Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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The Lost Books of the Odyssey
Dreams, vignettes, hypotheticals, and poetry lay out alternate versions of Western literature’s founding epic.
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A Big Step in France
“France has become the first country in the world to remove gender identity disorder, also known as transsexualism, from its list of officially recognized mental illnesses.” While the issue is certainly complicated, this is incredible news.
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Gilliam Hearts Bulgakov
“Why do I keep running away from Mikhail Bulgakov? I’ve been on the run for years now. From the first time I was encouraged to read The Master and Margarita, I have been pursued by keen film producers trying to…
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Movies, Briefly: Vanishing Point (1971)
I’m not a big fan of the moment early in the film where Barry Newman’s Kowalski drives past himself in a different car and disappears into thin air (“Holy crap! He just vanished! THAT MUST BE THE VANISHING POINT!”) and…
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245 Rules for Writing Fiction
In anticipation of Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, which comes out next month, The Guardian has put together a comprehensive list of rules for writing by writers like Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Geoff Dyer, Neil Gaiman, and Joyce Carol…
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Morning Coffee
Time photo-essay on zebra-relocation. They have to be relocated somehow you know? Liechetenstein! (I don’t know why I linked to this either) We here at M.C. headquarters are big fans of the sculptural work of Carmelo Leone. Trying to understand…
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Pedigree Pigeons
“It seemed like a pastime of a fairy-tale New York that had long since disappeared. But, with a little research, I realized a thriving community of pigeon-keepers still existed in the city.”
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Amazon Gets Up a Creek in California
Last year I noted in Slate that Amazon’s been having it both ways for a while on state sales taxes — not paying any where they were not due, and not paying any even where they were due: