Monthly Archives: May 2011

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May 3, 2011

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Current Projects

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Bullet Reviews – Pastoralia

My review of George Saunders’s Pastoralia is up over at Bullet Reviews.

A quick word about the website: We’re growing. Like a big ball of moss rolling down a hill composed entirely of moss which, upon contact with moss, acts like Velcro.

That’s how fast we’re growing.

If you’d like to be a part of it, now’s your opportunity:

As I’ve been told, the competition for book reviews is pretty slack. (Apparently, no one reads.) Along with myself, we’ve got a thoroughly British man going by the moniker of ESPF, and the occasional talents of sci-fi obsessed Michael Trimmer. If you read, and you fall outside the genres of “adventure,” Soviet-themed stuff, or… well, hell, even if you intersect with those two (note to self: Write a Soviet adventure novel), let me know if you’d like to write an occasional guest review or two.

Drop me a line at aaroncsimon[at]gmail[dot]com if you’re interested and we’ll have a brief chat in which I ascertain that you hate Jane Austen as blindly and zealously as I. I’m sure we’ll get along fine.

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May 2, 2011

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Essays/My Intriguing Thoughts

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Thoughts on Last Night’s Events

So as you probably know, Osama bin Laden was confirmed dead by the White House late last night.

It sent a whole lot of Americans out into the streets to celebrate the man’s death, and a bit of closure to the families of the victims of the Twin Tower attacks. (For the record, I spent the night sending feverish texts out to friends wagering on whether or not President Obama would announce the news dressed as Captain America. I lost.)

From the outside, I imagine that there are two reactions to all of the celebrations: Either a shared elation at the death of one of the people on the FBI’s Most Wanted list; or a sense of confusion at it all.

I can understand the first reaction. I felt it a good amount last night, though that might have been the Scotch more than anything. (Anyone who looks through my Twitter feed from last night will no doubt see one post consisting entirely of the letter E in varying forms and contexts.)

However, as I’ve seen on facebook and many other areas, there is a lot of the second reaction.

People look at the pictures from in front of the White House North portico, or Ground Zero, or Times Square and wonder, compare it to the images of anti-American sentiment welling up immediately after the World Trade Center attacks, and a chill runs down their spine.

There are a lot of similarities, that’s sure. Because, and this might surprise some, but people like to dance. It might be because a terrorist got offed by Special Forces; it might be because the jihad was in full swing; or it might be because a bored megalomaniac hijacks a parade.

Of course, there are a whole shitton (some might say a metric shitton) of differences. I’m going to ramble on for a while about the confusion on both sides. (Well, confusion on one, elation on another.)

Join me, will you?

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