At the risk of this blog’s focus becoming too literary, today’s article at todayinliterature.com is too good to pass up. On this day in 1946, The New Yorker published John Hersey’s thirty-one thousand word article titled “Hiroshima”, which followed the lives of six survivors in the months after the atomic bomb was dropped by the US to end the Pacific battle of World War II. The article took up all sixty-eight pages of text space, an unprecented occurence in both the history of the magazine and the publishing world. New …

So I’ve decided to give a boost to my fiction writing by joining The Cult at chuckpalahniuk.net. While not run directly by Chuck Palahniuk, author of such novels as Fight Club, Choke, Lullaby and most recently, Haunted, Chuck does conduct an online writing workshop every month that consists of essays on how to improve your writing skills and an assignment which can be submitted back to the site for critiquing and even the possibility of getting published in an upcoming anthology.
But I may have already said too much. The …

Climbing into the back of the pickup truck on the dusty street, a trio of tribes women surround us wearing clothes of bright yellows, magentas and cyans, and black hats decorated with jingling tokens and coins. Their smiles are stained red with bettlenut juice and they thrust toward me their handfuls of bracelets and scarves all the while whispering under their breath the mantra on their true intent: “Opium….o..p..i..u..m..”
We were leaving Muang Xing in the north of Laos, thirteen miles south of the Chinese border. This was one of the …

It wasn’t easy tracking down a copy of Lunar Park, the new novel by Bret Easton Ellis. I went to a number of book stores around Vancouver before finding a “slightly damaged” last copy at the Duthies on Broadway. I guess the true fan would have already pre-ordered on Amazon; I myself do not seem to possess enough forethought for such matters. In the end, I was desperate; they offered me a discount; I pulled out the credit card.
Promoted as a pseudo-memoir, Ellis fans will immediately recognize the author’s usual …

Above are the two best photos I could find of the weekend’s festivities at Owl Farm. Michael Swindle of the Village Voice provides the most fitting commentary.

Final preparations are being made for tomorrow’s private memorial service for writer Hunter S. Thompson. A 153 foot tall cannon, shaped like the gonzo fist (currently covered in blue tarp to conceal it from curious onlookers) is scheduled to fire the good doctor’s ashes into the air above his Owl Farm property.
My original reaction at the time of HST’s suicide was posted on the IBC blog site:
The self proclaimed creator of gonzo journalism and long time hero of mine, Hunter S. Thompson shot himself yesterday afternoon at his home …

With the CBC on the eve of a lockout, there is still nothing finer than tuning in to quality Sunday night programming like The Wire [the impact of electricity on music] (5—6pm PST).
Tonight’s episode titled “The Wheels of Steel (Episode 7)” explored the turntablist (a far different creature from the superstar dj) as serious musician. As host/producer, Jowi Taylor puts it: “”Someone who mixes one record after another is a DJ. Someone who brings an archive of records to life with loops and breaks and mixes and creates something new, …

In the era of videophone war journalism, it seems implausible to find someone like Steve Mumford who chose to cover the U.S. occupation of Iraq with sketch book and canvas. Following in the tradition of Winslow Homer, who illustrated scenes from the American Civil War for Harper’s Weekly, Mumford’s paintings often capture a deeper reality and an added dimension of humanity that the click of a camera shutter cannot portray.
Having returned to New York after over 10 months in the heart of the action, Mumford’s work is now on display …

The self-proclaimed “art terrorist”, known only by his tag name, Banksy has been getting his fair share of press as of late. Not only does Wired Magazine offer a profile on him in their upcoming issue, but the latest Adbusters features his Renaissance style portrait of a maiden in a gas mask on its cover.
An urban artist since the age of 12, Banksy has gained recent notoriety for his prankful snub at the mainstream art community. In March, upon donning a trench coat and fake beard, Banksy visited the …