Archive for 2014

  • The Zen of Allen Ginsberg

    The Zen of Allen Ginsberg

    June 3rd, 2014 | Allen Ginsberg | journalpulp | Comments Off on The Zen of Allen Ginsberg

    Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born June 3rd, 1926, and died April 5th, 1997. Today is his 88th birthday. Ginsberg, along with Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, is a preeminent figure in the 1950’s Beat Generation counterculture — i.e. the Beatniks — and if you’ve ever wondered what, precisely, these women and men stood for, it […]

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  • Twelve of the World’s Most Stupendous Libraries: Like Something Out of Science Fiction (saved the best for last)

    June 3rd, 2014 | Libraries | journalpulp | 4 Comments

    Hat Tip Distractify

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  • Happy Birthday, Walter Whitman

    Happy Birthday, Walter Whitman

    June 1st, 2014 | Walt Whitman | journalpulp | 2 Comments

    Walter (“Walt”) Whitman, perhaps America’s only guru, turned 195-years-old today. He is unquestionably America’s most famous and most quintessential poet — who is second, I would add, only to Emily Dickenson as the most overrated. Walter Whitman, who opened the closet but wouldn’t come out; who lived in a kind of luxurious poverty — housekeeper, […]

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  • Five Insanely Interesting Facts About Dracula

    May 26th, 2014 | Dracula | journalpulp | No Comments

    On May 27, 1897, Dracula, by Bram Stoker, was first published. Here are five facts about Bram Stoker’s Dracula that you probably didn’t know: 5. Bram Stoker, who was Irish, originally titled his book The Dead Un-Dead, which he then later changed to The Undead. Stoker’s original manuscript was 541 pages and, until fairly recently, […]

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  • Bucket of Black Snakes

    Bucket of Black Snakes

    May 21st, 2014 | Writers | journalpulp | 4 Comments

    The extraordinarily prolific and witty French writer-and-philosopher Voltaire — whose real name was François-Marie Arouet — drank up to 100 cups of coffee a day! Voltaire called coffee “the bucket of black snakes” and said it was the closest thing he had to a religion. He did most of his imbibing at the Café de […]

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  • The 140-Year-Old Riddle That’s Never Been Solved

    The 140-Year-Old Riddle That’s Never Been Solved

    May 8th, 2014 | Riddles | journalpulp | 86 Comments

    Bishop Samuel (“Soapy Sam”) Wilberforce, who once famously debated Charles Darwin’s protege Thomas Huxley — Darwin himself had been slated to debate Wilberforce but got sick and sent Huxley in his stead — was regarded in nineteenth-century England (by his friends and enemies alike) as among the most forceful public speakers of his day. The writer […]

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  • The Subtle but Significant Difference Between Confidence and Determination

    The Subtle but Significant Difference Between Confidence and Determination

    May 1st, 2014 | Writers | journalpulp | 8 Comments

    “Confidence is a static state. Determination is active. Determination allows for doubt and for humility — both of which are critical in the world today. There is so much that we don’t know, and so much that we know we don’t know. To be overly confident or without doubt seems silly to me. Determination, on […]

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  • Putting the Cock Back in Cocktail with Rum

    April 22nd, 2014 | Bartending | journalpulp | 12 Comments

    Nothing says springtime like a refreshing rum cocktail — refreshing, with its remoter connotations of freshets and bursting water. Come and have a drink with the unwashed: Rum, like the hangovers it can create, is a side-effect, a by-product: a by-product of the juice that comes from sugarcane. And that, really, is one of the […]

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  • 3 Beautiful Ladies, 1 Horrifyingly Uncooperative “Canada” Shirt (and Other Photos You Won’t QUITE Believe are Real)

    3 Beautiful Ladies, 1 Horrifyingly Uncooperative “Canada” Shirt (and Other Photos You Won’t QUITE Believe are Real)

    April 17th, 2014 | Photos | journalpulp | No Comments

    A reader kindly sent me these, and I thought they were pretty damn entertaining (though I don’t know if I quite buy into that last one).

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  • Become a More Productive Writer

    April 10th, 2014 | Writing | journalpulp | No Comments

    “If you’re just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television’s electric plug wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far.” –Stephen King, On Writing I admit it: Stephen King has never been my cup of tea, and […]

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  • Fifty Best Southern Novels Ever Written?

    Fifty Best Southern Novels Ever Written?

    April 4th, 2014 | Uncategorized | journalpulp | No Comments

    What do you think? Here’s how the writer begins: Sure, alphabetically, Absalom, Absalom! is first on this list. But, coincidentally, it is also the greatest Southern novel ever written. A crowing achievement of William Faulkner’s experimentation in narratives and storytelling, it encapsulates all that defines the post-war (that’s the Civil War, you guys) Southern mentality, […]

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  • Pulp Shakespeare?

    April 3rd, 2014 | Shakespeare | journalpulp | No Comments

    This is from 2012, but I only just heard of it: PULP SHAKESPEARE, a “Best of Fest” winner at the 2011 Hollywood Fringe Fest, has been selected to be presented in the 2012 FringeNYC Encores Series. Out of the 187 productions in this year’s FringeNYC Festival, PULP SHAKESPEARE is one of just fifteen chosen for […]

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  • Spock

    March 27th, 2014 | Star Trek | journalpulp | No Comments

    Live long and prosper, Leonard Nimoy! On this day, March 26th, 1931, in the West End of Boston, Massachusetts, Leonard Simon Nimoy was born to Max and Doris Nimoy — both Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Iziaslav, now part of present-day Ukraine — and today he turned 83 years young. Leonard Nimoy is exactly four […]

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  • Behind closed doors

    The 32-Year-Old Poet who was Executed for Waging War on a Barbarous God

    March 20th, 2014 | Poets | journalpulp | No Comments

    “I have tried to defend the legitimate right that every people in this world should have which is the right to live freely with full civil rights.” — Hashem Shaabani, February, 2014 This just happened. On February 17th, 2014, the Iranian government executed Hashem Shaabani, a thirty-two-year-old Arab-Iranian, and his friend Hadi Rashedi, both of […]

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  • Creative Writing Courses are a “Waste of Time”

    Creative Writing Courses are a “Waste of Time”

    March 17th, 2014 | Writing | journalpulp | 2 Comments

    The novelist Hanif Kureishi — who teaches creative writing at Kingston University, and whom I’d frankly never heard of before I saw this article — has recently come under some fire for remarks he made to The Guardian newspaper: “A lot of my students just can’t tell a story. They can write sentences but they […]

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