Lynn Demarest's Blog, page 6
July 8, 2012
Ghostwriting is Lying
If I’m reading a book about ASP.NET programming, I don’t really care if the author whose name is on the cover actually wrote the book. I’m reading to learn a skill, and as long as that requirement is satisfied, I’m satisfied. Novels are different. Novels are personal. When I read a novel, I engage in [...]
July 1, 2012
The Gospel of Harry Crews
When I was a student at the University of Florida, during the fabled Nixon Administration of the mid-seventies, I took a creative writing class taught by Harry Crews. It was an odd job for Harry, a novelist who wrote in his lauded autobiography that he himself had gone to college (on the GI Bill, after [...]
June 30, 2012
The Wages of Procastination and Laziness
There are certain people in this world who shouldn’t be allowed to do certain things. Very few should be allowed to raise children, obviously, given the general quality of the adults most of them create. Likewise, some people — myself among them — shouldn’t be allowed to own a house. If you think buying a [...]
June 24, 2012
Songs with Randy
Simple living-room recordings, mistakes and all.
June 17, 2012
How to Import a .DBF file into MS SQL Server
UPDATE: I learned today that you can sometimes open .DBF files with Excel. If you can do this, it will be easier than the method described below. Simply open the .DBF file, then save it as a .CSV and import the .CSV into SQL Server. I received a .DBF file the other day that [...]
June 16, 2012
My Dead Brother
My brother, John, died of AIDS on June 5, 1991. He got it the old-fashioned way. “I was a bad boy,” he joked with me after the VA doctors had delivered the bad news. “I fucked my way across Europe.” He might have been more careful. The virus that killed him was identified a [...]
May 27, 2012
Why I Vote, Why You Should Too
I vote because it’s the last thread of hope left for American democracy, but I harbor no delusions about who runs things, and it’s not voters, because there simply aren’t enough of us. There aren’t enough voters, of course, because a disillusioned Joe Citizen doesn’t bother to vote most of the time. By experience, he [...]
Fate
The Lord God Almighty and his wife (who knew?) were watching the world go ’round, as they sometimes do. “I’m bored,” said she. “Let’s have some death.” And so her loving husband took a big breath. God blew and blew until a giant wave formed and crashed ashore as the heavens above stormed. No man [...]
November 3, 2011
Flying with Mother
I was visiting my seventy-something mother for the day. It was a Sunday, I’m pretty sure, because she had assembled a big breakfast: Sunny-side-up eggs basted in hot bacon grease, in order to hurry the albumen along before the yolk firmed up too much, baked potatoes from the night before cut into big chunks and [...]
