Categories
Technical Difficulties

A block is not a brick

Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday, July 13, 2005. So what I do is just admit my fear. Look at this gap in time: days since the last Brick, feels like a month. Why? A lack of topics as well as a lack of opinions? No. It was the feeling of a block. It came […]

Categories
Mr. Boo Klist The Course of Words

Shhh: Fight Club

Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Sunday, July 10, 2005. A few days ago I finished “Fight Club,” by Chuck Palahniuk, and now have seen the DVD. I’ve been dancing around reading more of this extraordinary writer since he was interviewed on NPR, mocking their style more acutely than something on “The Daily Show with Jon […]

Categories
News, Spin

No trash cans in London

Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Thursday, July 7, 2005: No need to add excessive verbiage about the London mass-transit attacks. Suffice it to say that America shouldn’t forget the Madrid attacks, which have been scarcely mentioned in the news media today. This sort of terrorism has an evening effect. Whether it is thousands killed in […]

Categories
Body, Home, Street

Can’t see the lights

Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Tuesday, July 5, 2005: For a few weeks, newspaper house ads and broadcast public service announcements have proclaimed that the city of Fayetteville would host a Fourth of July celebration at Baum Stadium of the University of Arkansas. It would succeed the ones held for years at the local mall. […]

Categories
Body, Home, Street

Auld friends

Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Sunday, July 3, 2005: Several times a year I do a book report, oops, a book review (I am a grown-up), for the paper. This last one, critiquing the first full biographical treatment of poet Ogden Nash, brought out a couple of e-mails from old friends who had to put […]

Categories
News, Spin

Lead the press to water

Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Friday, July 1, 2005: In this morning’s papers, we read again of local officials asking people to informally not waste water, before conservation steps are ordered. Again, they say there is no shortage, just that it’s summer and yada, yada, yada. In previous summers, though, there have been no mummers […]