Category: writing

St. Patrick’s Day

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment

I just got back from spending some time with good friends in St. Patrick’s honor.  Here’s a picture from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin that I took when my wife and I visited Ireland.  On a wall outside there are memorials to many of Ireland’s famous writers including Jonathan Swift and Samuel Beckett.  Oscar Wilde’s boyhood home isn’t far away and there is, of course, the omnipresence of Joyce and Yeats everywhere in the city. The Book of Kells is another amazing piece of Ireland’s literary (and spiritual) legacy.  Reading the prologue of John’s gospel in something that beautiful and old, well, that’s an experience.

The Floating Plastic Garbage Island

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment

Did anyone else happen to see Captain Charles Moore on Letterman last night?  I first heard about the Pacific garbage field a few weeks ago but didn’t realize how recent a discovery it was.

Um, let’s all agree to stop using plastic yesterday.  Or, like Moore says, let’s agree to use it only for things we intend to have around for a good long time.  It’s pretty ironic that we use one of the most durable things we’ve ever created for disposable packaging, utensils, cameras, and other things that are specifically made to be thrown away.

Remember glass?  Good old inert, flavor-saving glass?  Those were the days.

Don’t get me wrong.  I know plastic has made the world better in many ways.  I’m not saying it hasn’t.  But plastic waste is another issue.  It needs serious attention.

This is a single-serving, disposable post, by the way.  I’ve been up all night working and am now about to fall happily to sleep for a few hours.  So no big long post about sustainability and everything.  Just wanted to say if you haven’t heard about the floating waste zone twice the size of Texas, read up on it.  And I also wanted to say good on you, David, for having Charles Moore.

That was Johnny Fever’s name in “Head of the Class,” wasn’t it?  He was also in Flight of The Navigator. And to all a good night!

Brackets

~ Chris Cocca ~ 3 Comments

I like sports.  I’m a huge baseball fan.  I love the Olympics.  I love the NBA (especially the playoffs) and almost every other thing I’m supposed to.  I like football.

But March Madness just doesn’t do it for me.  I’m also not one of those people that can spend entire Saturdays watching college football.  I don’t think it’s just because I went to a D III school (Go Bears!).   I think it’s the ubiquity of these things that riles me.  I never find myself minding baseball’s omnipresence in its season, but I also don’t spend entire days watching those games and don’t flip between three ESPNs desperately seeking my usual programming in vain.   It feels like every bracket on the guide grid this month says “College Basketball.”

I start paying attention when it’s down to sixteen because that’s when the narratives get especially interesting.  I know that means I’ll always miss out on the ultimate sports narrative, the Cinderella performance, but I’m fine with that when it comes to this tournament.  Always have been.   Clearly, the athletes and coaches are all top competitors and I respect what they do all season.  I’m just not invested.  Sports fans, you tell me: what am I missing?

Fanboy Vernacular

~ Chris Cocca ~ 2 Comments

This is from 2010.  Spoiler alert: I never wrote the piece for Bkish.  I was too busy writing my own vernacular work.

Reading Oscar Wao, I could follow most (not all) of the Spanish…at one point the notes I was writing as I read started ending in Spanish, too.

But I understood all of the fanboy vernacular. All of that Jack Kirby Source Wall Fourth World Ringwraith stuff.

I’ll probably do a longer post on this at bkish, but I am really impressed by this book.

What a Curious Life

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

Jonathan Fitzgerald and David Session still do many things, but I don’t believe Patrol is one of them.  I don’t believe the site has been updated since 2015, which is perhaps around the time  David started working at The Daily Beast and Jonathan began a PhD program, though I’m not exactly sure.  The piece linked below is tied up with my having become around the same time a contributor to The Huffington Post.  Those days were like the wild west.  No one knew how online publishing was going to work out, and we were all doing lots of things for free.  Prospecting, really. 

I have a new article at Patrol Magazine today.  It’s about indie music and faith.

Thank you, Jonathan Fitzgerald and David Sessions, for working with the piece and publishing it.

Some Open Letters Answered

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

A follow-up from a few days later in 2010.

Looks like my “Open Letters to the Radio” were read by some people.  Now that Civil Twilight is following me on Twitter, I feel like I should expand on my comment from last week.  I was mostly making a joke about those vampire books and movies.  I actually didn’t know civil twilight was meteorological (?) term, and I’m assuming there’s an intended double-meaning about the piss-poor state of civilization.  It’s a cool concept.  Just not a great name.  Thanks for the follow!

Other letters answered this week: a couple rejections from non-paying fiction venues for some experimental things.  I have a good feeling about some other pieces currently making their way out there in the world.