon of milk.
- Did I really see “buy 2 for $10” next to the organic milk section at the grocery?
- $20 for petrol used to last the entire month. The fuel gauge reads that the auto is almost empty. I won’t get paid until next week. Hope there are no household emergencies on Sunday that force me to use the auto, because the buses don’t run on Sunday.
- If I skip lunch, I can afford to but an extra gallon of petrol in the tank.
It is true that the arts keep us sane, but a larger bias for this perception is surely the fact that the arts keep us civilised. Once a poem is written, it belongs to the world, and its greatest destiny is its usefulness to the tribe.
I would like to think the purpose of poetry is to teach.
Musical taste linked to personality
From The Press Association:
Heavy metal fans are gentle, indie music listeners lack self-esteem and lovers of pop music are uncreative, according to research.
The study on the links between personality and music taste has been conducted by a psychology professor over the last three years.
He found that country and western fans are hard-working, rap fans outgoing and jazz and classical music supporters are innovative and bursting with self-confidence.
Contrary to the stereotype, heavy metal fans are gentle and at ease with themselves but they tend not to be hardworking.
Those who listen to heavy metal and classical music share character traits, according to the research, of being creative, at ease and introverted.
But classical music fans have high self-esteem while heavy rock fans lack self-belief.
Coffeehouse Junkie 