The problem with Corporate Art, as Andy Warhol foresaw, is that quantity eventually smashes quality. They keep repeating the same gestures, catch-phrases, plotlines, until whatever narrative existed logically has been spread out into meaninglessness. If you keep making enough seasons of a show, you will make it boring and tired. If you keep making enough… Read More Stick a Time-Traveling Fork In the Terminator Franchise
Quintus Curtius has a fine article on his web site about Pompey’s most impressive victory: Every victory seems easy in retrospect, of course. But the campaign against the pirates was successful for very specific reasons. They are as follows: (1) deployment of sufficient forces to deal with the threat; (2) assignment of specific sectors of… Read More Pompey’s Counter-Insurgency
I bought my current home desktop computer, a Mac Mini, in 2012. I bought it on Father’s Day, and I sprung extra for the newly released version. It has reliably served my needs. I write, blog, pay my taxes, record podcasts and music, and play copious amounts of Crusader Kings 2 on this machine. It… Read More Escaping from Planned Obsolescence
Apparently he committed thoughtcrime by criticizing Little Angry Climate Girl, whereupon the usual gang of Two-Minute-Haters jumped up and down, whereupon his most well-known book shot up to #1 on Amazon. Larry Correia has the details. Now, logically speaking, we must stipulate that Correlation is not Causality, so it’s entirely possible that the Legions of Woke… Read More Dan Simmons Demonstrates There’s No Such Thing as Bad Publicity
It’s obligatory to do Seasonal-themed issues of a lit mag, and as much as I enjoy bucking trends, I also enjoy bucking the need to buck trends, because contrarianism knows no bounds. This is one of our longer issues, as one of the four pieces is a radio script, and the other is almost 7,000… Read More New Pumpkin Spice Unnamed Journal!
The author of Leaving Las Vegas pretty well fit the cliche of the alcoholic writer. He embodied it so well, in fact, that it killed him. O’Brien had been a hardcore alcoholic for much of his life. His sister, Erin O’Brien, said of his drinking: “John’s drinking problem started as soon as his drinking started.… Read More Considering John O’Brien
Here’s a YouTuber’s take: The argument is that beautiful and sublime are central to art. They could almost be called the yin and yang of aesthetics, but they’re not entirely opposite to each other. Delight and Awe are not mutually exclusive. One could make an argument, however, that Low Art seeks delight (beautiful), while High Art,… Read More The Beautiful and the Sublime
To capitulate to Chinese censorship, or not to capitulate? That’s the billion-dollar question increasingly facing U.S.entertainment companies that wish to retain their access to China’s enormous 1.4 billion-person market while maintaining a veneer of integrity in the eyes of supporters back home. A “South Park” episode and a single tweet from an NBA employee have… via… Read More South Park Does What South Park Does
I’m fine with this. The Celibate priesthood is a non-essential tradition, dating no earlier than the Middle Ages. I dont’ expect it to be a panacaea, but I don’t think it will do any harm. At any rate, it constitutes a change to the priesthood, and I think after the last fifty years the priesthood… Read More Married Priests Might Be a Thing Again
Some people say “fru-fru” but in my college days, we all referred to “foofoo drinks”. I believe our standard for what constituted a foofoo drink was: Any cocktail named after a magazine Any cocktail that is pink Any cocktail containing liquer This was the 90’s, so you can probably guess what cocktail was specifically on… Read More Man Complains About Foofoo Whiskey, Proceeds to Use It to Create the Most Foofoo Cocktail Of All Time
Content Blues 