Monthly Archives: April 2010
Food Review: Virginia BBQ, Middletown, DE
I love barbeque. Pulled pork is one of my 5 food groups. I make it myself as well, but love sampling others just as much. I like different varieties of sauce, from the tomato-based to Carolina vinegar based to mustard based (my personal favorite). On a recommendation, Lady Aravan, myself, and a friend all took a short road trip down to try a place called Virgina BBQ, a chain barbeque joint.
The Power of the Media
I’ve read two articles recently that struck me, both illustrating the power of the media to distort truth and damage lives. Growing up, I seem to remember thinking the news was pretty impartial, stating facts and pretty much leaving it at that. The editorials section of the paper had some opiniated pieces, sure, but on the whole, the facts were presented with the reader left to conclude what it meant. Now, it seems all we have are editorialists, and we tune into Fox or MSNBC to get the slant we most generally agree with. Maybe I’m wrong, and the “golden age” of impartial journalism never existed.
A lot of us know about Ben Roethlisberger’s idiotic drunken escapade. We’ve heard the story about that night. But what most of us didn’t know the first story, the one that came out the night of the incident:
“13. THE ACCUSER HERSELF WAS UNCERTAIN ABOUT THE MATTER. When the officer on the spot said “I need to talk to the alleged victim, not [the sorority sisters],” he asked the accuser if Roethlisberger had raped her. She said:
(A). “No.” (DA news conference; PART 2, starts 2:42, key point: about 4:10: http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/video/index.html [also at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaRGdYizw7g])
(B) When asked if the two had sex, she said “well, I’m not sure.” (DA interview, PART 2, starts 2:42, key point: about 4:20: http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/video/index.html [also at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaRGdYizw7g]).
- (Blash also said she seemed inebriated, incoherent, “nonchalant,” and at times seemed to to want to tell someone that “y’all did whatever.”)”
Holding Your Novel
I got the proofing copy of my novel in the mail yesterday. Holding your own book in your hands for the first time is surreal. So is flipping it open and looking at words that you vaguely remember writing, but still feel alien and strange. Some of it seemed like it was written by someone else – I literally cannot remember writing those words, even though I know exactly the scene it represented. Flipping it open to a random page, I would see phrases that chunked like a frozen brick on a sidewalk, while others that sounded almost literary.
Winter in Derenemyn 