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I had a few days to organize the article, and in the meantime I had been saving an episode of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse to watch since Friday. You can find out about the show if you care to, but most important to this little narrative was the pre-end-credit segment of the program. As is the style of many current hour long dramas the last few minutes of the show was a montage of scenes that interconnected the isolated characters of the story with a mournful song to drive home the underlying emotional state (usually sadness). The song used for this closing montage: “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime.”

Okay, we had some fun yesterday making fun of this piece from the Guardian that calls for the “re-masculating” of books so men can be turned into page turners instead of roll-over-and-go-to-sleepers. The whole thing is so ludicrous. So I’m going to propose we have a contest: “remasculate” the title and basic plot summary (one sentence, max) of a famous book—and if the book is by a woman, “masculate” her as well. Bonus points if you include a cover redesign.

By joining the Coalition, readers and writers everywhere send a strong message to the Honorable James Moore, the Department of Canadian Heritage, and the Canada Periodical Fund that we believe in our literary and arts magazines and feel that they should continue to do so by supporting them through well-deserved and sustained financial support.

So now we’re here. All those social tools I mentioned are a daily fact in many of our lives. You are reading a blog. Yes you are. You may even have been sent here by a link from oneFacebook page or a direct message from another. How does that make you feel? Are you fully connected? Are you feeling the benefit of a social circle that also circles the globe? Or do you feel like you are a lonely voice in a universe of other lonely voices? Do you wish you could knock on your neighbour’s door and have a beer with them on their front steps? I am curious to know.

One that seems unavoidable is the disruption that comes to mass transit around this time of year. Too many people, too much bad weather and next thing you know you’re sleeping on hard, curved plastic chairs with a new community you’ve just joined. It should be televised… if it hasn’t already been.

One of the hardest things about post-academic periods for some writers… well for me, anyway… is the sudden, terrible freedom that comes from the removal of a write-for-deadline structure.
For a while I managed to find my way into different situations (art projects, multi-media performances, festivals) that re-created the pressure situation of the Wednesday 2:30 pm [...]

The article, and the sign to a certain degree, made me wonder if I was a spelling stickler. I think I might be. I know that seeing the widespread misuse of the apostrophe on the majority of signs makes my stomach a little more acid. I know internet forums, beyond their racism and misogyny, make me want the digital equivalent of the red sharpie. But then I started wondering why. Why?

For the last few years I’ve been proposing to friends that Labour Day weekend is a much more appropriate juncture for celebration. Though I haven’t actually been in school for over a decade now, my rhythms (and some of my earnings) are still attached to the curricular ebb and flow. This is true for most of my extended circle of confreres and consoeurs. Plus it’s warm enough to walk home if you’ve had three too many strong ciders around the edge of the fire pit.

Nothing numbs the bum quite like a bad reading.
The public reading is one of those secondary skills authors should really develop. It is one of the few areas (other than the writing itself) where they can control and transmit their message. Otherwise it is just a slab of processed tree sitting misfiled in [...]

I bet you’re wondering how rising fuel costs are affecting us here at Branta. I bet that because the price of gas seems to jab it’s pointy little nasum in every news story no matter how tenuously of late. Unwittingly catching a few minutes of CTV Newsnet last week I actually heard Dan [...]