Any fans of short fiction?

I do game nights with some blogger buddies & friends every other week and we're starting a new game, which required me to build a fictional character from scratch. I decided to have some fun with it and wrote a 3-chapter story arc and figured I'd post a link to it.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Enjoy.

Time Out From Politics

This amuses me.

Thousands journey far and wide to view Edgar Allan Poe's grave in Baltimore, whose football team is named for his most famous poem. In New York, Philadelphia, and Richmond, Va., droves of devotees visit museums in the itinerant poet's former homes.

Yet in Boston, where Poe was born 200 years ago this January, the master of the macabre is a faintly remembered footnote, all but "nameless here for evermore," as he famously penned in "The Raven." ....

Now a dedicated band of Poe scholars and students at Boston College is hoping to rescue the mysterious writer from "forgotten lore." They have embarked on an earnest, if quixotic, quest to persuade city officials to reclaim Poe as Boston's own and restore the writer, who often dismissed Boston and its literary scene as a provincial "Frogpondium," to its literary fold.

I neither love nor hate Poe's work (actually, I generally either love or hate it, depending on the piece), but if Poe fans will flock to Boston to see where he was born, go for it. Tourism is the Bay State's 3rd largest sector of the economy, so any excuse for an extra stop on the Freedom Trail is a good one. Plus, I like to play up the Mass literary tradition (even if Poe didn't!).

Let's Have a State Book (Contest)!

Ignoring the amusement at beating the Globe to the punch by several days (who knew you could scoop someone on an editorial?), the Globe's stance on an official state book did convince me of one thing. First, though, here's a quote from the editorial.

There are undoubtedly less literary states where the official book designation would be as lightly contested as a Massachusetts congressional race. It would be to the state's credit if a proposal for an official state book did set off a donnybrook here.

And before legislators come down on the side of any of the candidates, they should be reminded that every corner of the state has writers at work on books that in a decade could leave Melville, Wharton, and company in the dust.

Well, now that you put it that way...

The other day, when I wrote my blog, I thought it was all a bit trivial.

I guess the real lesson here is why do we need a state anything at all? With a few state anythings, it's almost as if there's a state everything - causing state somethings to be devoid of the meaning behind the efforts of their installments to begin with. Soon, they're as meaningful as Quequeg's harpoon up against the belly of the great white whale, as Massachusetts becomes the Pequod in the stormy seas of legislative productivity. It seems as if that great push for Moby Dick will - or ought to - fall flat against the impenetrable Moby Dick Beacon Hill.

While all of that is true of the state donut, and in some capacity would be true of a state book, there's something a little, well, more meaningful to a state book. Imagine how fun a state-wide debate would be if it were about literature. Heck, we can even compare the poll numbers on Walden versus Moby Dick, or start a March-Madness esque tournament. Instead of people talking about Sanjaya being tossed from American Idle, maybe some of them would have an healthy debate on whether or not Melville's whale of a tale is more deserving than the Scarlett Letter. Or, is the "influential" Walden more deserving than the read-by-all Red Fish, Blue Fish?

Such a state-wide debate would be so, well, weird and fun, surreal and once-in-five-lifetimes-ish that I just don't think I can miss it. It would be like missing the Revelation, because all of the stars have to be lined up for this kind of a heated political contest. In fact, if we do enter into this debate, I promise to read all of Emily Dickinson's poems, Moby Dick and the House of the Seven Gables just so I can give my expert educated opinion. Ryan's Take on the politics of literature in politics is just too good to pass up.

Just imagine the phone calls to your state rep!

PS: I need a funny tag for all these stories, since it seems like there could be more blogs ahead. Best one in the comments win.

A State Book?

Apparently, there's a push to make "Moby Dick" the state book.

What do you guys think? Does Melville's whale of a tale deserve to be top of the state over such great works as Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter? While New Bedford obviously would think so, I'm sure Salem would have something to say about it. It'd be a bit ridiculous to think there could be lobbying for a state book, but surely there have been squabbles over even less substantial issues - like the name of a bridge. In fact, literature seems damn well substantial in comparison - at least in graduation season, when I'm sure someone would call for Dr. Suess's The Cat in the Hat to be our state book (wouldn't that be fitting?). Red Fish, Blue Fish? Old fish, new fish?

Of course, fans of Emily Dickenson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau would all have something to say about it, too. It seems to me that, maybe instead of picking a state book - with plenty of great works to choose from - Massachusetts should just give itself a new nickname: the literature state. Clearly, we have a proud tradition of literature that is very worthy of praise all around. However, if we pick an official book, why not pick an official blog too? I think Ryan's Take would be a splendid choice!

I guess the real lesson here is why do we need a state anything at all? With a few state anythings, it's almost as if there's a state everything - causing state somethings to be devoid of the meaning behind the efforts of their installments to begin with. Soon, they're as meaningful as Quequeg's harpoon up against the belly of the great white whale, as Massachusetts becomes the Pequod in the stormy seas of legislative productivity. It seems as if that great push for Moby Dick will - or ought to - fall flat against the impenetrable Moby Dick Beacon Hill.