Recent
No Prizes for Subtlety
It was the sort of place you wouldn’t be found dead in; the guy on the floor didn’t agree. Didn’t seem to like the floor — but it was in better shape than his face. Then someone had gone duck hunting on his chest. And either another guy was standing in front of me, or
Can We Tawk?
Comedienne Joan Rivers’ catchphrase was, ‘Can we talk?’ with all that that entails — its rhetorical nature, the Jewish thing, an implication that at least one of the parties will be better off for having done so … Like God. T’other day a priest spoke of ontological remembrance, the immediate and ongoing memory of past-present-future
Hide and See
Something lost, Dallas Willard said once, might yet be very valuable. One’s car keys for instance. He was speaking somewhat in the context of salvation, if I recall … the general point was calling something lost doesn’t mean it’s not wanted — quite the opposite. Yet it remains … until finding its way out or being found
Greater Love Blah Blah Blah
Do we doubt locals thanked them for their service? I’m not equating the two. They were wrong; glad we crushed them. Only noting it’s likely they thought as much about such things as we do, which is to say not much. German citizens who believed their leaders, loved their country, watched their sons get on
Random
The Fat Guy and Buffets
The word is buffet, and it is 300 years old, from the Old French, of “obscure origin” as the kids say, if the kids wrote etymological dictionaries. Obscure origin, but the word is more than making up for it three centuries later. They are everywhere. Everywhere the Fat Guy lives, and everywhere he has been. I
When We Lie
If mere humans may have things abominable to them, mine is lying. I hate it in nearly all forms: commercial advertising and political propaganda, of course, as well as even when people doing good things feel compelled to pretend they are flawless: that the rotten thing they just did is required by that good thing
Take Up Do
In my mid-20s — half an age (mine) and still nearly nil on maturity ago — I noticed a thing that at the time was massive but in retrospect, as such immensities often are after the time, obviously is something millions of others have noticed through all their times. At least one hopes. I noticed
The Smart Young Student
Then a student came up to Him and said, “Teacher, what must I do to get an A?” And the Teacher said, “Now you want to know? Now you care — and you think I can help? Look, to get an ‘A’ just do the things that get an A: think critically, run the spell-check, yes, you need