Recent
Coyotes and Christians
I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,
And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’
Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that
What I Recalled Watching Netflix
[Television is educational.] One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain
Seeking the King
A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do
Random
Baseball-O-Matic 9000
Farrell took Price out in the bottom of the 9th and the Angels beat the Red Sox in Anaheim. I like Farrell, Price, and the Red Sox. I have no bones to pick there. I also have no set demand that pitchers always throw more than 100 pitches — Price had thrown 109 through eight. My thesis
You Da Man
A Good Friday And petulant Pilate as if triumphant — What I have written, I have written! Finally a decision.
Trick Shot
Sometimes successful films — ones that aren’t expected to be, by many excellent people — spawn copycats, a fact as well-known as well-attested. The followers aren’t as awesome as the originals but they’re not always so awful, and the makers, if they care a little, will throw some new stuff in, or at least get people
The Weighty Beauty of the IBM Selectric III
As Annie Dillard might say, I didn’t write this, I typed it. In fact, I typed it on a black 15″ IBM Selectric III — correction, a Correcting Selectric III, which began production, I am informed, in 1980. It’s the one I learned to type on and, I know now, began to learn to write.