Man Complains About Foofoo Whiskey, Proceeds to Use It to Create the Most Foofoo Cocktail Of All Time

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

7 Oct 20197 Oct 2019 Andrew1 Comment

The Oxford Comma is Actually Useful – A Fisking

I don’t understand why I keep seeing memes about the Oxford Comma. It’s a nerdy thing to meme about, but it’s also, I suppose, a sign of health that people care that much about quality. But this is the 21st century, and we will have our stupid Hot Takes. Here’s the Federalist, an online mag… Read More The Oxford Comma is Actually Useful – A Fisking

2 Oct 20192 Oct 2019 AndrewLeave a comment

Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Space Opera

If you define fantasy as “a story that cannot occur in the real world”, as this web site does, then you can include sci-fi in that, as sci-fi takes places in worlds unseen and with technology uninvented, and any technology sufficiently advanced functions more or less like magic in the minds of many people. But… Read More Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Space Opera

2 Oct 2019 AndrewLeave a comment

George R.R. Martin is Seriously Starting to Bore Me

In the last issue of UJ, I penned an essay about how I felt regarding the end of Game of Thrones. In that essay, I argued that the spirit of Martin’s work is essentially pagan, and the influence of Robert Howard is far more present than that of Tolkein, who filled his work with a Catholic… Read More George R.R. Martin is Seriously Starting to Bore Me

27 Sep 201926 Sep 2019 Andrew1 Comment

On Aesthetics

I was inspired by my earlier post to think about aesthetics – the philosophy of art, beauty, etc. And I did a brief perusal of the related article on the topic on Infogalactic and discovered something: In ancient and medieval world, specific things were called out as being beautiful: order, form, harmony, unity, etc. This was… Read More On Aesthetics

19 Sep 201919 Sep 2019 Andrew1 Comment

Quotations on Fantasy Literature — charles french words reading and writing

As this is a good quote, I shamelessly reblog it. (https://pixabay.com) “One day, you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again.” C. S. Lewis (https://en.wikipedia.org) “Fantasy fiction is essentially about the concept of power; great fantasy fiction is about people who find it at great cost or lose it tragically; mediocre fantasy fiction… Read More Quotations on Fantasy Literature — charles french words reading and writing

19 Sep 201919 Sep 2019 AndrewLeave a comment

Some Books to Check Out

Since I mentioned it the other day, you can pick up a copy of Burke’s A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful on Kindle for 99 cents. It looks, based on the sample, to be properly formatted, too. Additionally, the micro-press whose podcast I’ve been following, Dead Rabbit… Read More Some Books to Check Out

17 Sep 201917 Sep 2019 AndrewLeave a comment

And Now, More Mindlessly Speculative Guff about Star Wars

First, the rumor mill: reshoots, secret cameos, six different endings, a bunch of “sources say” folderol. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. There’s really no way to know. Even after the movie’s out, we don’t get a lot of facts about what actually goes on in a movie shoot. Until the last Blu-Ray sale, no one… Read More And Now, More Mindlessly Speculative Guff about Star Wars

14 Sep 2019 AndrewLeave a comment

A “One-Woman Fyre Festival”

That may be unfair. Caroline Calloway isn’t the first person who couldn’t make a book deadline. But the disconnect between reality and InstaReality is as vast: Caroline Calloway knew she was not who she had made the world believe she was. She had created a public image that was essentially false and, when she was… Read More A “One-Woman Fyre Festival”

12 Sep 201912 Sep 2019 Andrew1 Comment

Originality is not Art.

All aesthetic positions are going to offend someone, because concepts of the beautiful are perpetually wrapped up in concepts of the true, and that makes sense in poets’ vomitings but not as an ontological baseline. Whether the beautiful and the true are connected in some way doesn’t really help us to define the beautiful. The… Read More Originality is not Art.

12 Sep 201912 Sep 2019 Andrew1 Comment