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Neil Serven

@neilserven.bsky.social
1K followers 911 following 2.8K posts

Fiction & essays, novel in progress. Co-owner @federalstbooks.bsky.social . Candlepin bowler. Language stuff. A lot of crank air. Used to write the dictionary. Western Massachusetts.

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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 5h
Does this mean the Doobie Brothers are his uncles?
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 10h
Squaredle shenanigans today.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 22h
Same, Chuck, even without the turtles.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 23h
Phillies, Brewers, Padres, Guardians, Braves, the whole Earth consumed by fire, Dodgers, Yankees.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Shit, now I have to watch this thing.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
m.youtube.com/watch?v=88dL...
m.youtube.com
Zither
YouTube video by R.E.M. - Topic
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Thank you, Astros, cursed franchise, for getting yourselves eliminated before the Red Sox.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
They have a pitcher named Fried and a guy named Rice who used to be a catcher but I doubt they were smart enough to market the Fried Rice battery.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Searching for the pettiest reasons I can think of to hate this new iteration of the Yankees. Cam Schlittler, you have too many dumb consonants.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Rooting for the Red Sox, of course, but part of me feels like it would be an immense moral victory if they don't get shut out for the whole series.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Exit, pursued by a fucking bear
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Feminize a band name Buffalo Thomasina
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Otters with jobs
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Sparkling wit and a sloppy Joe sandwich on an insufficient paper plate.
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Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Fuck ChatGPT flyers. The future is broadsheets.
A crowded broadsheet with way too many fonts. It says:
Forget ChatGPT Flyers
Say it with 
Broadsheets
Unlimited fonts
Stretch them
Or cram a really long sentence into one line for no good reason
No whitespace
Mix capital and lowercase
Pointing hands
(They're called manicules!)
Don't be left behind
Broadsheets are the future
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Wait you guys are getting job interviews?
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Edward Hopper @edwardhopper.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Couple Drinking - 1906 botfrens.com/collections/173/conten…
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Federal officer standing over us brandishing billy club: “That grass ain’t gonna touch itself, sweetheart.”
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Did they enlarge the font on Wordle or am I having an aneurysm?
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I live near New Hampshire, and every time I see an AI-slop poster it reminds me of the mailers we’d get from fireworks retailers (before AI slop was a thing). Same loud, garish, cluttered aesthetic.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Nate Burleson just said “this offense looks very granola,” when I think he meant “vanilla,” unless he’s really talking about driving the Subaru to the co-op while wearing Birkenstocks and doing standouts for peace on the common.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
That’s no way to treat an ex-game show host.
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the babahuck @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
rip annie dillard
One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
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Alexander Chee @alexanderchee.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I wrote about being Annie Dillard's student at Wesleyan in the spring of my last year in college for Elizabeth Benedict's Mentors and Monsters anthology, and The Morning News: themorningnews.org/annie-dillar...
themorningnews.org
Annie Dillard and the Writing Life - The Morning News
Writers aren’t born, they’re made—from practice, reading, and a lot of caffeine. And sometimes tutelage.
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Kylie Eleison @gonebabygone.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
This is what Paris in the 20s was like
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Federal Street Books @federalstbooks.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
We’ll be closed through SEP 22 26 for a short break. Open regular hours SEP 23 26. See you soon! (Library relic found inside a recent donation.)
Old library checkout card marked with a sequence of dates stamped in purple ink.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Why we never see innovative filmmaking anymore
Screen graphic of Texas running back Hollywood Smothers and the words “1-yd rush TD”
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Things I was frightened of as a child: 1. Snakes. 2. Mannequins (not so much IRL but they appeared in a lot of nightmares) 3. Santa/Easter Bunny/costumed figures 4. Loud buzzers on game shows
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Anyone else like Frederick Busch? Perhaps my favorite writer that nobody else seems to know about.
ABSENT FRIENDS by Frederick Busch lying on a lavender fleece blanket.
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Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
My latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com
Hercule Poirot dressed all in black speaks to Captain Hastings in a grand hallway “Please ask the suspects to gather in the library, Hastings: I wish to reveal that our births are random, our lives meaningless, and our deaths absurd.”

Caption “Having investigated so many awful murders over the years, it was perhaps unsurprising that Hercule Poirot turned to Existentialism”


p.s. Poirot had presumably been reading a lot of Sartre recently…

 "It is meaningless that we live and it is meaningless that we die," Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (L'Être et le Néant)

“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (La Nausée)
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Make a band edible: The Sundaes
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Early that morning at M-W was when I used a copier and paper cutter to make blank reference slips (termed “pinks”) for the 11th Collegiate. I'd stamped them with my date stamp [SEPT 11 2001] *before* I xeroxed them so there are a mess of slips—like thousands—still in the file with that cursed date.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Saw a clip of Vicki Lawrence still playing the Mama character from "Mama's Family" (blue-haired, fusty, slow-moving) even though Vicki Lawrence--who is not blue-haired nor fusty and seems to move okay--is now older than the character was supposed to be, and am now confused about how time works?
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Eric Allix Rogers @ericallixrogers.com · 07/09/2026
The scale model of the Mississippi River on Mud Island in Memphis is flowing again! 🚨🚨
Photo of a concrete scale model of the Mississippi River as it flows past Cairo Illinois.Photo of a concrete scale model of the Mississippi River with a wall of waterfalls depicting the White River tributary.Photo of a concrete scale model of the Mississippi River with water in it flowing around a bend.Photo of the lower Louisiana Delta of the Mississippi River as depicted in a concrete scale model with the Memphis skyline across the river in the distance.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
1988 was my first year watching the Red Sox and it turned out to be a thrilling season. Joe Morgan took over as manager and the team immediately won 12 games in a row. Guy had a knack for understanding his players and going on hunches. RIP Walpole Joe.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I love everything that Emma Cline writes, and I loved how Switzy rolls on with assurance of voice in spite of a character aware of his own mental scatter. It’s kind of terrifying in a good way.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Acorns bouncing off slate roof season.
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😱 Spooky SpectreKILLoquy 🔪 🩸 @caulimovirus.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
you can’t trust online book reviews. amazon, tiktok, goodreads—all of them can be gamed by bots and fraudsters. but it was different back in the 70s. back then, if you picked up a sci-fi paperback and there was an ad for cigarettes right in the middle of it, you knew you were in for some good shit:
old paper ack book with a advertisement insert for tobacco cigarettes
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Kory Stamper @korystamper.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Pro tip! The less you post about "Lake America," the less written evidence of its use there is, and the less likely any reputable dictionary company will enter it into their dictionaries. ONLY *YOU* CAN PREVENT BAD LEXICOGRAPHY
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I thought I just heard someone on TV say “I had a few too many Adderall spritzes.”
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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
The auteur theory is an attempt by adult males to justify staying inside the small range of experience of their boyhood and adolescence. (1963)
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
How to Draw Cars and Trucks. (Truth . I wasn’t a serious reader until college.)
Cover of HOW TO DRAW CARS AND TRUCKS. Several cars and an auto carrier moving left to right, driven by animal characters.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Cop misses train connection.
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Stephanie Carvin @stephaniecarvin.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Wake up, babe. The Prime Minister just dropped “hydronym”.
The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big”.

The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.

We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms. 

Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Job interview, 2001: gray il-fitting suit, tie that had been my father’s, copy of resume laser-printed on foolscap in a leather binder. Job interview, 2026: quarter-zip and cargo shorts, bare feet, hiring manager in a tank top against branded backdrop, resume tailored to pass through ATS filters.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
All you got to do is smile that smile And there go all my defenses
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
No cheating. Share the last photo of the sky from your photo roll.
Pink-tinged clouds amidst gray, over crowns of trees.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I didn’t get the Jeopardy! clue writer job—which would have required moving to California, no small thing—but out of 1,300 applicants I was one of a small number who got to interview with a producer.
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Neil Serven @neilserven.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
It's going to be the sunny side from now on. Get out, all of you.
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Elon Green @elongreen.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
years ago me and Ms. Moreno talked about how this came together and it was the greatest www.newyorker.com/culture/cult...
“The contrast is outrageous! There’s this sex bomb in front, and this, this creature—I don’t know what else to call him—this fuzzy, violent, nasty creature in back who only got pleasure out of making people and other Muppets unhappy. A creature of impulse, let’s put it that way. And when I watch myself—’cause I’m usually so critical—but when I watch myself, I just laugh at me. What I love about it is that my character’s trying so hard to be sexy and sultry. And this horrible creature in back of me is acting up. [Laughter] See? I can’t stop laughing. It tickles me to death.
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