paragon: jane mcgonigal’s “reality is broken”

The sheer number of games I invented or modified during my youth is both amazing and typical. Ninja Hide. Best Path. Tennis Baseball. Elder Dragon Wars. Fatal Leap. Cheater. Pothole Racing. I modified… Read More →

Signs of the Times: An Open Letter to Orlando Soria

Dear readers (gay or not), How much do symbolic protests — such as protests native to Facebook — matter? *** I think it’s fair to say that I have a robust immune system.… Read More →

Idiot Wind: Julia Glassman’s Other Life Forms

In “The American Scholar,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said: As no air-pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither can any artist entirely exclude the conventional, the local, the perishable from… Read More →

Yes, We (Shere) Khan: The Life of Pi, A Film About The Simple Bare Necessities

First, you have to watch this short video. Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. -Matthew 7:15 Why should you run? Can it… Read More →

No, sir, it’s a completely baked Alaska

What follows is the Google chat transcript of a knock-down, drag-out battle between myself and the ferocious Tristan Matthews on the subject of John Green, and more specifically his very Donna Tartt-like novel Looking… Read More →

stories of sardinia: d. h. lawrence and grazia deledda

Below I’ve reproduced my review of D. H. Lawrence’s travel narrative, Sea and Sardinia, which I posted to Goodreads (my Goodreads page is here). I highly recommend checking out my other Sardinia-related review,… Read More →

On the unbearably important writing of Milan Kundera

I have known all these situations, I have experienced them myself, yet none of them has given rise to the person my curriculum vitae and I represent. The characters in my novels are… Read More →

one good revolution deserves another

Well, guys, it’s over. We had a good run. We had Tony Soprano, Don Draper (back when he was fun), McNulty and Barksdale and Stringer (oh my), Al Swearengen, Hank Moody (back when… Read More →

a really short blog post about camp

[Beginning in] the 1970s, the real is the impossible, most frequently manifesting in Lacan’s axiomatic declaration of the impossibility of a sexual relationship [...] Men and women swerve away from the impossibility of… Read More →

In Which Our Hero Resolves The Question of Nature vs. Nurture

(x-posted to The Valve, of course) Nature versus nurture, Lodge. Nature always wins. –Secretary William Cleary, Wedding Crashers Jenny Davidson’s new book of cultural criticism, entitled Breeding: A Partial History of the Eighteenth… Read More →