"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Fighting for hearts and minds
When I bought my new Honda Goldwing in 2001, I joined an online Goldwing forum. As a new owner I found the forum useful: readers posted maintenance tips and reviewed after-market accessories. After the first couple of years, though, members ran out of new topics and the forum began to drift away from its original […]
One sees more and more of this sort of thing on Facebook: Wow! Look at all those likes! Look at all those shares! I wonder, do these loyal American Facebook users think someone’s keeping a list? Maybe Mark Zuckerberg? The FBI? Santa? It puts me in mind of this passage from Joseph Heller’s Catch-22: Almost […]
God, have I been neglecting the blog lately! Of course if I don’t blog every day I feel neglectful … that Puritan streak of mine is a mile wide. No theme today; just a bag full of miscellaneous thoughts. One of my sisters is mad at me for picking on Missouri. Well, I pick on […]
A shopping bag seems appropriate for this update, because I have in fact been shopping: for used motorcycle parts, raspberry iced tea, a pair of moccasins, a wifi range extender … The smell of consumer lust permeates Casa Paul. These days I do most of my shopping online, mainly through Amazon and eBay. I used […]
What does that title even mean? Is the cat named Wednesday? Sure, why not? Let’s go with that. My son can’t believe I haven’t said anything about the F-22’s oxygen problems, or about the two whistleblower Raptor pilots who appeared on 60 Minutes last weekend. My first excuse comes easy: I know very little about […]
Apropos of nothing, two thoughts on nakedness and sex in HBO’s Game of Thrones. One, typecasting. Take British actress Esmé Bianco, who plays the prostitute Ros. When on camera she’s often nude, sometimes fully so, even, in one scene, simulating lesbian sex with another female actress. By taking this role, has she limited her career options? […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring news about banned and challenged books. Arizona: That rumor I mentioned in my last YCRT! column? The one about the racists going after ethnic studies at the universities, now that they’ve “fixed” the high schools? Looks like there’s some truth behind it. Here’s another disturbingly Orwellian […]
When I read The Hunger Games last year, one game contestant from the first book stood out from the others: Rue, the 12-year-old from one of Panem’s agricultural districts. Katniss, who volunteers for the games to protect her own 12-year-old sister, forms an alliance with Rue, even though they both know that if it comes […]