By joshuacitrak, on November 15th, 2012 |  Glad you asked. It’s a UN organization that very soon will decide if the global internet is in need of some good old fashioned censorship, regulation, bandwidth throttling and lowered expectations of privacy and free speech.
We defeated PIPA and SOPA last year, now we must encourage our own government to carry out our wishes internationally. Other foreign governments such as China and Russia are seriously pushing for struct, universal internet control. That’s not what we’re about. The philosophy behind Internet control isn’t about software piracy, hacking or viruses. It’s about keeping tabs on who is saying what and who has access to what kind of information. Internet freedom is something we all appreciate and benefit from. Visit the above links, decide for yourself.
By joshuacitrak, on November 15th, 2012 | Allan Bloom is a hysterical, raving, reactionary lunatic. He and his academia ilk are exactly the reason why education teaches kids nothing, because they know absolutely zero about the children they’re supposed to teach. mostly, this book is little more than a “get off my lawn” diatribe against any and all (race, sex, drugs, rock music) youth fascinations, blaming each of them in turn for the “Closing of the American Mind.”
Bloom continually condescends in the most irritating manner of the American intellectual elite; yammering on and on yearning for some lost set of ideals that never existed; kids who didn’t slack off. Americans who knew their place. Businessmen who were kind and good, not greedy, because they’d read French poets in school. Quoting Socrates, Plato, Tocqueville to bolster arguments that are pointless and stupid, Bloom completely fails to engage and communicate anything meaningful, which of course may be the real reason his own Ivy League students seem so disengaged. That thought, of course, would never enter the author’s mind in a million years. With guys like this, it’s everyone else’s fault you know.
Built on a false notion, this book can never succeed. However, that doesn’t stop the author from telling us all the ways in which we’re so stupid and he’s so fucking smart. Bloom’s problems? Liberalism. Integration. Equality. Without a class and caste system, youth have no set place! No reason or need to struggle! No reason to look up to the “elite” class! Kids these days, they accept everybody without prejudice! That’s wrong! Because, because now we have women thinking they can learn stuff! Make decisions about things old men like me have already decided. And ask men out on dates and nobody blinks an eye! And black people! Right there! On campus! The horrors!
That all being said, some of it in fun, the author does make some interesting observations. Observations of which I happen to agree with. For example, education has turned into glorified career training. Students are no longer being taught foreign languages, art or music — their education is much less rounded — but further missing are basic skills such as composition and critical thinking. The reasons for this are many, teaching to a test, classroom over-crowding, budget cuts, and we need more champions of the complete educational experience. However, puffy-chested, hyper-educated egotists do nothing but damage that important message.
By Mitch Mitchum, on June 5th, 2012 | unemployed
let down by friends
feel so low that not even
masturbation is appealing
By Mitch Mitchum, on June 5th, 2012 | who feels gypped after a drunk fuck?
only the guy in the next apartment over listening to it through the walls while
he can’t sleep.
up worrying
about every little problem that ever flashed across his path because he can’t
grip it in his hands.
squeeze those problems around the neck until the head just
flops under its own unconscious weight.
let the body fall to the floor and
kick it in the ribs for good measure.
By pookie you-know-that-guy-that-hangs-out-front-the-liquor-store-all-day, on May 10th, 2012 | Some of the stories in my just finished novel, Picture Me Rollin’, are self contained enough so that I sought about publication for them in lit mags. ‘run,’ a story about a witnessed home invasion in the Western Addition, is now up on paragraphline.com
By joshuacitrak, on May 9th, 2012 | is the title of my recently finished first novel, and… it’s done. whew. that was a lot of work. seriously. 75% of the book was written in a flurry since July, which would explain the lack of posts here, the crazed look in my eye and the fact that i no longer have any friends.
i had the manuscript edited by someone i trust and they came back and told me it was one of the cleanest manuscripts they’d ever seen. there’s a tip for all you on the path to your first book. even the littlest things mean a lot. write, read, read aloud, edit, edit, edit, then edit again. never say, ‘good enough.’ you have to put the work in to be taken seriously. and did i mention, it’s a lot of fuckin’ work?
i learned so much while i was writing about myself, about writing and about the business. it was truly a work of joy, and now, i’m already on to the next book.
PMR is on it’s way to agents, so wish me luck, friends.
By joshuacitrak, on January 30th, 2012 | Thought I’d link to this great post on Awkward. Lots of humor there, but lots of truth as well.
By admin, on December 3rd, 2011 | Do you have absolutely zero ideas for a book?
Or perhaps you just want to know how to properly use the little known literary trick, “ellipse-semi-colon style” (…;) properly in a sentence?
Then, here’s your man. But, fair warning: you probably don’t have the chops to get this dude to rep you.
By admin, on November 16th, 2011 | Non-writing related, however if H.R. 3261 does pass, it will most certainly effect the way you consume your media, books included.
While the Stop Online Piracy Act sounds like it might be a good thing, it really isn’t. It puts the ability to censor websites and their content in the hands of major corporations and the enforcement of such in the hands of third-party ISP’s, completely foregoing legal due-process for any who might be targeted.
You might think, well, if websites are guilty of piracy, then they should be shut down. The letter of this bill is so vague that benign sites like Twitter, FaceBook, Tumblr and hundreds of others would become targets. And let me remind you, a website does not have to be actually guilty of committing or abetting or facilitating piracy, it only has to be accused of it to effectively be shut down.
You might think, hey, I wouldn’t want someone getting a hold of my hard work for free, either. I agree. But guess what? This isn’t about you or me. This is about big companies squashing speech, innovation and development, or anything else that they view as a threat to their current market share. Really? Yes. And it happens all the time already, even with your favorite company Apple and your new world Jesus H. Christ, Steve Jobs. They already own the courts, friends, don’t let them start carving up the net.
Visit AmericanCensorship for more information on how you can add your voice to the growing list of Americans against H.R. 3261
By Mitch Mitchum, on November 16th, 2011 | “I bet somebody makes a lot of money writing Mad Libs,” she said, brushing her rolled cigarette against her lips before taking a drag. “They’re probably fucking rolling in it.”
“I got these in the dollar bin,” I said. “I was just walking by and I saw them there and suddenly I wasn’t in San Francisco any more. I was back there. Back home — ya’ know? 2nd grade. 3rd grade. Somethin’ like that. Me and my sister, up way past our bedtimes, sprawled out on her bed listening to WAAL on her clock radio — which I wanted like anything because all I had was a stupid dinosaur clock with the T-Rex pointing out the time — giggling ourselves stupid.
She exhaled. Pulled her knees up to her chest and stretched her sweatshirt over them so that just her freckled feet stuck out.
“I wonder how much money they make, you think?”
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