Glass Maze Every jumbled pile of person

Posts from February 2005

Fear and Loathing in 2004

I’m happily making my way through Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail in ’72, when suddenly I come across this passage, and my jaw drops open, and a sharp needle of recognition lances through my frontal lobe. Hunter S Thompson is talking to an acquaintance about Edward Muskie’s candidacy for the Democratic ticket: “Ed’s [...]


Pointing Fingers

Another interview featuring Colin Powell pinning the blame for our discredited WMD-fueled entry into Iraq — and his own entirely false testimony on the matter before the UN Security Council — on faulty intelligence. The problem was stockpiles. None have been found. I don’t think any will be found. There may not have been any [...]


Memo: The Supreme Court

From: The Office of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales To: The President of the United States Subject: The Supreme Court Dear Mr President: I must bring your attention to an issue that poses a grave threat to the national security of this country. Our government has, in its midst, a rogue agency bent on preventing the [...]


BeagleBlogging

This afternoon, my dog decided to step up his longrunning campaign to bankrupt us. So far, he’s been relying on various intermediaries to do so: huge veterinary bills, hospital visits, kennel stays, massive property damage, etc. He’s ingested deadly poisonous snakes, chewed through priceless Renaissance paintings, hurled himself through ancient plate-glass windows. He’s a nuclear [...]


Goodbye

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.” – Hunter S Thompson Rest in peace, Mr Thompson, if peace is what you’re after. Somehow, I doubt it is.


Ground Rules

The Onion AV club has an interview with Mitchel Hurwitz, the creator of Arrested Development, hands down the funniest non-animated show on TV. Lots of interesting stuff here, but I found this particularly cool: I also had this idea — I’ll give you all the details, because I assume there are students reading this, and [...]


Lovecraft

I’ve never read HP Lovecraft, largely because what little I’ve seen of his prose has been a little too purply for my tastes. But my interest has just been kindled by an article that looks into the controversy over whether he was a genius or a hack. It’s interesting reading, and occasionally funny as hell. [...]


What I Did On My Summer Vacation

On my summer vacation I went to a planet called Earth. It is a little planet that is mostly blue except where it is brown or white. The blue parts are soft and you can fall into them to a place where the air is heavy and wet and you move very slowly and you [...]


Plato’s Shadows

Juan Cole, on the current state of reality in America: Although George Orwell/ Eric Blair wrote 1984 as an anarcho-syndicalist socialist critique of Stalinism, it is becoming increasingly clear that it was also prophetic about the direction of Late Capitalist societies characterized by corporate media consolidation. In such a society, Cheney can substitute himself for [...]


Newton’s Notebook

When Isaac Newton was a boy, he acquired a notebook and spent inordinate amounts of time copying things into it: extracts from a book on secrets and magic, Aristotelian theory, instructions on drawing, recipes for making colored ink. He didn’t embellish any of his transcriptions with commentary, analysis, insight. It was a pure experiential dump. [...]


← Before