The League of Lensgrinders: Recent Episodes
James Foreman
The League of Lensgrinders is a podcast about creativity, writing, being a person, and making art. Each episode features a lively discussion of Very Important Topics, and topics that don’t matter at all, in a gothic mansion next to a roaring fire.
leagueoflensgrinders.substack.com
Meeting Minutes
January, 2022 - Topic: “The New Year”
1 hour 25 minutes
Members Present: James Foreman (co-chair), Evelyn Pryce (co-chair), Robert Foreman(co-chair)
January
Chair Check-In
Doing Stuff for Extra Credit
Sleeping a Lot
Being a Better Friend
COVID talk
2021 in Review
No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (the book)
3% (the show)
Station Eleven (the show)
Daddy’s Home by St. Vincent (the album)
Corrina Repp (the musician)
Long Lost by Lord Huron (the album)
Chaos TikToks Twitter feed
Rabbits by Terry Miles (the book)
Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Allison (the book)
Jim Talks about his dream and writing
Mad Prairie by Kate McIntyre (the book)
The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison (the book)
News Time
The word of the year
Wordle Start Words
Sci Fi is Scary
Please Don’t Make the Torment Nexus
Cold Cheese Pizza
The Orson Clip
Orson Clip: Art
Oscar Break!
Orson was very tall
Orson’s Additional Outtakes
Resolutions
Rob: More Live Stuff
EV: No new year’s resolutions
Jim: More Everything
Spider Mans
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Your favorite secret society has not gone away, they simply took a break.
There are no minutes for this meeting, because we have had a Year, and we’re just getting started. You should still listen to it, because we have Extremely Interesting Things to share.
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Meeting Minutes
March 28, 2021 - Topic: “Food Writing”
1 hour 38 minutes
Members Present: James Foreman (co-chair), Evelyn Pryce (co-chair), Robert Foreman(co-chair); new member Liz Cook inducted (Lensgrinder 011).
Lensgrinder 000011 Liz Cook
Pelaton joke
Where are we?
Chair Check-In
I’m Fine, It’s Weird
Schlemiels
Lensgrinder 11: Liz Cook
Liz’s Newsletter: Haterade
Feet Pics
The Crows
Dagger Use
Weird but Okay
Pilates for Everybody
Samuel Toaster
Port Fonda
Food Journalist or Food Writer?
Liz is a Bona Fide Public Figure
Being a Restaurant Critic
Liz’s Origin Story
Visual arts criticism
How to become a critic
Why Have a Newsletter?
What’s so great about food?
Jim becomes Louis from Ghostbusters
Getting Grossed Out by Food
Nigella Lawson
Food anxiety
Conspicuous enjoyment
I Am Love
The Foreman Alarm
Role-Playing: How to Approach a Restaurant Review
The Guy Fieri Restaurant Review
GuyTV
New Term: LensCrafters!
Rob’s a fancy writer
Making Money as a Writer
Liz’s Fun New Years Party
Bringing KC and Pittsburgh together
Our Favorite Food Writing
Food descriptions in fiction
Turkish delight
Rax King and Helen Rosner
Rax Restaurants
Rob’s ice cream eating
Rob’s favorite food writing: Consider the Lobster
Evie is a Foreman Critic
Liz’s Recommendation: MFK Fisher
Liz’s Recommendation: Ruth Reichl
Liz’s Recommendation: Ruby Tandoh
Liz’s Recommendation: Whetstone
Liz’s Recommendation: How Apples Go Bad by Helen Rosner
Liz’s Recommendation: newsletter Food is Stupid
The Orson Clip: Dry Sherry Sack
The Orson Ouija Board
Liz’s Room in the Mansion
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Meeting Minutes
February 28, 2021 - Topic: “Women’s Work is Art”
1 hour 58 minutes
Members Present: James Foreman (co-chair), Evelyn Pryce (co-chair), Robert Foreman(co-chair); new member Amy inducted (Lensgrinder 010).
Lensgrinder 000010 Amy
Chair Check-Ins
Hitting the Pandemic Wall
Lensgrinder 000010: Amy
Evelyn Takes the Lead
Rob Then Takes the Lead
Meeting on Twitter
Podcamp!
Garden Party Rapid Power Down
Moving Around Too Much
Moving To a New Place
Dancing Girl Press for Amy’s chapbook
How Long Ago Things Happened
Everything feels like it happened 6 months and 10 years ago
The Raven Delivers the Invoices
Amy’s Lensgrinder Origin Story
Amy’s Popular Blog
Blogs vs. Newsletters
Converting From Lensgrinder to Living on Your Art
Doing Lots of Stuff Instead of One Thing
President’s Day Tweets: Presidential Facts (read the whole day’s worth)
Andrew Jackson’s Cursing Parrot
Moneyshot Lincoln
History Mom
Teddy Roosevelt Gave a Foreman Ancestor a Box
The Foreman Alarm
West Virginia is Not a Monolith
Another Brief Hunger Games Reference
Low Stakes Twitter Drama
Dog Shampoo Guy
Main Character
Quillette?
Feral Hogs
Clowning on Some Guy
Bean Dad
Hilaria Baldwin
Amy’s Quarantine Activities
The Quarantine desert
Embroidery, Cross Stitch
Big Projects
Works in Progress, Unfinished Objects
Hobbies vs. Arts & Crafts
“Women’s work” and Art
South Atlantic Stitching Company
Preservation Bias
Bristol Orphanage Samplers
Suddenly Matt Damon
The Phantom Thread as a Lensgrinder Movie
Paul F. Tompkins Phantom Thread Song (read the whole thread)
Imperfection in Art
Weird Pig and How it Was Born http://www.semopress.com/books/weird-pig/
The Paul Masson Commercial
James Adomian’s Additional Outtakes
Amy’s Room in the Mansion
The Foreman Face
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Meeting Minutes
January 21, 2021 - Topic: Comics
1 hour 58 minutes
Members Present: James Foreman (co-chair), Evelyn Pryce (co-chair), Robert Foreman(co-chair); new member Marcel Lamont Walker inducted (Lensgrinder 009).
Lensgrinder 00009 Marcel
Chair Check-Ins
A reading from the Great Gatsby
Lensgrinder 00009 Marcel Lamont Walker https://www.marcelwalker.com
Rob’s Void
Marcel Watches History
Vaping in the rotunda
The “Insurrection”
Marcel’s Origin Story
Pittsburgh Comicon
Smoking Guns by M.L. Walker https://www.thisawfulawesomelife.com/home/2017/11/5/qa-with-pittsburghs-own-marcel-lamont-walker-by-fran-joyce
Hate Your Friends by EV
Hero Corp International https://www.marcelwalker.com/hero-corp-international
Chutz-Pow! https://hcofpgh.org/chutzpow/
Meeting John Lewis
teaching art on zoom
Rob’s teaching experiences
Comics are literature
“The best language arts class”
Being a critical reader
Marcel’s Process
Chutz-Pow Volume 4
Art is not pain
Marcel Gives Us Hope
Meliorism
Velocity, Traction, A Push
Mikey Wood
The Scroll Method
The Scrapbook
Jim’s Recommendation: Michael Kupperman
Skull Groin
Rob’s Recommendation: Dogman
Marcel’s Recommendations: Money Shot
Marcel’s Recommendations: The Terrible Elisabeth Dumn Against The Devils In Suits
Evie’s Recommendations: MAUS
Evie’s Recommendations: Phonogram
Evie’s Recommendations: The Manhattan Projects
First Clip: The Shadow with Saint Orson
Second Clip: Frank Zappa on the Hip Guys
Double Threat the Podcast
Sometimes You Need a Flop
Comics Are Disconnected from People
Marcel Discovers the Publishing Morgue in the Mansion
Marcel on Twitter! @marcelwalker1
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Meeting Minutes
December 14, 2020 - Topic: Music
1 hour 44 minutes
Members Present: James Foreman (co-chair), Evelyn Pryce (co-chair), Robert Foreman(co-chair); new member Addi Twigg inducted (Lensgrinder 008).
Lensgrinder 00008 Addi Twigg
Orson’s Ghost
The volume of emails we get is tremendous
The Roster
New Member: 0000008 Addi Twigg
Objection Raised: Human Lensgrinders and Animal Lensgrinders
What’s a Podcast?
Please Keep Buying Dirty Books
First Musical Guest
AddiTwigg.com
Band: The Telephone Line
Band: Cisco Kid
West Virginia (Bingo!)
Playing Live Online
Zoom CoffeeHouse
Addi’s Origin Story
Jim Cuts Out
Lipstick
Lady Gaga’s origins
Music While Writing
Thinking vs. Writing
Listening to Anything
Vinyl
Stone Taping
Cecil
Musical Break! Caving In by The Telephone Line
New Patron “Saint” — Fiona Apple
Can Rich Kids be Lensgrinders?
Association of Axegrinders
Image by Addi Twigg!
Fetch the Boltcutters
Feminine Anger
Two Versions of Extraordinary Machine
Under the Table and 40s Fiona
The World is B**t:
Courtney Hole
The Hysterical Woman
The Gift of Awareness
I Finally Love My Crumbling Body
Recommendations (see below)
Orson Welles Raps:
Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen:
Addi Adds a Room
ADDI’S PICKS
Natalie Prass self-titled album from 2015:
Lady Wray’s 2014 album Lady:
Lianne La Havas:
ROB’S PICKS
Jesca Hoop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesca_Hoop
Chloe Foy: https://www.chloefoy.com
EV’S PICKS
Better Oblivion Community Center: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Oblivion_Community_Center
The Worriers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worriers_(band)
Alexandra Savior: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Savior
JIM’S PICKS
Sweet Spirit: https://www.sweetspiritatx.com
Angélique Kidjo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angélique_Kidjo
Andrew Bird: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Bird
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November 26th, 2020 - Topic: National Novel Writing Month
1 hour 16 minutes
Members Present: James Foreman (co-chair), Evelyn Pryce (co-chair), Robert Foreman(co-chair).
EMERGENCY MEETING: November is National Novel Writing Month
Evelyn and Rob don’t think it’s a good month.
Evelyn would prefer a different month
Law 4
“The League shall not honor or endorse one method of creation as intrinsically superior than another, except when said method is proved detrimental to the continued grinding of lenses.”
Personal Nanowrimo experiences
Writing during the election, and after it
Rob’s Position on Nanowrimo and how he does it
Evolving Positions on Nanowrimo
Motivation to write
Are you writing an entire novel this month? Maybe.
Jim’s Position
National Crappy First Draft Month
Is the first draft the most fun?
Research takes over
Evelyn’s Position
Productivity at all costs: is it healthy?
Market Forces
How long it takes to write a novel
Favorite Books
Drinking Moonshine
National League of Lensgrinders Novel Writing Month
How long is a novel?
Who cares?
Fan fiction
A “commonplace book”
Bathroom Break
EV’s recommendation: The Maddaddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake
Rob’s recommendation: The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Musketeers
The Formula for Writing a Novel
The Guys Hanging Out novel
Female Friendship <> Men’s Friendship
Male Friendship Not in War
Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club
Jim’s recommendation: Crooked by Austin Grossman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crooked_(novel)
Evelyn Also Recommends: Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Jones_%26_The_Six
Rob Also Recommends: The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kameron_Hurley
Jim Also Recommends: Machineries of Empire series Yun Ha Lee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machineries_of_Empire
Orson Welles Clip: Talking About Dracula
Orson Welles on John Landis
Orson Welles on Kazan
Do Bad People Make Good Things Sometimes?
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Meeting Minutes
October 31st, 2020 - Topic: Failure
1 hour 26 minutes
Members Present: James Foreman (co-chair), Evelyn Pryce (co-chair), Robert Foreman(co-chair); new member Jocelyn inducted (Lensgrinder 007).
Lensgrinder 00007 Jocelyn
The bylaws are magical, folks
EV update: new game, no cricket, bad sleep
Rob update: not just having bad ideas, following through on them
Fish Sandwich and Book Review
Joey’s World Tour
Lensgrinder 000007 Jocelyn
You can’t avoid paying for the robe, people
Fish Sandwich and Book Review Continued
EV’s show notes
Jocelyn First Performer Lensgrinder
Long Form Improv
Interior Design
Dramatic Improv
Gate Keepers (shaking fist)
Emmitt joins the meeting
You need to be a natural
SNL
Zoom Coaching
Arcade Comedy Theater, Pittsburgh’s Only Nonprofit Comedy Theater
Broadway is closed!
Comedians are damaged people
Holiday Time: October 30, the War of the Worlds broadcast
Orson Welles was very young
Foreman Family Alarm
Listen to the War of the Worlds broadcast!
Morgan Freeman’s narration
(Jim loves this speech)
No Person Lives or Dies in Vain
How did the aliens not know about germs?
No Mercy in the Lensgrinders
Failure!
“Mistakes are gifts”
You can’t be afraid to look bad
Failure is part of the process
Rejection, too
Drawer Novels
Hard time admitting failure
Not everybody is ready for rejection
We hate doing monologues
What’s a failure?
Hearst, Kane and Orson
The Battle Over Citizen Kane
Group Chat
Tom Holland’s performance
AITA for Accidentally Washing My Ex’s Wallet?
Servant Boy
Jocelyn Wants to Improv With Us
Frozen peas
Toast of London
Christian Bale
Jocelyn had a Christian Bale Moment
The Apology
Swing Kids
Fred joins the meeting
Jocelyn adds a Black Box Theater
Rob changes his name on Twitter
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Meeting Minutes
October 12th, 2020 - Topic: Drink
1 hour 28 minutes
Members Present: James Foreman (co-chair), Evelyn Pryce (co-chair), Robert Foreman(co-chair); new member Meagan Ciesla inducted (Lensgrinder 006).
Lensgrinder 00006 Meagan Ciesla.
-Read Meagan’s writing here, here, and here.
-Name pronunciation
-Sabaton song “40:1”
-“Bequeathment”
-What is a Lensgrinder?
-The Meagan Ciesla Elevator Pitch
-Stella, the 3-legged dog
-Meagan’s novella “Me, Them, Us” is available. Get in touch with lensgrinders@gmail.com to order
-Rabies
-Louis Pasteur
-Nursing School
-Enter the Cricket (Lensgrinder 00007)
-Hard to concentrate when you’re worried about money
-Things that give more than they take
-Writers get pushed into teaching
-Nursing is an important job
-Pivot to cricket conversation
-Drinking and writing
-The process of Weird Pig (Weird Pig, get it now)
-Drinking and Podcasting
-Alcoholism is an occupational hazard for writers
-Hunter S. Thompson’s ritual
-Drinking used to be fun, not anymore
-Truman Capote and Groucho
-Enter the cat (Lensgrinder 000008 Emmitt)
-Worlds Fair stories by Meagan
-Sticking to fiction after trauma
-Brain Tumors are Scary
-Writing to Communicate, Not Process
-Private Moments
-“Figure it out, dude”
-Lucia Berlin, beloved Lensgrinder and writer
-AITA for Saving a Crow?
-Our answers may surprise you
-Bird Hitler
-the Birdologist
-Please Don’t Touch Things
-Picking up the Pigeon
-Writing Advice
-Having an Agent
-Selectric Typewriters
-Servant Boy
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Meeting Minutes
September 21, 2020 - Topic: Visual Arts
1 hour 15 minutes
Members Present: James Foreman (co-chair), Evelyn Pryce (co-chair), Robert Foreman (co-chair); new member Katie Crawford inducted (Lensgrinder 005).
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Official Induction of New Member: Katie Crawford
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Katie’s style is the push and pull of cute and unsettling
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Who are famous graphic designers?
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Katie endorses Paula Scher:
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The Goals of a Designer
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Grab Attention
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Communicate Clearly
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Match the Client
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The Anxieties of a Graphic Designer
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Louder, More Colorful, More Interesting
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“I would rather take more risks”
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A traditional art background
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It all starts by hand
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Evelyn also starts by hand
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Robert only Lensgrinds digitally
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Typewriters
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Awful babies
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We expect kids to just do what we say
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Robert’s writing tips: Weird Pig available now!
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Word processors just reproduced typewriters
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Tom Hanks and typewriters
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James endorses Simon Stalenhag
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Sci-fi b**t (affectionately)
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Evelyn endorses Aubrey Beardsley
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Robert doesn’t have favorites anymore
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Robert endorses Horace Pippin
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Deceptive simplicity
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We should always keep learning
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Katie endorses Tara McPherson, her favorite artist
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the combination of sadness and joy
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AOC and Obama - politics and design
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Designy Design
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Keep Calm and Carry On
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Styles change, but people look backwards, too
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War of the Worlds and Orson Welles
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Edward Gorey’s War of the Worlds
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Sketches by Anne -- sketchesbyanne.com
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The Foreman Childhood Alarm
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The War of the Worlds
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the Foreman grandmother experienced it!
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Orson Welles was forced to apologize, though he knew what he was doing
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George Orson Welles apologizes
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Saint Orson is a genius
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ktcrawford.com you fools!
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check out the stream for Katie’s artwork: The Only Way Out is Through
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Meeting Minutes
September 7th, 2020 - Topic: Bookshelf
1 hour 10 minutes
Members present: James Foreman (co-chair), Evelyn Pryce (co-chair), Robert Long Foreman (co-chair); new member Andrea Laurion inducted.
Emergency meeting called by co-chair James Foreman to discuss the topic of this tweet:
Tweet:
The List of Books
Basic Literary B*s
What would we see on a bookshelf that would make us leave?
The two shelves: the working shelf and the performing shelf
What books do we have to explain?
Should books be aesthetically pleasing?
The Bedside Books
Steve Harvey is from West Virginia
Everyone has someone else’s copy of House of Leaves
Do Kindle libraries count?
Showing people your favorite movie
Andrea Inducted into the League
The Babysitter’s Club
Sleepover Movies
The Books Everyone Mocks Aren’t Always Bad
Eat Pray Love has Lessons For Writers
Evelyn Doesn’t Trust a Henry Miller Fan
Norman Mailer
Motion: The official The contents of the bookshelf of the people we are romantically involved with do not matter unless you want them to.
AndreaLaurion.com is the website, where you can subscribe to her newsletter
We keep discovering rooms in the mansion
Point of order: Evelyn Pryce finds the Bathroom
Clip of the Meeting: Gore Vidal vs. Norman Mailer
Podcasts are bringing back the public intellectual
Gore Vidal joins the pantheon of Lensgrinder Heroes
Andrea ads a room to the mansion
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Meeting Minutes
August 15, 2020 - Topic: Disasters
1 hour 20 minutes
Members Present: James Foreman (co-chair), Evelyn Pryce (co-chair), Robert Foreman (co-chair).
In Medias Res
Pandemic Journals
Simulation Theory Theories
Twitter Used to be Great
Tigers Are Real
Foreman Childhoods
Do We Like Disaster Entertainment?
Are stories disasters?
Point of Order: Romance requires a happy ending
Orson Welles: Ignorance is Confidence
Point of Order: Writing Workshops
Nothing is permanent, everything is terrible
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