Glass Maze Every jumbled pile of person

Posts from May 2005

The Revenge of the Sith

I saw Revenge of the Sith on Friday. It’s been getting glowing reviews, so I went in with very high hopes; hopes that were dashed against the sharp, pointy rocks of cinematic suckitude. This is not a good movie.

Even the film’s inexplicably numerous fans admit that the script is a disaster. George Lucas isn’t just [...]


Maryland Democrat

So what does it mean to be a Democrat? The party’s charter has skittered across the political landscape in the past couple of decades, but I think one thing remains constant: Democrats want to be the voice to the individual. To stick up for the rights, the security, and the well-being of everyone, not just [...]


Toward Theocracy

In his 2006 budget, Bush is proposing to increase funding for anti-poverty programs run by faith-based organizations, while at the same time cutting funding for their secular brethren.

Bush’s 2006 budget proposed slashing public housing subsidies, food stamps, energy assistance, community development, social services and community services block grants — programs that for decades [...]


Cobra Pit

One of the great things about writing, we’re told, is that it gives you a window into your own mind. There are parts of your hidden self that refuse to percolate to the top of your consciousness along the normal routes, but will sometimes make their way down your arm and through your pen and [...]


The Best Rejection Ever

Hidden among the catalogs and complementary real-estate magnets and supermarket circulars in yesterday’s mail was a little envelope addressed to me, in my own handwriting. I have, over the past couple of years, come to dread these little envelopes. They’re always bad news.

Whenever you send a short story to a magazine, you’re supposed to include [...]


Hubristic Puddles

One of the more annnoying justifications for the “theory” of Intelligent Design (which maintains that evolution is a fallacy, and that a divine, invisible hand is guiding our development) is that the universe appears to be “finely-tuned” just for us.

If the strong nuclear force were to have been as little as 2% stronger [...]


Intelligent Design: A Conversation

God: CHARLES DARWIN. BEHOLD YOUR LORD.

Darwin: [looking up from his work; crying out; falling to his knees]: Lord!

God: YOU’VE BEEN A VERY NAUGHTY SCIENTIST, CHARLES DARWIN.

Darwin: Lord?

God: DON’T “LORD” ME. YOU KNOW WHY I’M HERE.

Darwin: [straightening; fiddling with his glasses] Is it my time, Lord?

God: QUITE POSSIBLY. TELL ME ABOUT THIS “NATURAL SELECTION” BUSINESS.

Darwin: [smiling [...]


Random

Walking the dog, listening to Beck, weathering neural infarction after neural infarction, feeling the slime of rejected thoughts leaking out of my ears and down my neck.

And I’m thinking:

If you’re the only person standing in line, then you’re not standing in line, you’re standing in point.

Nobody worships entropy as a god, and they ought to; [...]