Every week I get at least a few hits from the phrase “how I met your mother jumped the shark.” This occurs because a year ago I penned a post entitled “I Met Your Mother While Jumping a Shark.” and while it doesn’t bring in quite as much traffic as “Why Family Guy Sucks at… Read More HIMYM, Shark-Jumping, and the Lonely End of All Sitcoms
Since I began the process of attempting to read Civil Disobedience, I’ve had in the back of my mind a typically starchy takedown of him by P.J. O’Rourke in his 1996 book All the Trouble in the World. I quote at length: Thoreau took the bad ideas and worse ideals of the primitivists, added the pitiful self-obsession… Read More P.J. O’Rourke on Thoreau
“We had dead Americans! What does it matter if what we said caused it wasn’t what caused it at all? We were too busy saving the people who died!”
The time has come for honesty. We cannot continue as we are, pretending to party unity. The schisms are too obvious. We talk of “establishments” and “purists” as though we all want different things. Let me suggest that this is in fact, because we want different things. Let us first talk of the Union. The… Read More The Union and the Confederacy: the Ongoing Civil War in the GOP
Back in 2008, Jeff Goldstein had a long, ugly argument with Patrick Frey (which started here) about whether Obama was a “good man”. At the time, I found the argument much ado about nothing: what difference can it possibly make if he has a good heart or not? I’m opposed to what he does in… Read More Does it Matter if He’s Eeeeeevil?
I watched Our Lord and Savior get inaugurated again at Wegman’s whilst getting some coffee. He’s graying. He looks smaller. I didn’t stick around for the address. I expected it to be the usual boilerplate, and absent some rather proggie-sounding talking points, I don’t doubt that it was. The whole concept of Obama, which even… Read More Obama is Boring
54. The Rolling Stones — Their Satanic Majesties Request This album, long drawing question marks and sneers from the taste historians of the 60’s, has recently been undergoing a critical reanalysis. Which is to say, I read some guys in Magnet say some positive things about it in a head-to-head discussion of Beatles and Stones albums.… Read More Rating My CD’s: Their Satanic Majesties Request
One of the things I had in mind for this blog was a combination of my politics blog, Revolutionary Nonsense, with my music blog, Genre Confusion, mostly because writing two blogs was exhausting. And while my political writings shifted over here with ease, the music criticism hasn’t. Genre Confusion was about a lot of things (hatred of trendies… Read More I Write About the Rolling Stones
Over at Wired, a lawyer named James Daily has done a quick (to the extent that lawyers do anything quick) analysis of the legal contract drawn up between Bilbo and the dwarves in The Hobbit. It’s a fun read for those interested in the intricacies of law, and manages to avoid turgidity. For the most part, Daily… Read More The Hobbit: An Unexpected Legal Conundrum
Not being a reporter, I have neither the skills nor the resources to discern fact from fiction in the Steubenville Rape Case. I trust that Stacy McCain has the right of the matter, and that the KoolKids from 4Chan (or whatever) are just desperately seeking lulz. So I’d like to talk not about the particulars,… Read More Stupid Teenagers are Stupid
