This is a short rant. Only kids haven’t seen the same old tricks a thousand times. So when new movies use the same old tricks, I’m giving the movie-makers the benefit of the doubt and assuming that they’re making the movies for kids. This must be true even when the movies are rated R, or […]
Happiness
I’m finally getting around to reading The Best American Short Stories 2007, which I posted about earlier. Two things of note: 1. Stephen King, who picked the final 20 stories, wrote the introduction that made me want the book in the first place. Re-reading it, I see that he used a semicolon on the first […]
Wedding Bells
My brother finally asked his girlfriend to marry him, and we found out yesterday (I think he did it the night before). They’d been together a long damn time, and everyone in the family loves her and worried that we’d lose her if he didn’t propose. Now he has and we’re all happy. Also, while […]
Adventures in Repetitive. (Saying the Same Thing Twice)
My edition of J.C. Masterman’s book, “The Double-Cross System,” has an introduction, followed by a preface, followed by a forward. The Introduction, written in this century, spends some time discussing a certain series of events that’s slightly related to the book. Then you get to the preface, written in 1973 or something, which discusses the […]
Wize Up
We say “fall” and the British say, “autumn.” But they changed it, not us. They used to say “fall” in England, too. I just found out that the same goes for spelling “organize” with an s instead of a z. From AskOxford.com: Q: Are spellings like ‘privatize’ and ‘organize’ Americanisms? A: No, not really. When […]
Drowning
Christopher Hitchens is always deeply thoughtful even when he’s wrong (like agreeing with Bush on the Iraq war). I can’t find it online, but he’s been accused of regarding waterboarding as a sort of not-that-bad thing that Americans do. He was challenged to try it for himself, and he recently agreed. There’s video of it, […]
On Dissolving Political Bands
My version of the Declaration, modernized and more readable: — IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America When a group of people splits apart from another group to become their own power in the world, they should give their reasons. We think that the following things are […]
Pig
I want a pig. I have for a long time. My wife and I keep saying that when we get out of our loft, we’ll get a pig. In the meantime, I drew the pig above. I used a silly Web site that has a terrible UI and claims that you can learn something about […]
I Quit
I once saw a round-up of blog posts apologizing for not writing enough. That was interesting. Practically everyone who’s ever written a blog has found themselves saying sorry for not writing enough (or recently), and every one of those posts is a waste of time. Why bother? Just write the next post. I’d like to […]
Sexualization (Part 2)
A year ago, I posted about a report on the “sexualization” of young girls. My post rocks, of course, but here’s a link to the page for the actual Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. Now there’s a book out, called “The Lolita Effect,” which gets a middling review in […]