Episode 1296: Epicentre Magazine Lands!

Completely forgot that Tuesday is the worst day of the week for me to attempt to do any sort of work, just because of the sheer amount of TV that I follow which airs on Monday night. I'm almost done though, so I'll still be able to get a little bit of reading in tonight. Incidentally, the inaugural issue of Epicentre Magazine went up today, and there's some cracking stuff in it! It's been amazing to see the reach the magazine is having, just in one day. Currently, it's at 1200+ views and still counting, which is really impressive. WordPress now breaks down viewer statistics by country, and it's interesting that an overwhelming number of the viewers so far have been from within the UK. (By contrast, the viewership for Eunoia Review is predominantly American.) Part of the reason, of course, is that most of the writers in this first issue are British. So I'm curious to see if the viewer figures will even out more in the coming days, or will they continue to remain heavily weighted towards the UK. Whatever the case, it's still a really good start to the magazine, so kudos to Jane and thanks for roping me in!

Episode 1295: Fallen London

So Phil's got me started on this web game called Fallen London, and it's pretty good. It's sort of Victorian gothic (so I've managed to get Maria playing it as well), with the storyline(s) getting doled out in bite-sized portions. There's also a limit to how many actions you can do before you have to wait for them to be replenished, so it's the sort of game that you don't have to spend too much time on if you don't want to. Plus for a change, it's a game that doesn't seem to require that you buy the premium in-game currency to get ahead, at least not so far. Admittedly, I've barely scratched the surface of the game because of the aforementioned constraint. A surprising number of my friends were already on it though. Makes me wonder how come I didn't discover it sooner! Haven't done any work today obviously, but I'm just treating this as the last day of my long (and unearned) Easter weekend break. (From what exactly I am taking a break would be an interesting question.) Starting tomorrow though, I'm going to knuckle down. First up, Bloom's The Anxiety Of Influence. I'm sure it's going to be a fascinating read...

Episode 1294: Babette's Feast Is Brilliant!

Couldn't get to sleep last night, so I started reading the Babette's Feast chapbook series from Math Paper Press. Am halfway through the 10 chapbooks, and so far, I haven't been disappointed (although the first, Jason Wee's My Suit, probably could have done with more proofreading to smooth out some of the awkward tense shifts). In fact, I think what Kenny and Karen have started with this series has the potential (and deserves) to put Singaporean writing on the global map. That's the level of the quality of the writing! Alvin Pang's What Gives Us Our Names is one of the best things I've read. Ever. That's saying a lot because I don't usually get all superlative about the stuff that I read. There's a powerful simplicity to Pang's writing that transforms the chapbook into a very moving experience, reminiscent of say, Italo Calvino's writing in Invisible Cities. Anyway, I managed to survive the Easter service on about three hours of sleep, and then a couple of us had lunch at Arun's and just hung out for pretty much the rest of the day. It does mean I'm pretty exhausted now, so I might crash soon, in the hope of shifting my sleeping patterns back into something resembling normal hours.

Episode 1293: This Day Doesn't Exist, Apparently

So it's the third week of the Easter holidays, and I'm slightly ashamed to say that I still haven't done anything for my conference paper. Earlier, I did briefly consider reading Bloom's book, but then almost immediately thought better of it and decided to stick to reading something I'd actually enjoy, just for one more night, although I suppose I could do 'work' by reading the Merlion anthology yet again. Then again, as someone mentioned at Mike's yesterday, the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday doesn't really feel like it exists, and you wouldn't feel like doing work on it anyway. To be fair, I could've had a productive evening, if I hadn't spent most of it looking for new music. I think maybe I should go through all the hassle of bringing my laptop to the Library next week, or perhaps use Dropbox to store a copy of all my dissertation readings, so that I can access them from a Library computer and do some work. Might as well make use of Dropbox since I've got it, right? Assuming the Library computer allows me to install the Dropbox application and sync files locally, of course...

Episode 1292: Thanks FictionDaily!

Am back from Mike's birthday barbecue. Good times had by all, with appropriate amounts of banter! Anyway, was the latest episode of Community its best ever or its best ever? This show's definitely at its greatest when it's poking fun at familiar cultural institutions. It's frustrating how people aren't watching it, whereas The Big Bang Theory, which is also a fairly weird comedy, is getting up to four times the viewership, as measured by the admittedly flawed Nielsen system. Part of the problem is clearly the general failure of NBC's primetime lineup to thrive, e.g. Smash is supposed to be the network's latest hit, but its ratings would get it cancelled on pretty much every other network (except The CW, which would kill to have even those). I just hope the prospect of syndication gets Community the fourth season it so clearly deserves. Incidentally, for the third time, the FictionDaily site has featured a story from Eunoia Review under its LONG category! Really chuffed about that, I have to admit. Here's hoping the journal gets a few more regular viewers out of being featured. That'd make me really happy for the writers with work in Eunoia Review. I've been getting a fairly steady stream of submissions lately, and looking at the Duotrope's Digest statistics, I'm starting to think it definitely doesn't reflect my true acceptance-rejection ratio anymore. If anything, if 100% of the submissions I receive were reported, the journal probably wouldn't be in the list of top 25 Most Approachable for poetry or fiction. Definitely would still be right at the top for 25 Swiftest in both categories though. Now that they've started listing non-fiction as a separate category, I'm hoping more people will cotton on to the fact that Eunoia Review accepts creative non-fiction submissions too, as those have always been lacking so far.

Episode 1291: Really, Yale?

It seems that the debate over the Yale-NUS College has erupted once more. I'm not au fait with the issue, so I won't presume to comment on it, but a friend of mine has written a response here. I particularly like how Yale academic James Sleeper keeps banging on in the comments about how Singapore is an 'authoritarian corporate city-state', as if that somehow invalidates any Singaporean attempt to critique the American reaction to the joint venture. Authoritarian is stretching the truth, since at the day-to-day level, no one in their right mind would think of comparing Singapore to a genuine dictatorship like North Korea. As for being a corporate city-state, I'd argue that if you carved major cities like New York and Los Angeles out of the rest of the USA, that's exactly what they'd become as well. Plus isn't the USA one of those countries where the government is either in the pockets of big business or pretty helpless to resist its lobbies? I suppose you could say Singapore, with all its GLCs, is being a lot more honest about the relationship between government and business. Ultimately, the whole debate reads like a textbook demonstration of why given half a chance, the rest of the world loves to hate the USA. I would hazard a guess that no other country is as full of people who believe their way is the only right way to do anything, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

Episode 1290: Please Nominate!

Still unproductive in terms of writing my conference paper, but my poem in The South Townsville micro poetry journal is now available to read, along with a mini-interview of sorts. My third review of a chapbook from The Knives Forks and Spoons Press is also up at Sabotage Reviews. I've also realised that nominations are open for the 2012 storySouth Million Writers Award, so if anyone reading my blog also happens to follow Eunoia Review and enjoys the fiction I publish there, please consider nominating a story of your choice here, which has to be longer than 1000 words and have been published in 2011. I've already sent in my three nominations as an editor. In other news, the weather's decided to take a turn for the worse lately, so I had to walk through a drizzle to pick up a mystery parcel. Turned out to be the flipped eye pamphlets I ordered a few days ago. Wasn't expecting them to arrive so soon, but this means I now have Max Wallis's Modern Love, which I've heard nothing but good things about, and he's actually putting the poems up on his website, so you can read them and then buy the pamphlet.

Episode 1289: Coventry's Nightblue Fruit

Apparently the cleaner doesn't come to do my room on Tuesday anymore? I'm so confused. I'm assuming it's now Thursday, since that's when they showed up last week, but I assumed it was just a one-off. Anyway, I went to the Nightblue Fruit open mic at Taylor John's House. (First Tuesday of every month, except January, for anyone in the area who's interested!) It was a lot better than the one at that place in Leamington that shall remain unidentified. Didn't read anything myself this time, but I think I will, if my friends are interested in going back in the coming months. Going to have to miss the very next one though, seeing as I'm back in Singapore for the whole of May. I got a bit bored while I was online in the afternoon, so I ended up buying the clinic II anthology and all five of the print chapbooks NAP has for order. Most of the latter have a limited print run of 150, and as they all sound intriguing for various reasons, I thought I'd best get in there before they're sold out. Am also contemplating getting the PANK Magazine iPhone/iPad app, but I'm going to read a few of the online issues to see if the work they publish is my kind of thing. I've been hearing nothing but good things, but as the app is a fairly expensive investment for digital issues, I want to be sure. Would also like to subscribe to Midwestern Gothic, but that's a bit trickier because there doesn't seem to be a way to preview the magazine's material.

Episode 1288: Game Of Thrones Is Back!

Am finally watching the season premiere of Game Of Thrones, and yes, the show's still as awesome as I remembered. Still don't know what HBO will do when they run out of books to adapt, especially since George R. R. Martin might just be massively trolling the universe and planning to die before the last book of the series is written. On the other hand, I've decided not to continue following AMC's remake of The Killing, as the Season 1 finale really annoyed me and from what people are saying online, it seems like the Season 2 premiere isn't exactly forthcoming on answers either, and I'm not spending another season with a show that refuses to make progress towards solving pretty much its only mystery that I expect the audience cares about. Annie tells me the Danish original was excellent, and that's exactly what Tom Cornford told us at least twice last year during our Shakespeare seminars, so at some point, I might check that out, if I can find it online. Spent a couple of hours in the Library this evening, alternating between playing Words With Friends on my iPhone and reading Koh Buck Song's Brand Singapore: How Nation Branding Built Asia's Leading Global City. Had to finish it because it was due today, which I might have complained about in a previous post. Anyway, I did, and I came away not particularly impressed by Koh's analysis. While I generally agreed with it, I felt that it just came off ultimately as quite cursory, given that it's written by a self-professed expert. Some of his comments on the Merlion should prove useful for my dissertation though, so reading the book wasn't necessarily a waste of time.

Episode 1287: Ah, April Fool's, You Got Me

After several abortive attempts, I finally got the review of the Stainton chapbook going, just before I had to leave for church. Came straight back after, watched the Season 2 episodes of The Pupil that I'd missed in Singapore because I found them on YouTube, and then continued writing. It's almost done now, and I'll send something off to Lindsey tonight, no matter how late I have to stay up to get it done. After all, this should've been done by Friday! I've also got to reply to an e-mail from the editor of The South Townsville micro poetry journal, which has just accepted one of my poems. It's a new online journal with a slight twist. The editor takes only one-poem submissions (because like me, it's a one-man operation over there and I guess he has more on his plate than I do), and if accepted, you have the option of answering three questions posed by him and inspired by the poem. So that's what I'm doing in a bit, once this review's done. Incidentally, I was actually taken in by an April Fool's joke today and I'm not embarrassed to admit it because it's a pretty funny/bizarre one, depending on your tastebuds. Basically, I actually thought Innocent Drinks was being serious about its new limited edition smoothies with a dollop of marmite in it. I mean, why not, right? If there's a company I trusted to make such a concoction even remotely palatable, it would be Innocent Drinks. (By the way, isn't it weird how the company's now 58% owned by The Coca-Cola Company?)