Ordinary Human Language

2020

by Brian Crane

August 2020

Tinderbox Videos

It’s the time of year where I’m preparing courses for the Fall, and this year, I decided that I would...

Full Post • Posted August 13, 2020


July 2020

Fitzgerald on First-Rate Intelligence

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same...

Full Post • Posted July 30, 2020


A Few Garden Thoughts, July

* There is too much to do. So do what you see how to do. As you work, you’ll see...

Full Post • Posted July 25, 2020


A Home at the End of the World

Book I Two young boys grow up together in Cleveland as best friends. One is dealing with the trauma of...

Full Post • Posted July 25, 2020


Araki on Heterosexuality

“Heterosexuality sucks, even as a board game.” —Gregg Araki, *Totally F***ed Up*...

Full Post • Posted July 25, 2020


Butler—Themes Post-Exogenesis

Reading the Exogenesis series (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago) I made a non-exhaustive list of themes running through Octavia Butler’s novels....

Full Post • Posted July 25, 2020


Nus masculins

A 1954 film by François Reichenbach restored and presented by the Cinémathèque française that I found through a blog post...

Full Post • Posted July 13, 2020


What Opening Looks Like

I’ve realized too late that it would have been cool to keep the Government’s various info sheets as they were...

Full Post • Posted July 10, 2020


Cocteau on Individuality

Rien n’est plus tenace que la déformation professionnelle. — Jean Cocteau, Orphée...

Full Post • Posted July 9, 2020


The Time of Crisis

The troubles move at their own times. There are waves of infection. There are also waves of reaction. They don’t...

Full Post • Posted July 7, 2020


Cunningham on Fate

“Few fates are wholly disagreeable. If they were, we might do a better job of evading them.” — Michael Cunningham,...

Full Post • Posted July 6, 2020


Required Viewing

Today’s thought: Ink Master and RuPaul’s Drag Race are, despite surface differences, the same show about the same subject. They...

Full Post • Posted July 4, 2020


June 2020

Montaigne on Judgment

We readily acknowledge in others an advantage in courage, in bodily strength, in experience, in agility, in beauty; but an...

Full Post • Posted June 23, 2020


A Taste of Honey

This fantasy novella recounts a gay, interracial, intercultural love story. Two young men — one the son of a low-ranking...

Full Post • Posted June 22, 2020


Lie With Me

Philippe Besson’s short novel tells of two young men in a small village on the French border with Spain who...

Full Post • Posted June 20, 2020


Montaigne on Deciding Things

I can easily maintain an opinion but not choose one. — Michel de Montaigne, "Of Presumption"...

Full Post • Posted June 16, 2020


Incremental Change

WordPress is the equivalent of the vegan’s morning egg taken from the nest of the chickens roaming freely in the...

Full Post • Posted June 13, 2020


Butler on Throwing People Away

“The problem, of course, with throwing people away is that they don’t go away. They stay in the society that...

Full Post • Posted June 10, 2020


iVegan

Walking today it occurred to me that I interact with the internet the way vegans interact with food: intensely but...

Full Post • Posted June 10, 2020


Distraction as Metaphor

We talk a lot about distraction these days, and recently a few thoughts popped into my head about what our...

Full Post • Posted June 9, 2020


May 2020

Ink Master, Season 1

I’ve seen clips of later seasons and found them mesmerizing. So with lockdown wearing on me one day and looking...

Full Post • Posted May 30, 2020


Criterion's Pride Schedule

Criterion has published their June schedule, which includes a series of queer films for Pride Month that actually has me...

Full Post • Posted May 29, 2020


Abbott on Humane Scholarship

You should aspire to something better than the mere political use of the past or of the Other. Human scholarship...

Full Post • Posted May 29, 2020


Errands Under Lockdown

My last post, once I saw it online, startled me with how little it captured the experience of running the...

Full Post • Posted May 29, 2020


This Year's Garden

Early Wednesday, May 20, I got up and dropped off my bike at the shop to be serviced for the...

Full Post • Posted May 28, 2020


J. A. Martin, Photographe

Set in the late 18th century in Quebec, a wife finds people to care for her children and sets out...

Full Post • Posted May 27, 2020


COVID-19—Timelines

In late 2019, a new coronavirus cropped up in China, and a few months later, it became a pandemic. The...

Full Post • Posted May 25, 2020


Embarassed

Yesterday I was going through some old posts on my blog for the first time in ages and what I...

Full Post • Posted May 25, 2020


Fall 2020

The announcement has been made: classes at my college will be online in the Fall. Figuring out how to make...

Full Post • Posted May 23, 2020


Star Trek: Discovery

I lost track of the Star Trek series early on in Voyager. So aside from the three film reboots, I’ve...

Full Post • Posted May 20, 2020


New Normal

Talking about a “new normal” a few weeks ago felt like hysteria, but it seems pretty clear that many of...

Full Post • Posted May 15, 2020


Brown on Not Copping-Out

…don’t make a ritual out of getting your head together… — Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle...

Full Post • Posted May 12, 2020


True Detective

My brother loved the first season of True Detective. My sister-in-law loved it too. So did my mother. It stars...

Full Post • Posted May 8, 2020


BeepBoopBeepWooooo

Have a good one bro…...

Full Post • Posted May 8, 2020


April 2020

Rousseau on Walking

The free hours of my daily walks have often been filled with delightful contemplations which I am sorry to have...

Full Post • Posted April 28, 2020


Walking

It was sunny and warm, so I spent the morning walking the dirt and gravel roads between the farmers’ fields....

Full Post • Posted April 27, 2020


And Yet...

Our lives are upside down, and yet: * hundreds of geese floated by on the river today, resting for a...

Full Post • Posted April 25, 2020


Some Final Meta-Blogging

Now that I’ve sorted out how to style a personal theme, there are really only two things that annoy me...

Full Post • Posted April 25, 2020


A Theme of One's Own

This morning I finally sat down and figured out the odd element tags in WordPress and wrote up the additional...

Full Post • Posted April 24, 2020


Worn In

I have a pair of leather shoes that I bought in 1997. I was a student, had no money, and...

Full Post • Posted April 24, 2020


on foolishness

It’s a fault of character to mistake kindness for foolishness....

Full Post • Posted April 24, 2020


TBX on the Go?

Tinderbox only runs on macOS. There’s no iOS version. Generally, this is fine because if I’m going to work, I’m...

Full Post • Posted April 6, 2020


The Day Fear Hit

Yesterday was the day where I feel as if I felt something of the amplitude of the coming crisis in...

Full Post • Posted April 3, 2020


March 2020

Moving a Course Online

Courses are cancelled for the rest of the semester, and colleges and universities are expected to provide students with a...

Full Post • Posted March 30, 2020


Earthquakes. Frogs. What next?

The Beav and I were shaken awake this morning by an earthquake. No damage and not that strong — only...

Full Post • Posted March 30, 2020


The Unwanted Intimacy of the Video Conference

People all seem excited about video meetings, but I loath the idea. I don’t want to see the people from...

Full Post • Posted March 26, 2020


Busy-work During the Pandemic

One week into Québec’s various lock-down measures, people have gotten past the dull smothering shock of the first days and...

Full Post • Posted March 26, 2020


Vuong on Loneliness

... & remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world. —Ocean Vuong, "Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong," Night Sky...

Full Post • Posted March 26, 2020


Process Is Part of the Project

Québec’s response to the pandemic seems to be working. This is great news, but it’s also a sign that over...

Full Post • Posted March 22, 2020


Outlines and the Terrible Beauty of Maps

After years of relying on map view in my TBX files, I’ve gotten to the point where I generally use...

Full Post • Posted March 22, 2020


Quarantine Chains

As of today the Beav is officially quarantined because one of his work colleagues has tested positive for COVID. In...

Full Post • Posted March 20, 2020


Getting News in the Plague

On Anne-Marie Dussault's 24/60 the other night, a panelist gave advice for getting through the next few weeks. It boiled...

Full Post • Posted March 19, 2020


Movies about Forstalling the End

It occurs to me that one thing that's strange about the staying in is precisely that the story of staying...

Full Post • Posted March 19, 2020


Jemisin on Trusting Your Instincts

(This is not a digression.) — N. K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms...

Full Post • Posted March 18, 2020


Plague Diaries: "Vacation" Begins

Over spring break, I travelled to the States to visit family I hadn’t seen in a long time, some of...

Full Post • Posted March 17, 2020


And then There Were Permalinks...

I thought I’d wait to deal with permalinks, but I had an idea while taking a walk and decided to...

Full Post • Posted March 16, 2020


An Earlier Blog Experiment

I tried to run a blog from Tinderbox once before, but in that case, I tried to duplicate the look...

Full Post • Posted March 16, 2020


New HTML Blog

Started up a new blog this morning. It’s not a replacement for this site. OHL will stay around and I...

Full Post • Posted March 16, 2020


A New Blog

This is the first post of a new blog experiment that I imagine as a space for micro (and perhaps...

Full Post • Posted March 16, 2020


Hello World

…...

Full Post • Posted March 16, 2020


February 2020

Melville on Laughter

A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more’s the pity. So,...

Full Post • Posted February 25, 2020


Lanier on the Self

You have to be somebody before you can share yourself. — Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget...

Full Post • Posted February 23, 2020


A New Project

Earlier this week, I received word that my book proposal to McGill-Queens UP has been accepted. I’d already been chipping...

Full Post • Posted February 20, 2020


Vuong on Being Lost

Remember: the rules, like streets, can only take you to known places. Underneath the grid is a field — it...

Full Post • Posted February 19, 2020