Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Pride and Extreme Prejudice

Monday, March 16th, 2009

zombiesA great moment for literature.

From ‘American Nerd’

Monday, March 16th, 2009

American Nerd

The heroes of American popular culture are surfers, cowboys, pioneers, gangsters, cheerleaders, and baseball players, people at home in the heat of physical exertion. But so many of the individuals who make these images are more like Anne Beatts [whose experiences as a teenage nerd inspired her creation of the TV series Square Pegs]. Their voyeurism – their sense of staring from the wrong lunch table at a radiant nation – makes for a vision of America that appeals to the whole world, including America itself. There’s a globe full of outsiders thirsty for glimpses of the land of myth, and American nerds have gratified them with adoring images. [Brian] Wilson – the bodiless studio addict who spent days refining drum sounds for songs about high-school football and girls on the beach – was the rule, not the exception, for North American fabulists, for DreamWorks as much as Microsoft.

from American Nerd – The Story of My People, by Benjamin Nugent

So, after dithering, I’ve finally decided to treat this site not only as my webcomic site, but also as my primary blog (largely replacing my blog on Vox). That means I’ll occasionally be posting general news, but also idle thoughts, opinions on movies I’ve seen, found news stories and pictures, and – as above – interesting quotations from books and articles I’ve been reading.

Hopefully, this won’t be too tedious or annoying for those of you who are just here for the comics… (ahem)