Influential Authors

Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who've influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes...

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Thomas Pynchon
Neal Stephenson
Jean Shepherd
Douglas Adams
Chinua Achebe
Ken Kesey
George Lakoff
Mikhael Bulgakov
Carl Sandburg
David Foster Wallace
Tom Wolfe
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Robert Graves
Jack Kerouac

Badminton

(Comment on an argument going on at Joey Novick's page...)

I was tempted to engage here, but when one side in an argument asserts that "liberal" and "fascist" are two names for the same ideology, my sense is that there is nowhere for that argument to go. It'd be like trying to play badminton with a cinder block.

Super

A kid learns that tying a towel around his neck like a cape won't enable him to fly. Similarly, I believe Bogie now grasps that he isn't, and never will be, faster than squirrels.