The Wrath of Kon

Dispatches, thoughts, and miscellanea from writer Jon Konrath

Tag: favorites

  • Curators Versus Creators

    I haven’t read Mashable in a while, and for whatever reason, decided to re-add it to my RSS reader.  Within about five articles, I suddenly remembered why I stopped. First, half of the articles were link-bait about various {Apple_Product}-killers.  Like there was an article about how damn neat HP’s new “answer to the iMac” was,…

  • Things I Learned in 2011

    Okay, so how does one write a post that summarizes the year without A) listing all of the books you read that year, which honestly nobody gives one flying fuck about; B) see A, except with music, which is problematic because I don’t think I bought a single goddamn album actually released in 2011; C)…

  • You Can Never Go Back

    I am home.  My last ten days: Oakland to Chicago to South Bend to North Liberty to South Bend to New Buffalo to South Bend to North Liberty to Elkhart to South Bend to Indianapolis to Bloomington to South Bend to Elkhart to South Bend to Elkhart to South Bend to Milwaukee to Chicago to…

  • Why I am not an indie writer

    I hate the term “Indie Writer”.  Hate it.  Hate all of the variations: indie writer, indie writing, indie books.  It’s one of those terms, like “sammies.”  Any time I am in a restaurant that has the term “sammies” on the menu, I want to burn the fucking place to the ground. Over on Self Publishing…

  • The Replay

    I’ve been dreading this post for years, but it’s a band-aid I need to rip off. I was at this acupuncturist in Berkeley a year ago, in some stupid last-ditch attempt at getting rid of my allergies.  (It did not work.)  And I remember laying on his table, with a dozen needles in my arms…

  • 10 things I learned from the Lemmy documentary

    I’ve been a fan of the band Motörhead for over 25 years now.  When I was a freshman in high school, I used to watch the British comedy show The Young Ones on MTV, when they used to show it late Sunday nights, and one week, this weird metal band came on that sounded cool…

  • 20 Facts About Baseball You Didn’t Know

    1) PNC Park, home to the Pittsburgh Pirates, was built on what was later identified as an American Indian burial ground belonging to the Shelmikedmus nation. Since its construction, the Pirates have not had a winning season. 2) No player in history at the major league level has had the middle name Xavier. 3) During the filming of…

  • The Retail Race to the Bottom

    The Borders by my house looks like a food warehouse two years after the apocalypse started.  I went a few weeks ago, when the sign dudes stood on the corner with the “ALL TITLES 40-60% OFF”, hoping to snag an armful of good science fiction, because I’m going through this phase where I’m trying to…

  • The Death of Death

    I was in the allergy clinic last week, waiting for my arm to swell up until it looked like it took a Justin Verlander fastball, and I saw some magazine with a cover story about man reaching immortality. I didn’t read the article, because I know there are exactly two types of articles in magazines:…

  • List: 30 Ways to Reach First Base

    Hit a single. Reach on an error. Walk on four balls. Get hit by a pitch. Catcher drops the ball after the third strike. Fan interference. Catcher interference. A pitching infraction that results in a 4th ball. A pitched ball lodges in the catcher or umpire’s mask on the third strike or fourth ball. Replacing…