I Me Mine, I Me Mine, I Me Mine

Thanks for the link, shadesong: author Steven Millhauser's essay "The Ambition of the Short Story" and exactly how different the novel and the short story are:

So much for the short story. Modest in its pretensions, shyly proud of its petite virtues, a trifle anxious in relation to its brash rival, it contents itself with sitting back and letting the novel take on the big world. And yet, and yet. That modest pose — am I mistaken, or is it a little overdone? Those glancing-away looks — do they contain a touch of slyness? Can it be that the little short story dares to have ambitions of its own? If so, it will never admit them openly, because of a sharp instinct for self-protection, a long habit of secrecy bred by oppression. In a world ruled by swaggering novels, smallness has learned to make its way cautiously. We will have to intuit its secret.

Read the whole thing (it won't take long).

94.7 Alternative Portland, one of the stations I like, is counting back the top 94 alternative albums of all time, as determined by a vote of about 12,000 people.

I was taking the list less-than-seriously even before I found that Blue October's first album was higher in the countdown than Nirvana's In Utero.+ Let me put it this way: the day the countdown started, and DJ and good guy Greg Glover said the first album would be revealed after the next commercial, I e-mailed "Oo! Oo! Is it Metal Machine Music?"
___________
+ I don't "get" Blue October.

New xkcd.

I was 95% sure. Now I'm 100% sure, because while I was out today I stopped at County Elections, and:

Yep. I'm registered, I'll get a ballot (to the right address), and I'll get to vote.

Oregon's registration deadline is next Tuesday, 10/14. Need a reminder of when your state's deadline is? Choose your state on this page. Google is probably your friend, too.

In other news, I had a caramel apple sundae at Burgerville. Not bad. (This journal's often a mix of the weighty and the light like that.)