The Middle of the Dark

I don't know why I'm so fascinated by Lady Gaga. She seems to want to out drag queen even the most gonzo drag queens out there. She has a great sense of humor - which I think is very necessary, otherwise she might come off a little stiff if she wasn't in on the joke - but her music and style is very smart at the same time. And I think she's so different. So many new musicians out there are hell bent on emulating each other. She is a walking blender of everything she enjoys.

After a LONG time of not posting, and then posting somewhere else, and then not posting there, I've decided to come back to the ranch and try to get this thing to kick over. I think I've spent so much time pushing novels up hills I've completely forgotten the language of anything short. That changed a little in August, when I attended the Summer Writer's Conference at Northwestern. I took a class called Parasitic Writing and was exposed to a form of writing I had never heard of: erasure poetry. The class was an eye opener in so many ways. In three short, swift hours we discussed the idea of plagarisim in art; if there is such a thing; fan fiction; You Tube and the art people create from found materials like movie trailers; it was all fascinating to me, because I've been interested for a long time in ideas like genre, and the idea of 'rebooting' something, which is especially common now in genre works like comic books and movies. The class inspired me to

Now broadcasting at The Piss Jitters .

I remember very vividly the week I spent in Belfast. It changed my head. I knew my family came from Ireland, knew of the Troubles, but not until a few weeks before I left, I didn't know my family came specifically from the north, and until I got there, I had no real idea of the reality there. The division of Belfast - material, spiritual - splits my head still. One thing that stood out to me most was a tour we took of the Catholic/Protestant neighborhoods - streets like Shankhill divided like some contested border - and the tour guide putting the difficulty down primarily to the relative poverty of the area. Up the road near Queens, the realtive prosperity of that part of town saw a healthier, less hostile environment. Indeed, the Celtic Tiger gave all Ireland a reason to look forward and not behind; the economy exploded, and with each year, it seemed the Troubles were finally over. Maybe not. Ireland's economy, like the world's, has collapsed and just like that, the

SPOILERS follow “Watchmen” is really two movies: one for people like me, who remember the earthquake it was for comic books in 1987, when it first appeared, and one for people just looking for a good movie. In a lot of ways, it succeeds on both levels; in a lot of other ways, it doesn’t. “Watchmen” arrived in 1987 as comic book that for the first time in the history of comics looked on the idea of superheroes as a real thing; what if in the real world these people actually existed, and what would happen? I first read it at 13, finding it on the bottom shelf of the comic stand in the back of the Cigar Store down on Sycamore – this when comics were still sold outside comic shops – and I didn’t understand it, but knew a comic – a funny book – with blood and murder and various other adult things was not normal. I found a lot of books there that were an absolute awakening to me, and make me feel very lucky to have been that age, at that time: “Swamp Thing,” “Sandman,” even “Cinder

The first single from U2's new album (finally!!!) is live. My first impressions: they are back to experimenting.

An absolutely essential and remarkable conversation with Battlestar Galactica creator Ron Moore and the writers of last night's season premiere. That he gives this much in an interview is a gift, and so is the show. It astounds, as always, and the sadness over its passing is only countered by the joy in knowing that it is getting the chance to end on its own terms. So many shocks last night. Earth. Dee. Ellen. Kara. I have my own theory of it all - the Grand Unifying Theory of BSG I guess - that I'm still formulating, but Ben had a theory a while back about Earth and Cylons that seems to have been dead on. Go read the article, and if you haven't seen it, or have never seen the show, go rent, buy or steal it on DVD. Enrich your life.