Are you exceptionally likeable?
I already know that I’m not. Some people like me exceptionally well. But I think most people find me a trifle odd. Maybe not just a trifle. And now I know why. I don’t fit this profile at all, and … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Literature and writing
Orwell on the will to power for power’s sake
I read George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four when I was about twelve years old. You might say that’s too early to truly understand it. And if you said that, you’d probably be right. But even then, I understood it well enough. … Continue reading →
Waking up in a strange place
Did you ever wake up convinced you were in one place, and then look around and realize you’re in another? Maybe you’re on vacation and you think you’re at home, until you look around the room and everything is unfamiliar. … Continue reading →
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou being dragged into a dispute between National Review and Max Boot?
Yesterday I started reading this National Review piece by Charles C. W. Cooke criticizing Max Boot’s recent fault-finding with National Review. I thought it might be subject matter for a post, but I didn’t have much interest in it after … Continue reading →
Get Roger’s Goat!
Roger Simon, founder of PJ Media, author of many novels and screenplays, has a new book out called The Goat. He explains here why he decided to self-publish it, after so many novels published in the conventional way: The Amazon … Continue reading →
JD Salinger caused the death of Lennon, right?
Of course he didn’t. But that’s something like the argument they’re using for El Paso and Trump. [NOTE: If you don’t know what I’m referring to, it’s this: Officers Steven Spiro and Peter Cullen were the first policemen to arrive … Continue reading →
On leaving the circle dance
Don’t underestimate how emotionally difficult it is. I know precisely what “Jan in MN” is talking about here: Self-image shouldn’t be underestimated as a reason to close one’s mind to facts. I remember, in my change process, how frightening it … Continue reading →
When truth must be denied because it’s unacceptable…
…then you’re in a heap of trouble. How can a problem be solved if it can’t even be named, or described, or discussed? This isn’t about Trump and Baltimore’s rats, although that’s one of many recent incidents that sparked the … Continue reading →
Trump tweets and the uproar ensues
Just go to a site like Drudge today and you’ll see the furor in the list of headlines, which I reproduce here minus the links: Get out of USA, Trump tells congresswomen! Cortez fires back: We don’t fear you! President … Continue reading →
N. K. Jemison’s Utopia: breaking those eggs
Yesterday commenter “huxley” wrote: I just discovered there’s a new ultra-SJW-intersectional, black, female SF writer, N.K. Jemisin who has won three Hugos and a Nebula since 2016. That’s a very big deal. It puts her into grandmaster level with the … Continue reading →
More things in heaven and earth…
I often read about something that makes me think of Shakespeare’s line from Hamlet: A phrase used by the title character in the play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. Hamlet suggests that human knowledge is limited: There are more things in … Continue reading →
Franco Zeffirelli has died at 96
Franco Zeffirelli died Saturday at the venerable age of 96. But to me, he was and always will be the director of the 1968 film “Romeo and Juliet,” a movie that breathed extraordinary life into Shakespeare. The sweep, color, costumes, … Continue reading →