Archive for July, 2009

nonpretentious contributors have been Sasha Pasulka fans for a long time.¹  For folks like us, bloggers with extra letters – like B.A., B.S., J.D., M.A., Ph.D., M.D. – after their names, Sasha is a role model. Here’s a girl who traded in her job working on this for an opportunity to work on this.² ...
Read more »

We had a mix-tape from a few weeks ago that we needed to publish. Rather than keep you waiting even longer, we wanted to publish it this week. At first, we thought we’d publish it on Tuesday (yesterday). We already missed two weeks ago, then last week, and we wanted to at least get...
Read more »

Things I expect to see in this season: a plot line dedicated to race/Civil Rights; two or three more women swoon at Don Draper’s charm; and, Betty flirting with thoughts of suicide. Get Mad Men Season 2 DVD on Amazon or download episodes from iTunes. While season 1 was slow on the uptake, it...
Read more »

It’s time for me to start kicking my own ass. Therefore, I’ve decided to post my mid-year resolutions so that nonpretentious readers can call me out if I start to fail. Please feel free to add to my list if you think there’s something that I need to change. In addition, please feel free...
Read more »

Marketing Tips from the Vendors at Philadelphia’s Punk Rock Flea Market In case you didn’t know, mainstream marketing techniques go out the window when a band of hipsters gather together to sell items at an event called the Punk Rock Flea Market. Although it seems that this is an unstated rule –  i.e., punk...
Read more »

Try as I might, writing isn’t exactly paying the bills here at the casa de groovy.  The dreaded day job, despised as it may be, is barely keeping me afloat on the great sea of financial ruin.  But as of July 11th, it will be sink or swim–when my employer of nine years decides...
Read more »

In today’s world, being a professional writer (usually) takes more than simply applying pen (or pencil) to paper. There are notebooks, netbooks, pens, digital pens, Microsoft Office, Google Documents, and Mac (Keynote/Pages). And, those are only the start of the tools you may need to prove yourself in this profession. At its heart, http://nonpretentious.com...
Read more »

While we do have a mix tape prepared – or, shall I say, while we did have a mix tape prepared – thanks to the wonderfully fabulous, genuinely hilarious Sasha Pasulka, we are going to postpone publishing Sasha’s mix for one week. On Wednesday and Thursday, we were unexpectedly unavailable. (Read: We’d tell you...
Read more »

Upon first glance, it’s hard not to compare Jenny Deller to Al Gore.  (Although, let’s face it, Jenny Deller is much better looking.) In Future Weather, Jenny’s first feature film, the main character finds the effects of global warming so terrifying that she sets out to try to stop it. Moreover, like Vice President...
Read more »