Ah, the work for an aesthetician is never ever finished. So the other night, I finished reading a great big chunk of a story a friend is working on. The story is kind of about this guy who, because of childhood experiences, develops a kind of obsession with retro pornography that was popular during...
Read more →I linked to this in a previous post, but I think it’s worth highlighting by itself anyway… actually, I find their politics repugnant at times, but at other times I can’t help but think they’re not completely wrong… here’s a blog of political cartoons by Cox & Forkum.
Read more →Once, in a little diner in Iksan, I sat listening with deep amusement as two very enlightened fellows I know, an American and an Australian, bitched about Canadians. They were, of course, fairly justified. They were, I should clarify, complaining generally about a certain kind of Canadian who ends up as an expatriate in...
Read more →Here’s a link to an article I wrote for the New Sophists’ Almanac, titled Rap and the Ghetto. I don’t know much about rap, mind you, but then again it’s primarily an attempt at a parallel with jazz history, and a bit of blabbing about what art is and how we may or may...
Read more →As I read this report from the Chicago Tribune on children in Angola tortured as witches, I can’t help but feel my blood boil. It’s another case where I think war would be far more justified than in the places where it is happening. Helena Kufumana makes a pathetic witch. Far from exuding wickedness,...
Read more →I think the most beautiful lyric on The Smiths’ Singles collection is in “This Charming Man”, the line, “I would go out tonight, but I haven’t got a stitch to wear… This man said, “It’s gruesome that someone so handsome should care.” There’s something really desolate in the line, something very Oscar Wilde, something...
Read more →Is everyone as lucky as I feel on a day like this? The sun is beautiful, the people in my life are gentle and love me, the world is full of so many good things. Even the evil nasty ranting of Morrisey is sweet and pretty. As the poor bastard sang, There is a...
Read more →This week, a big news story broke: Martin Luther King’s widow has given her opinion on the gay marriage “debate”. POMONA, N.J. (AP) The widow of Martin Luther King Jr. called gay marriage a civil rights issue, denouncing a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban it. Constitutional amendments should be used to expand freedom,...
Read more →