Dispatches, thoughts, and miscellanea from writer Jon Konrath

Month: March 2014

  • AlphaSmart and distraction-free writing

    It has been impossible for me to write lately without spending time fucking around, checking the web, reading through old email, whatever. So I am trying something new: writing on an AlphaSmart Dana word processor. The Dana is essentially an overgrown Palm Pilot, glued to a full-sized keyboard.  It has a monochrome touch screen that’s…

  • A Stupid Nostalgia Listicle (Or, You Won’t Believe these 15 Things From The Nineties That Will Help You Lose Weight That The IRS Doesn’t Want You To Find Out About!)

    I have been binge-watching the show West Wing lately, because S has never seen it, and I watched a lot of the first few seasons until it got stupid, back when I was supposed to be writing the follow-up for Rumored to Exist, which never happened. So I remember bits and pieces of the show, and…

  • RIP, Oderus

    I woke up this morning and found the start of a flood of Facebook posts that I thought had to be a hoax, but they were true:  Dave Brockie, also known to many as Oderus Urungus of Gwar, had been found dead last night.  He was only 50. I must have first heard about Gwar…

  • Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel

    I saw The Grand Budapest Hotel, the latest Wes Andserson flick, last night.  I don’t like watching movies like that on opening weekend, because they draw the baby boomer intelligentsia Berkeley crowd, the ones that never see movies and then laugh at the wrong places at the stupid pre-trailer ads that I’ve seen a thousand…

  • The journal pit

    I wanted to write a big post bitching about the new Facebook design, but it’s hopeless and a waste of time. I’ve wrung hands over the fact that I spend too much time there, and eventually that rug will be yanked from under me and it will become as fruitful as logging on to Friendster…

  • default apologies

    Enter the standard disclaimer here about never posting and needing to post something more often and how I’m going to be pissed ten years from now when I go back to find out what I was doing in 2014 and find out that entire months went by with no updates. I’ve actually done well with…