“Parent: After talking it over, my wife and I have decided that Oliver would be happier going to a different school next year.
Gibbs: What’s your point?”
My latest for CiRCE deals with teenage happiness, real and imagined.
Proverbial, Episode 47: Fathers & Sons
The latest episode of Proverbial is available today and concerns the great difference between friends and family, even though modernity has largely conflated the two.
On Offense
“A brother offended is not easily won,” but let’s face it, a brother who is offended by a little honest critique is not really worth winning.
This Beautiful Song
My friend Andrew introduced this song to me in a collaborative playlist the trio put together for New Year’s Eve. I have listened to it many times since then. As someone who has written a good deal on the subject of nostalgia over the last five years, I must say I am astonished at how well Mulatu Astatke (who I had not previously heard of) captures the nostalgic mood.
When it first came on, I thought it was a Leyland James Kirby track. The fact that it’s not makes me more impressed with both Kirby and Astatke.
Worth It
It would be worth it for Christians (especially Christian couples) to sort out now how they will respond when the inevitable occurs and the “terms and conditions” that we blindly agree to–and which are now attached to a growing number of products and services–contain a whole bunch of anti-Christian dogmas.
Our Teenage Daughter Has A Smart Phone But She Makes Up For It By Singing In The Church Worship Band
A wager: Give me ten student essays about Jane Eyre, five written by non-texters and five written by texters. I’ll tell you which is which.
My latest for CiRCE is about what happens to students who learn to text before they learn to write decent essays.
Not A Coincidence
Around the same time scientists gave parents the ability to choose the sex of their children, politicians gave children the ability to reverse the decisions their parents made.
Sexual assignment invariably led to sexual reassignment. What parents would not leave to nature, neither would their children.
Top-Down-Fullness
My latest for CiRCE is really more of a McSweeney’s piece, but I’ve collected too many rejection letters from that place to send them anything else.
Of the piece, I would add this: There is no fashionable big corporate banality which is not a temptation for private education, as well.
So Tawdry
A tried and true way of climbing the ranks of the online intellectual world: pick a fight with someone just a little bigger than you, hope they respond, win a little web traffic in the process.
Music For Nine Post Cards
It is a good day for the music of Hiroshi Yoshimura.
There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. 