Today is supposedly #NationalBirdDay but I'm calling BS. The first Bird Day was actually celebrated on May 4, 1894 in Oil City, PA and led to a decades-long movement of celebrating birds in schools. The Jan 5 version is less than a shadow of what they did 100 years ago🧵

When and only when one has learned how to cope in the appropriate manner with certain events in human life, one is already halfway to being consoled for their occurrence. Many people find as much comfort in the ceremonies of dejection as others do in the intoxication obtainable from wine. L. Tieck

The Empyrean Series has been, bare none, one of the best things to happen to lit and for readers in the past five years! Buy these books, each one is an incredible treasure!

At my blog, a brief statement on the past & the future of the Empyrean Series, which will turn 5 years old this April jsief.com/2026/01/05/s...

Lines of scrimmage, MIA somewhere in japan

really old woodcut

author Helen Dewitt has recently provided an interesting account of her dealings with agents and publishers in the very slow process of finding a publisher for ‘Your Name Here’. It is of course specific but these kinds of accounts are somewhat rare & lacking helendewitt.substack.com/p/your-name-...

James Grauerholz, the overseer of the William Burroughs estate, is dead. Oliver Harris, one of the leading scholars of the novelist's world, pays tribute to the man and his achievement for Rock and the Beat Generation… simonwarner.substack.com/p/obituary-8...

we’ll drink a cup of gladness yet? we will

2026, spending more time with friends (Tr. @unpaginated.bsky.social & Daniel Elkind)

One of the best things that happened to me in 2025 was that we got a permit to visit The Wave in Arizona. Here are some photos from last Friday; needless to say, photos do not do justice to this place

ah new happy year

$4.10?! goddamn.

just dipping into the PKD exegesis casually, as one does

seeing 2025 out by watching a bleakly comic independent film called Vulcanizadora (dir. Joel Potrykus, 2024). dark as pitch. it's on Kanopy. the film marathon continues

As 2025 fades to the merest flicker, we once again come upon the most important End-of-Year list you or anyone else will see. That's right comrades - it's time for the Top Ten Geological Maps of 2025!

New today on the site! @carriecourogen.bsky.social on Gena Rowlands, John Cassavetes, and the enduring power of A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE

I’m not sure abt “favorite” (no clue abt that) but seeing the videos for NIN’s “Closer” (and “Head Like a Hole”, to boot) at abt 11 or 12 yrs old had a profound effect on my personal development

I always tell students if you ask a good question the article will write itself

Year's End 2025

congratulations to Nardwuar, a great music journalist

you know what else is facing a crisis of legitimation? your skeets

People are saying that literature is facing a crisis of legitimation, but I still like to read a good book now and then

a suspicious presence of narratively important plumbing-related floor collapses in both of the bronsteins’ films out this season (‘marty supreme’ (which i saw yesterday) abd ‘if i had legs i’d kick you’ (which i have seen only in part)

just dipping into the PKD exegesis casually, as one does.

"If it's a matter of words, if it's a function of language, if it's concerned with what it's like or not like to be human, it will prove to be some sort of fiction." - Wright Morris, Time Pieces

Son is absolutely roasting my ass

Available now DM or email for info

I have a critical introduction to the work of the American writer Gilbert Sorrentino in the final stages of completion (might be finished in a month or so--no publisher lined up, however). There is no widely available biographical writing about Sorrentino, (1)

Sorry but I’m not going to be impressed by a book named “Animal Farm”. That’s like calling your allegory “People City” or “Refrigerator of Food”. Just put a little bit more effort into it please.

“History’s what people are trying to hide from you, not what they’re trying to show you. You search for it in the same way you sift through a landfill: for evidence of what people want to bury.” Hilary Mantel, GIVING UP THE GHOST

'Worthy to be commemorated—that I lived in the country; that I lived in solitude; that my infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, not by horrid pugilistic brothers; finally that I and they were dutiful children of a pure, holy and magnificent church.' - Thomas De Quincey

(Probably) last bookpost of 2025. Looking forward to getting stuck in

kind of dumbstruck to see that, in citing walter j ong’s ‘orality & literacy’, the author of this recent MIT Press publication provides a link to an illicit pdf (hosted at monoskop) of said book. a regrettable approach imo

fond memories

to my knowledge there is not a single waffle house in canada, but i will have those hash browns at any cost (first attempt)

Hindi writer Vinod Kumar Shukla passed away a couple of days ago, and Chaar Phool Hain Aur Duniya Hai – a wonderful documentary about him – seems to now be available to watch for free on YouTube. It's a powerful portrait of stillness, and well worth a watch. www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM6q...

Stranger Things hype had me reading articles about historical “psychic” con artists last night and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Wikipedia entry that read more like MadLibs, every sentence just gets weirder:

I thought, based on the social media-fication of the @rachelaviv.bsky.social Oliver Sacks piece, that Sacks had invented patients wholesale. But instead it’s what was once seemingly secretly acceptable among highbrow writers: making up quotes and details about people to make them more interesting.

Crazy new puzzle app involving word associations, secret messages, and being horny for death. Calling it a “poem”.

“Since they are Canadian, I would not rule out treachery” is the (unintentionally) funniest thing I have heard in 2025.

WAKE IN FRIGHT is a Christmas movie, and it is tops

(Wise Man, seeing Mary looking quizzically at the myrrh) “It’s an embalming fluid”

one of my more successful woodworking designs: a nightstand for books & things

some sparse comments at my blog on some of the highlights of my reading this year. jsief.com/2025/12/22/t...

This body so brief — just enough mind to sparkle out thought

We go to see a band the other night and I swear to god, one of the musicians up on stage is playing a laptop computer. I say to my wife “Looks like someone got lost coming home from the office!” and she goes “Ah shut up! It’s post-rock.” so I go “That guy’s POSTING something alright!”

If you get hold of a chap that’s got no shame nor conscience to stop him, you must try what you can do by bunging his eyes up.

pascal’s wager but with santa