The Normal Times

Blog

annienormal.com/

Profile

annienormal.com/author/annieno

Homepage

annienormal.wordpress.com

  • Ablutions

    Key Terms: Writers writing about writing – drunks describing drinking – the enduring mediocrity of 21st century fiction Fiction: Patrick deWitt, 2009 “What will you be doing in five years? In ten years? There is no one who will look after you and you could die tomorrow and the only people who would care would…

  • Amtrak and the Social Contract

    Key Terms: TSA humiliation ritual – Oh neat, real buttons – GeorgeCostanzaSociety.gif In such conditions there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and…

  • Where Have All the Weirdos Gone?

    How local lunatics color communities. Warning: This is a self-indulgent nostalgia post. If you came here expecting a bleeding-heart screed on the tragedy of homelessness, you’re going to hate this. There’s something like Christmas morning when you return to your hometown after being gone awhile. Passing through all the old haunts, wowed or depressed by…

  • City Beautiful

    Bango Skank was here. From Beaux-Arts to slummification to Gray McDonalds, anyone at any time that has lived at least twenty years in cities has seen some degree of big changes. Pizza Huts become bistros, highways widen and roads narrow to make way for bike lanes, lovely old ruined houses are blown down and replaced…

  • No-Trust Society

    And if you gaze long into a trash pile, the trash pile also gazes into you. Warning: this is a rant post that suggests no solutions, just classic bitching. My working days are spent in a barely underground basement. It is so barely a basement that is has some of the biggest and beautifulest windows…

  • Bells + Taxes 5: Genealogy of Fanaticism

    A Glimpse at Lesser Houses You’ll have to be patient with me this time. Yes, I promised secrets, and what I’m writing about for you today isn’t so much a Directory secret as much as it’s a Directory no-one-wants-to-talk-about. For good reason. These situations usually come to horrible ends. You see, we, or rather, the…

  • Cruel Summer

    A quick n shitty bit on the July Monarchy The new king, Louis Philippe, was head of the junior branch of the French royal house, the Orleans family, and to many conservatives he was the Revolution incarnate, though he hardly struck radicals as anything of the sort. A History of Europe, J.M. Roberts, pg. 352…

  • Upton Sinclair: A Terminal Case of Socialism

    Author of The Jungle, The Brass Check, the Sylvia series, Oil!, and a million pointless political pamphlets. Born in Baltimore in 1878 to an alcoholic liquor salesman and a severely religious woman who hated alcohol and caffeine. He grew up poor, sleeping at the foot of the household’s only bed like a dog. His father…

  • Gustave Flaubert: Sixty Slutty, Slutty Years

    Author of Madame Bovary, Salammbo, and Sentimental Education Gustav Flaubert was born in Rouen, a town in Upper Normandy, in 1821; the same year that someone sailed around Antarctica for the first time ever. His father was a surgeon and his mother was some lady. Like many 19th century European boys that aren’t the sons…

  • The Creation of Italy

    how the meatball gets made, a timeline of 1815 to 1871

  • Carolyn Chute: Madame Militia

    Author of “The Beans of Egypt, Maine”, “Letourneau’s Used Auto Parts”, “Merry Men”, “Snow Man”, and “The School on Heart’s Content Road” Do you ever feel amazed when people tell it’s not as bad here as in other countries? You want to ask: Where have they been? Certainly not in Maine. Carolyn Chute’s most famous…

  • American Nations

    Colin Woodard, 2011 Ugh. So it was fun at first. If it had been fiction it would have been more than decent concerning world-building, but it was not intended to be fiction. I could buy into the book’s premise initially. That the U.S. has these regional cultures with different backgrounds, insecurities, and desires, and these…

  • Chapter Four: Magnificent Futility

    House Silvia and House [REDACTED] More nuisances than intrigues this week, and I feel much more like a secretary than a mitigator. Between the devil and a pile of paperwork, I’ll give you two highlights.

  • Our Technetronic Era: Global Fragmentation and Unification

    This section from Brzezinski’s Between Two Ages explores the anticipated contradictory global impacts of the shift from industrial to high-tech societies in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He predicts both a burgeoning global community through trade and travel, alongside increasing fragmentation due to widening wealth disparities and the erosion of traditional cultures. Furthermore,…

  • Sherwood Anderson

    Author of Winesburg, Ohio, Marching Men, Poor White, Many Marriages, and Dark Laughter Born in an Ohio farm town of no significance to a Union vet father and probably exhausted mother of seven. The family started off stable enough, but soon began fleeing from small town to small town by Sherwood’s first birthday. His father’s…

  • The Cold War: Plutonium to Popsicle-shares

    1947 to 1991 For those unfamiliar, there are probably a million and one better sources than me for learning the nitty gritties of the Cold War. For those who are unfamiliar and lazy, it was essentially an epic chess game between two nervous giants who absolutely hated each other. During the game, both giants had…