Monthly Archives: September 2018

1998/2018: Whatever 20/20, Day Thirty: Time

This entire series is about time; it makes sense to end it with a piece directly on the subject. There are a number of ways for me to consider time, particularly since 1998, the year in which I started Whatever, and the point in which, for the purposes of this series, I start considering the […]

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Krissy Gets Ready For October

She’s goth! (She’s not really goth. In fact this picture she’s in our kitchen and if memory serves is looking down to see whatever damn fool thing Smudge is up to. But Photoshop is a hell of a thing.) Here’s a less goth photo of Krissy. She was walking down our stairs and I called […]

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1998/2018: Whatever 20/20, Day Twenty-Eight: Age

Well, I’m twenty years older now than I was in 1998, that’s for sure. I haven’t minded getting older in these last twenty years, I have to say. For one thing, bluntly, the last twenty years have been great for me, in terms of career and life and general happiness. If the worse things that’s […]

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The Whatever Digest, 9/28/18

To start the day off on a high note, look what arrived today: It’s the first author copy of The Consuming Fire, which is out in a week and a half. It looks fabulous. It feels fabulous. It is fabulous. And while we’re on the topic, I got a sneak preview the other day of […]

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The Whatever Digest, 9/27/18

Let’s start with a cat picture, shall we?  There. Whatever else happens with the day, you’ve still had a cat picture. And that’s something! *** No, I won’t be watching the Kavanaugh/Ford thing today. I have a very nice television and I don’t want to break it by throwing a shoe at it. Also, my […]

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1998/2018: Whatever 20/20, Day Twenty-Six: Ego

Oooooh, I’ve always been an ego-filled little doofus. I do think at this point the ego may be better justified. And also, I’ve worked to change where my ego is centered. 1998, I will note, was a very important year for my ego. That was the year it took its first major hit, when I […]

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The Whatever Digest, 9/26/18

My Internet is still mostly down, and I went through all of yesterday not knowing what was going on in the world. It was refreshing! Of course, some things still made it through. I understand our President was laughed at, at the UN. That’s all I got. Maybe I’ll skip today’s news too. *** I […]

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1998/2018: Whatever 20/20, Day Twenty-Five: Writing

Writing has gotten simultaneously easier and harder over the last twenty years. Easier, because, bluntly, I’m better at it now than I was 20 years ago. Better at which parts? All of the parts. There are literally no technical aspects of writing (including the technical aspects of creativity) that I don’t just simply do better. […]

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The Big Idea: Ryan North

I am not saying I am a time traveler. For all most of you know, I am not. But if I were, and remember I am not saying I am, then I would be very interested in Ryan North’s new book How To Invent Everything. Very, very interested. Theoretically. RYAN NORTH: I wanted to write […]

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The Whatever Digest, 9/24/18

I’m at the airport super early, so let’s check in on the state of the world, shall we? Oh. Oh. Well, that’s no good, is it. *** At the moment I have nothing useful to add about what’s going on with either Kavanaugh or Rosenstein situations, because in both cases no one else seems to […]

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1998/2018: Whatever 20/20, Day Twenty-Four: Reading

Over the last 20 years, and on a day-to-day basis, I don’t think what I read has changed much. I read a lot of non-fiction, a fair amount of science fiction and fantasy as well as the mystery genre, and I read a whole lot online, specifically news and tech sites, plus the occasional magazines […]

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1998/2018: Whatever 20/20, Day Twenty-Three: Technology

Much of my creative life, and certainly almost all of my professional life for the past 20 years, has been greatly influenced and impacted by technology. It starts earlier than that, of course. In 1984, the first Macintosh computer came out, and it came with a simple word processing program. Coincidentally, 1984 was the first […]

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1998/2018: Whatever 20/20, Day Twenty-Two: Taste

Here’s an interesting question to consider: Do I have the same taste — the same cultural likes and dislikes in terms of things like style and entertainment — here in 2018 that I had in 1998? After all, it’s been twenty years. That’s a long time in terms of culture, style and entertainment. But then […]

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1998/2018: Whatever 20/20, Day Twenty-One: New York

I’m actually writing this in New York; I’m currently loitering at a hotel near Penn Station, in room that looks like the nicest dorm suite at NYU and can hear the street noise rising up to my windows. It’s surprisingly nice white noise, although history reminds me that sometimes it’s just noise, and loud. It’s […]

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The Whatever Digest, 9/21/18

I’m at the airport with two and a half hours before my flight boards. Enough time for a digest! *** So apparently the big attempt to defect from Kavanaugh’s allegedly sexually assaulting past was for a key Republican operative to launch a conspiracy theory Twitter thread saying it was actually someone else who attacked Ford, […]

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