Lit City Blues

After a week off (we were in Minnesota for a wedding), This Week In Vexillology is back with a double shot from the Lost Archives of the Unfortunate Wordpress Experiment...  we're heading down to South America this week with the flag of Venezuela: (True story: I actually have this flag...  it's just buried somewhere, thanks to our move.) Venezuela's flag is the one designed by Francisco de Miranda for his attempt to liberate the country in 1806 from the Spanish. Venezuela at the time was part of the Viceroyalty of Gran Colombia, which is why you see similar colors/configurations in the flags of Colombia and Ecuador. But the fascinating genesis for these colors specifically apparently came out of a conversation he had with the philosopher Goethe at a party in 1785. Goethe told Miranda that his "density is to create in your land a place where primary colors are not distorted" He expounded further: First he explained to me the way the iris transform light in...

It's #ShortFictionFriday, so I'm awfully pleased to present "The Executioner's Daughter." The germ of this story came out of a recent episode of Hardcore History that I listened to (specifically 'Painfotainment') which mentioned that the job of executioner was traditionally seen as 'unclean' and people weren't usually allowed to touch them and they had to wear special robes when they were out and about in public. They were sort of a profession apart and had a tendency to marry into other families of executioner's. For some reason, that part just sort of stuck in my head and my brain went back to Venus and the world of the floating cities and colonies that I had thought up with "That's Venus, Baby" and so, Lo Shen City came into being and it all sort of fell out of my brain from there. It feels like there's more to the story than this and as I was writing it, I began to wonder if Ruthie and her story were somehow conn...

Look, I don't like Alex Jones. He's the human embodiment of that feeling you get when you reach up and realize that a bird just took a particularly vile shit on your head. I don't like his websites. I don't like his particularly vile brand of insanity. I didn't cry when he was booted off of Facebook, Twitter and every other social media platform out there. No one has a right to be on a social media platform. You voluntarily sign up, click the little box to agree to the term of service and there you go. If you violate the terms of service, then you get booted off. It's a pretty simple formula. It's also why you don't rely on one social media platform to promote whatever it is you do- whether it's double scoops of crackpot conspiracy theories with a drizzle of lunacy on the top or just you photography business or writing. It makes you too vulnerable- if you build a business on Facebook and Facebook alone, you're one tweak of a line of code away f...

Watched On: DVD (Redbox) Released: 2017 Starring: Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, Rupert Friend, Jason Isaacs, Olga Kurylenko, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough, Paul Chahidi, Dermot Crowley, Adrian McLoughlin, Paul Whitehouse, Jeffrey Tambor Rotten Tomatoes: 96% Pick: Mine The words 'directed by Armando Iannucci' got my immediate attention when the trailers for The Death of Stalin started making their way around the internet late last year and early this year. The guy behind Veep , The Thick of It and the excellent movie, In The Loop has an excellent track record of producing razor sharp satire, dark comedy and raising profanity to a beautiful artform. (Seriously: when Malcolm Tucker uses the words 'marzipan dildo' in an insult, it's a strangely beautiful thing.) So I was already on board just with Iannucci alone. But then there was the cast: Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor, Jason Isaacs, Michael Palin, Simon Russell Beale? You'll...

It probably ranks as one of the craziest things we've ever done, but in the space of about two weeks flat we went from exploring the possibilities with the bank to actually emptying out our house and moving in the space of about three days. What made us move? Well, my parents have been building a house and trying to sell their current house- but the market just hasn't been sending them any offers. Like, no offers at all. They tried reducing the price with no luck and finally they made us an offer we couldn't really refuse and we went ahead and did it. That's right. We're buying my parents' house. I was more ambivalent than I expected at first. Our current house is beautiful and it's been a great home for us for over two years now- and my parents' house, well... it's their house. Both the Missus and I have sort of wondered aloud during this process whether it's ever going to feel like ours- and I think it will, eventually- especially since ...

Adopt-A-Team: Well, it's that time of year again. Time to pick a new team to follow around for a season to see what happens to them. I shuffled around my league choices (this year I went with Liga MX, Ghana's Football League, The Turkish Superliga and the Chinese Super League) and the winner turned out to be the Turkish SuperLig. So I went to the website, looked at the list of teams and immediately realized that there was really only one choice: Trabzonspor . Before we get to my soccer reasoning, we have to detour back to my youth when I spent many days and many hours pouring through the Times Atlas of European History where I developed a weird obsession with the Empire of Trebizond . It was there on the map for a few centuries and grew longer and shorter and took little bits of what is now Crimea now and again, but to me, it was the fact that it served as the last historical post-script the Byzantine Empire. Constantinople fell in 1453, Trebizond persisted until 1461. So, ...

If there's one thing that just about everyone in the world of vexillology can agree on, it's that there are an awful lot of somewhat woeful and just plain boring state flags out there. One of my favorite podcasts, 99% Invisible did an episode focusing on just that topic - mainly with eye toward skewering municipal flags out there that are just as bad, if not worse. A lot of cities spent the last few years working on addressing the problem: Tulsa , Pocatello and although it's not quite official yet, Milwaukee are all trying to up their flag game. So why not states? It's talked about now and again. Both Nebraska and South Dakota have toyed with the idea, but it never seems to go anywhere. Minnesota has an unofficial flag out there in the world . But there's never been a widespread movement to get away from the infamous 'Seals On A Bedsheet.' There have, however, been some noteworthy attempts redesigning all 50 states. The United We Stand Project from t...