Given that the Decemberists managed to lead the sales derby this week, selling 94,000 copies of their new album, The King Is Dead, it appears likely that last week’s top seller, Cake’s Showroom of Compassion (44,000 copies), really is some kind of at least temporary bottom in the market. Just how bad is bad? In its [...]
Here, without further ado, three more quick examples of the zen-like genre of blog spam. With every little thing that seems to be developing within this particular subject matter, a significant percentage of opinions tend to be very exciting. Even so, I appologize, but I do not give credence to your entire strategy, all be [...]
It occurs to me that one of the sublime pleasures of maintaining a blog—one to which I’m privy, and you, Dear Reader, ordinarily are not—is reading the wonderful messages caught by WordPress’s steel-trap spam filter. Much of it is beneath notice—unvarnished attempts to put a URL into the comments section, for instance, thereby driving up [...]
Martin Brennan isn’t really an “area man”: his company is based in the UK, and besides, I’m not aware that there’s a large community of “silicon-chip designers” here in the Inland Empire. I’ve just always liked the sound of that phrase. I’m sorry to have lured you in under false pretenses. (But then, false pretenses [...]
Let me begin by thanking my colleagues Rosemary Feal (Executive Director of the MLA), Professor Erin Templeton, and Chronicle of Higher Education writer Jennifer Howard for correcting my error: the Los Angeles Times did run one feature story on the recent MLA Convention last week, focusing on the role of the humanities, and the job [...]
One of the holiday season’s hallowed traditions has abruptly shifted this year: the annual convention of the 30,000-member Modern Language Association (MLA) moved from its time-honored slot of horror right between Christmas and New Years (December 27–30) to the newly civilized and more family-friendly first week in January—this year, January 6–9. Another American ritual has [...]
On January 25, not December 25, Gang of Four’s first new album in more than fifteen years, Content, is scheduled for release. I love what I’m assuming is the pun presented in the title: it’s hard to image G4 as either “content,” is in happy, or as content providers. Though (to ruin my conclusion) I’m [...]