One of the most interesting things about the Bible, especially the Old Testament, is the all-to-human snapshots it gives of life and politics of the Bronze Age. While the Gospels spreads a moral vision of a perfected humanity, the OT spares us none of the warts and horrors we have come to expect of ourselves.… Read More The Biblical Game of Thrones
One of the sci-fi novellas I’m working on right now, Void, has a theme about space travel and the hell it plays with time. When I wrote Solar System Blues, I avoided this by making the ship in question travel at below-light velocity, and deliberately making the voyage a long one. Even then, the fact that Burton… Read More Time in Space
That someone calls himself Philosophy Bro, and the book: Descartes Meditations, Bro. It features a side-by-side translate, so you have the 1901 English Translation, and the Bro-Speak on the facing page. You know, like the Seamus Heaney Beowulf or Pinsky’s translation of The Inferno (both of which you should read, because they’re awesome). I just wanted it… Read More Somebody Translated Descartes’ Meditations into Bro-Speak
Which is to say, fisking his liner notes, which are irritating and pretentions: the latest post over at Every. Damn. CD. Original text in italic, my responses in Bold. Notes on the Compositions Included Herein AKA, I’M A MUSICIAN AND A GENIUS AND I LIKE FISH STICKS IN MY MOUTH. 1. Hungry Freaks, Daddy…(3:27) Was… Read More Fisking Frank Zappa, Because Why Not?
I think his declamatory German just gets lost in translation, but every time I read Nietzsche I find very little substance underneath all the sauce. I’m on page 86 of The Birth of Tragedy and I’m not entirely sure what ideas I’ve gleaned from this. I get the idea that tragedy is the fusion of the… Read More The Birth of Babbling, or Why Nietzsche Disappoints me
Every now and again I make my Goodreads list correspond to reality: A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick. Seen the movie on Amazon Prime more times than I would have thought. The movie was clever, the book is as clever. I find this more compelling than Ubik and better-paced than The Man in the High Castle… Read More What I’m Reading
A bit ago, I happened to rent Last Days in the Desert, an indie film with Ewan McGregor portraying both Jesus and Satan during Jesus’ forty days in the desert (Matthew 4). It was an interesting take on the idea, but the script wasn’t quite up to snuff, being primarily concerned with a family Jesus encounters… Read More New Fiction – The Devil Left Him: A Retelling of the Temptation of Christ
I’m done with blogging about politics. It no longer interests me. This election has driven from me the desire to man the digital barricades. In the years I’ve spent shouting from my soapbox here, I’ve accomplished nothing. Gun to my head, only vote that matters, forced to choose between Trump and Clinton? I’m not voting… Read More Good-Bye to All That.
No, not just another theme change, although it will involve that. I’m going to change everything. Everything?
Not this election cycle. Maybe not the next one. But it’s coming. In today’s America, a network of executive, judicial, bureaucratic, and social kinship channels bypasses the sovereignty of citizens. Our imperial regime, already in force, works on a simple principle: the president and the cronies who populate these channels may do whatever they like… Read More The Revolution is Coming, Friends.
Content Blues 