The monkey had run out of power before finishing the book again.

50 First Lines by Jason Ramboz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Posted by Jason on January 20, 2010
The monkey had run out of power before finishing the book again.

50 First Lines by Jason Ramboz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
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Posted by Jason on January 8, 2010
Though he would never know it, Samip was the most dangerous man ever to live.

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Posted by Jason on December 14, 2009
In her review of Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters, Jaymee Goh made a wonderful, precise summary of a trend that has been bothering me very much lately:
“Modern humour apparently requires some jaded, cynical worldview in which we are to say something we know is an -ism in order to show how in touch we are with the bad, horrible world. But you know what? Knowing something is racist, and saying it while knowing it’s racist doesn’t make it any less racist. Or sexist. Or ableist. It’s still an -ism, no matter how you wrap it.”
Context is an amazing tool, to be sure. It can entirely change the meaning of a word, a phrase, an entire text. But context is a funny thing: it can be easily missed, and it can be changed. And I think the ironic hipster “oh-I’m-being-offensive-but-not-really-because-I-know-I-am-and-see-how-enlightened-I’m-being-by-acknowledging-it?” is on the verge of falling afoul of both.
Posted in General, Non-Fiction | Tagged: hipsters, ideas, irony, Non-Fiction, racism, sexism, thoughts | 1 Comment »
Posted by Jason on November 2, 2009
The train is full of the dead again this morning, dead eyes staring staring staring at my living flesh.

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Posted by Jason on October 23, 2009
“Glorp,” stated the dishwasher decisively, “glorp, glipple, glorp.”

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Posted by Jason on October 14, 2009
People often ask me what my biggest fear is, and I lie and tell them it’s running out of bananas before the end.

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Posted by Jason on October 7, 2009
On my twenty-third birthday, a dark-haired stranger walked up to me, handed me a crysanthemum, and said that if we were lucky, we’d never see each other again.

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Posted by Jason on October 1, 2009
I can’t look at the stars anymore.

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Posted by Jason on September 29, 2009
[This post started as a comment on Mur Lafferty's post for Banned Books Week. As it grew, I realized it was probably too long for a single blog comment, and probably deserved a home of its own. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!]
Ideas are dangerous. In a way, most of the last 2,500 years (and especially the last 500 or so) has been nothing but a war of one idea against, or occasionally alongside of, another. Whether that idea is a religion, a scientific principle, an economic theory, a philosphy, a system of government, or something else entirely, people in recorded history have done more harm and good in the service of ideas than for any other reason. It’s little wonder, then, that so many people feel that society needs to be protected from these dangerous, intriguing ideas.
And the best way to remove a danger is to eliminate the threat, right? So if we ban all these strange radical ideas, then they’ll go away and not bother anyone ever again, right? Right?
Well, no. Those who think this way profoundly misunderstand the nature of ideas. Ideas, as anyone who has spent much time on the Internet will tell you, are viral.
Posted in General, Non-Fiction | Tagged: banned books, banned books week, dangerous ideas, idea vaccine, Non-Fiction | 3 Comments »
Posted by Jason on September 28, 2009
Before we go any further, you need to understand that everything I’m about to tell you is true and real, especially the parts that never happened.

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