Recipe: Chicken Roasted with Sour Cream, Lemon, and Mango

My mom discovered this recipe a few years ago, and it’s one of my favorites (according to the recipe card, she got it from the book Cooking for Mr. Latte). I asked her for it shortly after I left home, and discovered that not only does it taste good, it’s easy to make, and [...]

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Television: Star Trek: TOS, #44: “The Trouble with Tribbles”

Watch the episode on YouTube.
Having watched “The Omega Glory,” I decided I had to do right by my pop cultural education and familiarize myself with the origins of tribbles. Doing so has confirmed that I will be watching the rest of The Original Series. Also, that I wish I had been whoever was [...]

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Books: “The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear,” by John Buescher

The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear, John Buescher, 2006, 368 p.
A month or so ago, at my workplace (the Center for History and New Media, at George Mason University, where I work on the National History Education Clearinghouse project), I said something to my officemate, John Buescher, about science fiction. John’s an older [...]

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Television: Star Trek: TOS, #52: “The Omega Glory”

Having just seen the film, I decided to watch an episode of The Original Series—the first episode of TOS I’ve ever watched. This comes right after me sitting down and watching through TNG’s “Aquiel,” which is the first full Star Trek episode I’ve deliberately watched and not just fled from when I saw my [...]

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“Danny, The Champion of the World,” by Roald Dahl

Dahl, Roald. Danny, The Champion of the World. Bantam, 1975: 198 p.
I think I read this once when I was small, but I read it again recently. For research for fiction, strangely enough—one of my characters is a Dahl fan. Dahl’s one of those few children’s book authors who never sells [...]

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“Youth Without Youth,” by Mircea Eliade

Eliade, Mircea. “Youth Without Youth.” Trans. by Mac Linscott Ricketts.
The novella on which the Coppola film Youth Without Youth is based. After watching the film and grasping at the threads of plot that wafted by and then dispersed like artistically-shot smoke (which there was a fair amount of in the film), I [...]

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Fragment: “To Market”

Words: 254.
Prompt: The Eastern Market, and Marjorie and Magister begin their first real date. I may continue this.
Marjorie had told him she had gotten tired of the museums and of listening to him expound on every antiquity and display; he had told her he didn’t expound, they just brought back memories. She didn’t [...]

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China Mieville’s “The Scar”

Mieville, China. The Scar. New York: Del Rey, 2002. 638 p.
Cover art’s by Ashley Wood — and a very nice atmospheric picture of the floating city Armada and its accompanying airships it is.  Go check out his website — he does kick-ass, grungy robots and human figures.  Some posing super-chicks, which I [...]

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Raymond Chandler’s “Red Wind”

Chandler, Raymond. “Red Wind.” Stories and Early Novels. New York: Library of America, 1995. 368-417.
I’m taking a class in detective fiction right now, for my Last English Requirement EVER (finally graduating, what a thought) and am very happy, because we’ve leapfrogged right into the hardboiled, noir-type stuff. And, boy, do [...]

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Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The Gold-Bug and Other Tales. Ed. Stanley Appelbaum. New York: Dover, 1991. 30-56.
Sir Thomas Browne: According to Wiki, “Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was an English author of varied works which disclose his wide learning in diverse fields including medicine, religion, science [...]

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