Originally posted on San Giacomo's Corner:
Hello, all you budding authors. Have you been shying away from joining a critique group? Maybe you’re apprehensive about showing your work in public. Perhaps you’ve written a chapter, a poem, or a short story, and only your spouse and best friend have read it. Their reaction was…
Let’s do a quick compare and contrast. I’ve got two hyper-famous basketball players in mind. Player A, from his highschool days on, has been known for teamwork. I don’t mean this in the sense of some nauseatingly inspirational cliche either, I mean there are articles by people with PhDs analyzing Player A’s abiding psychological […]
I think that maturity, in many respects, is overrated. That is why, when I have the opportunity to poke, prod and otherwise antagonize wild animals, I consistently ignore mature concerns like “that critter will bite/poison/melt your face” in favor of the more elemental, more natural “oooh, shiny” mindset that has immediately preceded most of my […]
Two of my best friends recently got married and, since I’m an irritating showboat writer and insufferable bore fairly frequent public speaker, I felt it necessary to speechify at the reception. Here, then, is the result of my best efforts to explain one of the healthiest, happiest relationships I’ve ever seen. In order to properly describe […]
Just seven years ago, we had a major push towards what was then called the Unitary Executive. This Bush era doctrine (actually older, but that’s not important for this discussion) holds that the president is entirely in control of all executive functions. It is, in essence, a way to undermine the separation of powers. Rove […]
I teach a class on English-American culture at Mokwon University. I wrote the textbook, I chose the topics, I designed the curriculum – this class is as much mine as any class can be. What’s interesting is that, even with all this design and predetermination, I learn something new almost every lecture. Today, my students […]
Most of us are civilized. We open doors for old people and self-deprecate so that everyone feels at ease. We drink whiskey on the rocks because it’s crude to drink from the bottle and always in moderation because it’s even less refined to lose control. We turn off lights in other people’s offices because we want […]
I had an interesting discussion with “Unload and Unwind’s” Jenni about social class. Let me know what you think. I said: “I am curious about your class. You said you identified mostly by social class – before anyway. How did you perceive people from the lower classes, particularly ambitious ones?” She said: “Sadly I didn’t perceive […]
I should say first that I would recommend this book to almost anybody. 1100 pages of I’m not sure what, but 1Q84’s endlessly entertaining, the pacing (somehow) works and the world building is masterful. Haruki Murikami’s imagination seems to operate in the same, fevered, delirious and warped way that normal people only experience while dreaming […]
Originally posted on Unload and Unwind:
? I was really flattered when Irene asked me to participate in the Blog Hop as it is an award designed to showcase blogs devoted to writing, be it journal style, political, fiction, short stories or human interest along with the many other variations that those who enjoy the…
Ben Garrido's Author Page 