Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- The great forgetting (“And here is one uplifting aspect of ageing: our stories of self get better.”)
- How Did Bob Dylan Get So Weird? (“On a good night he makes some of his best-known songs unrecognizable, and on a bad one you come out wondering what it was, exactly, you’ve just seen.”)
Blog Headline of the Week
Bookish Linkage
- Given all the Ebola news, maybe plague fiction is a good topic
- How a teenager invented science fiction
- Bookish Lists: 5 great Midwestern novels; 8 beach reads for the social justice set and 5 to avoid; 50 SF/F every socialist should read
Nonbookish Linkage
- Guess what? Hell isn’t real
- Living with a face that wasn’t yours
- What would happen if Ebola came to the US?
- The first Wizard of Oz film preceded the one we’re all familiar with by 14 years
- Is belief in God innate or taught?
- Why do we bite our nails?
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from
Bob Dylan, “Not Dark Yet,” Time Out of Mind
Back when Karl Mundt and E.Y. Berry were alive and well in SD, the SD GOP sent a train around the state with some of their candidates. I passed out a bit of satire titled something like “Back Track for Progress”. Inside were hookum speech titles. I had Mundt speaking on “Sex in South Dakota Old Peoples Homes.”
The MC of the farce held up the brochure I had slopped together about half-way through the program and announced that is was not actually Republican information. He then looked at the disclaimer I had on it and said, “By Douglas Wiken”. Mr. Wiken can get a ride on the train (from Vermillion to Meckling). Well, I had never been on train ride, so I took him up on the deal. There were some mightly cold stares from the GOP passengers. EY Berry locked himself in a private compartment. The wife of the USD President (Moulton I think) was a bleached blond rabid Republican. It was obvious that my brochure had been printed on the USD offset. Early on Monday morning of next week there was a notice posted in the print shop area, “No political information can be printed here.” It wasn’t free printing in any case. Sorry about this diversion. It was a lot of fun at the time and USD’s response was also interesting.