Look, son. The reason this country is going to pot is that the people have been distracted from the one true philosophy of America.
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Beaten Down
I guess I should face it: I’m a dick. I’m a jerk. I have opinions. I can be overbearing — intimidating, even. I’m not warm-and-fuzzy, but cold-and-coarse. I love a good debate, but I don’t think many of us can detach personal feelings from intellectual exercise anymore. When I think I’m being critical and challenging, [...]
The Dream
This week’s readings include Borges’ “The Garden of the Forking Paths” (1941), Clarke’s “The Nine Billion Names of God” (1953) and “The Star” (1955), and Gibson’s “The Gernsback Continuum” (1981). A common theme throughout these four stories is that one person’s dream is another’s terror.
The End Is Nigh?
Is it me, or has anyone else noticed quite a lot of post-apocalyptic cultural expressions in the last decade? While the nineties were about vampires — and you could argue pretty effectively that this fetish hasn’t waned too much — the aughts seem to be the years of the zombie.
The New Old West
Well, it’s happening: we’re one step further toward the new old west. Apparently, the Georgia legislature feels, almost unanimously, that we citizens need to be armed. The right to bear arms is not enough: we have a compulsion to bear arms. In a gun bill that passed yesterday, 43-10, our wise legislators decided that guns [...]
What’s It Gonna Be Then, Eh?
This weekend, we went out, and I prepped for class. So, I didn’t get any writing finished. OK, that’s bull. I finished “Every You, Every Me” on Friday. It took me most of the day, and it probably should have taken me two days. Writing takes a lot out of me: to do it right [...]
Miracle, Mystery, Authority
Today, my class read Dostoyevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor,” Ivan’s narrative from The Brothers Karamazov. The premise is simple: Jesus returns to earth in the sixteenth century, to a town in the midst of the Spanish Inquisition. The people flock to him, and he does what the son of God is known for: cures some disease [...]