What happened here?

It seems the emphasis of this blog has shifted away from the independent media as a whole, though that will definitely be a major component of future posts. For now, at least, this blog will be about me (but aren't all blogs). Well, not about me specifically, but about things I find interesting and relevant.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Thank you, professor Cohen, wherever you are, for giving me a reason to begin this blog. It's a good exercise in creativity and analysis.

Some promotion:
I'd like to encourage everyone who reads this to check out my good friend Pete's blog. The captain of last year's Ithaca men's rowing team, he is at a USRowing lightweight sculling development camp. He's chronicling his story here.

Some Self-Promotion:
As an editorial intern in the Arts and Entertainment section of the Ithaca Times this summer, it is my job to proof copy, write articles and help put together the "Times Table." My first article was published yesterday, and I think it came out all right.

I also contribute to the Ithaca Times arts blog, Popcorn Youth. You can read my most recent post here, and I'll repost it below as well.

In other news, I am working on an honors thesis next year with Professor Michael Twomey. The topic? Prophets and the Apocalypse. (Not to be confused with "Profits and the Apocalypse," a terrifying tale of why the sinking world economy is a sign of the end times.) If I find anything interesting or relevant, I'll post it here.

What's on your summer reading list?
[Originally posted to the Popcorn Youth blog June 5, 2009]

I think the last teen/young adult book I read was Frindle in eighth grade. By this point I was reading mostly Tom Clancy, and just getting into John Grisham. Ho ho, I thought, I’m so mature. This book is about fifth graders, ho ho.

But then I really liked it. It had all the classic elements of teen lit: school, struggles with teachers and bullies, a smart kid to outwit them all. I sure wasn’t getting everything in Rainbow Six, but this I could understand. I’d been through stuff like this in the past.

Frindle was, if I remember correctly, very light-hearted, with no more conflict than student versus teacher or student versus bully. A little alienation here and there, but nothing big. That’s what I thought I’d find in Slob, local writer Ellen Potter’s latest teen novel. I was completely wrong. This book cuts pretty deep. And does it really well.

I first picked up this book doing research fro an upcoming article on Potter, thinking it would be important to know some of her work and style. I finished the whole thing in about two hours, unable to put it down.

Slob tells the story of Owen Birnbaum, a seventh grader growing up in New York City. He has an IQ of 139 and is 57% (e.g. 57 pounds) heavier than your average 12 year-old. His weight, of course, has him as the butt of many cruel jokes, including those of his teacher. He didn’t always used to be so heavy. In fact, he only started putting on weight about two years ago after an event that isn’t named until three-quarters of the way through the book. He has the stretch marks to prove it.

Owen’s an inventor, and is trying to come up with a contraption to see into the past, in order to see what happened two years ago. What is this mysterious event? Well, you’ll have to read for yourself, but if Dostoyevsky wrote a children’s book, he’d probably treat it in a similar way. The psychological implications of the incident are well-treated and the event itself is incredibly dark and heart-rending.

It’s a nice coming-of-age tale in which villains can be heroes, supposed heroes can be villains and everyone has a secret. Oh, and the guy with the one-point-short-of-genius IQ? He’s not nearly as good at understanding other people as he is at understanding his homework.

So if you’re looking for something to read this summer that’s not too challenging and won’t take up too much time, try a young-teen novel like Slob. It’s okay, Edward Cullen and Robert Langdon will be there when you get back.