mattrand.com - because vanity knows no bounds

Hitotoki Lives

matt — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:02:31 -0600

Hitotoki New York is live. It's been live for a month and a half, actually. Of course, I could go and backdate this post and pretend that I was here with the breaking story when the site launched in late September, but my ethics would preclude such a massaging of the truth. Instead, here, with a month-and-a-half lag, is the exciting news: check it out, Hitotoki New York is live, and you can read it.

We've got 11 excellent stories up there (look for #12 later this week). Included among them, ahem, is one of my very own. Read, enjoy, laugh, cry, hug your loved ones, change your clothes, do a chin-up, recycle a shopping bag, eat a samosa. Do all of these things. Or none. Whichever. Or none + read. Or none + read + enjoy? Maybe?

At any rate, while I may have been remiss in updating mattrand.com, I promise that if you submit a Hitotoki for New York I will not be remiss in reading your submission and quite possibly publishing it on the site. Most contributors appear not to be terribly dissatisfied with the experience. Yes: Write a Hitotoki and you will probably not be terribly dissatisfied.

Hitotoki New York

matt — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 22:14:30 -0500

I'm happy to report that I'll be working on a new project. The folks at Chin Music Press and AQ Works have been kind enough to let me man the New York bureau for the forthcoming New York section of their excellent site Hitotoki.org.

We'll be collecting stories about personal experiences in New York in order to build a narrative map of the city. You know how place is a big part of your memory? We're trying to overlay specific memories back onto their places.

If you're the kind of person who likes to write about things that happen in your life, please do consider submitting a story for us. My mattrand.com guarantee is this: I will read your story. Hitotoki might even publish it.

And if you're not the kind of person who likes to write about things that happen in your life, that's OK. The good news is you can still read the site even if you don't contribute. We'll work feverishly this month to get some good stuff up there for you.

Once again, here's that link: Hitotoki New York

Definitely Not Me

matt — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:50:10 -0500

A friend pointed out that today's Metro paper (pdf here) has a letter to the editor by someone named Matthew Rand. The letter, on page 10, splits hairs over the terms "immigrant" and "alien" and says that calling an "alien" an "immigrant" is an example of propaganda. He says that irresponsible teachers forced a propagandistic view on the seventh graders who made a mural that apparently does that word switch. (Never mind that they might simply not be of an age where they are distinguishing between legal and illegal immigration, which is, anyway, a pretty artificial construct for a country that teaches its children that all are and should be welcome here.)

I don't know anything about the mural, nor did I read the original article. But the letter is pretty ridiculous, and I wanted to make sure that the world will know: I did not write that.

So it is that there is now another Matt Rand on my list of Matt Rands who are not me.

I may be a spammer

matt — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:01:31 -0600

Apparently I'm sending out a lot of spam these days. I'm getting bounce backs from emails I've apparently sent to Brazil and Taiwan and all over the place, though most are from the U.S. The bounce backs are coming both from users I've spammed who don't exist and from the people who have spam filters that require me to verify I'm a person. It's a hassle, really, all the commotion that comes back at you when you send out thousands (millions?) of emails.

All these emails originated from mattrand.com email addresses, random strings of letters at mattrand.com. Don't know what kind of application harvests domains to use for the return addresses on these massive spam runs, but whoever or whatever is doing this isn't using my web host's mail server, just spoofing the return address, so I can't imagine much of this is getting through spam filters.

Nevertheless, if you're getting mattrand.com spam, sorry about that; I can't make it stop.

Happy New Year

matt — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 11:50:26 -0600

So it's almost 2007, which means that the dreaded '07 bug may shut down all computers. I'm pretty worried, and I've stocked up on duct tape and canned foods. If you're planning your own closet full of supplies, don't forget a can opener. Also, currency won't be accepted anymore in 2007, so you will need to barter. (Hint: stock up on rare items, like cakes and ice-skating figurines, which will have greater barter value.)

Despite the impending doom, I've managed through some kind of hope that civilization won't be destroyed tonight to get some stuff updated here at the site. The "journalism" section now lists almost all of the articles I wrote in 2006. Other years are TK (that's jargon for "to come"). Instead of making a database of published articles, which I gave up on after some technical difficulties brought down the last one I built, I'm just doing a text list for each year, along with links to the articles. That works well enough for me, but what it may lack for you is any connection to my site's RSS feed. So if you've subscribed to it because you have some interest in when I have new articles out there, then all I can recommend for the moment is to keep checking back every so often. If you have a better idea, click on over to my email section and let me know.

Thanks and Happy New Year!

new site, et al

matt — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 12:26:20 -0600

I've got a four-page feature in the upcoming 11/27 issue of Forbes Magazine, which I hope you'll read. Also look for the Informer item I wrote.

Spent the weekend in Teaneck, N.J. for the Teaneck Film Festival. My mother put a lot of it together, and it was fun seeing everything work out and even some crowds turn up. Next year, check it out.