Information-driven societies arrange their world into categories. Tests measure the subject’s suitability for various tasks. Today children around the world are weighed and ranked through standardized intelligence exams. The results have been correlated by the Administrators of Data and sifted throughout innumerable algorithms. And yet the computers keep spitting back blasphemy. When the numbers are […]
Featured Image: Joan of Arc at the Stake, Hermann Stilke (1843). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons For several years the Shadow’s Wormtongues have been trying very, very hard to start an American race war. They have filled mainstream and social media with tales of “White Supremacism” and demonized working-class White Americans as hateful, toothless, gun-toting, meth-addled bigots. […]
Featured Image Courtesy Wikimedia Commons You have certainly heard Tolkien’s stories. By now they are as ubiquitous as the tales the Grimm brothers compiled and Hans Christian Andersen rediscovered. All those legends have been relegated to the realm of fairy stories. They are entertainment for children and escapism for adults seeking to recapture their childhood. […]
Featured Image: James Archer, Death of King Arthur, 1860. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons For generations your people told stories of their impending demise. Prophets predicted Antichrists; scientists tracked asteroids; writers warned of atom bombs. Your people knew the fate of every empire in a universe sliding toward entropy. Most put the issue aside. Monthly bills hung […]
Featured Image: “Shoggoth” by Nottsuo (2016) A devout Roman Catholic jump-started a generation’s interest in elves, wizards and quests. An ascetic Providence atheist gave us a much different vision of the reality behind the old myths. J.R.R. Tolkien’s heroes could look toward the West and a light unending. H.P. Lovecraft’s protagonists stared into the gaping […]
Featured Image: Addison’s Walk, Magdalen College, Oxford, England. Photo Wikimedia Commons/Miles Underwood, 2002 On September 19, 1931 three Oxford dons sat down for dinner. Hugo was a High Church Anglican; Ronald a devout Roman Catholic; Jack a skeptical and lukewarm theist. While all three shared a keen interest in English and Germanic folklore, Jack had […]
Featured Image: “The Last Judgement” by Jehan Cousin the Younger (1585). Courtesy Wikimedia COmmons The penultimate episode of NBC’s critically acclaimed The Good Place presented a heaven of endless milkshakes and peak experiences populated by a benumbed Elect. Their finale gave us a happy ending when Michael (Ted Danson), a demonic tormentor turned tutor, offered […]
In a scene where everybody dresses in black, it can be difficult for a protestor to get attention. One young Portland lass figured out that less is more. Dressed in only a stocking cap and COVID mask, she fended off fascism by showing the cops her cooze. The boys in blue were disarmed by her […]
On the evening of July 11, 2020, three years and six weeks into his 20-year sentence for child pornography, Kenny Klein died in the infirmary of Louisiana’s B.B. “Sixty” Rayburn Correctional Center. Tzipora Katz, Klein’s ex-wife and one of the star witnesses at his trial, announced his death: I got the call yesterday that the […]
Featured Image: Apotheosis of St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. As the erasure of Confederate monuments continues, some have set their sights on a beatified 13th century king. The Apotheosis of St. Louis statue has stood outside the St. Louis Museum of Art since 1906. Now the citizens of St. Louis are […]
Europa’s Children 