Co-opting the Alternative
Pynchon may be documenting the end of a specific era in American life in Inherent Vice, but there is a universal resonance in his description in which the mainstream co-opts…
Slipping into Solipsism
Rand Paul strapped on a pair of opaque ideological blinders when he posited that Eric Garner died because of taxes. Seriously, he must have matching black holes swirling two inches…
Church is cheaper than…
You’d think, here in the South, churches would not have to resort to sad and desperate messages to bring in the flock. But on a church sign, between Houston and…
Turn the Survey Inward
Philip K. Dick’s story “Survey Team” was so prescient for its time that it has completed the cycle and now seems passé. He sees a future where we are stuck…
Official “Idiots on an Overpass” Day
July 19 must be the new official “Idiots on an Overpass” day in Texas. Clumps of white people were perched on several I-35 bridges between Dallas and Austin, waving their…
Thoughts like Fish
Many awesome passages percolate up from the thick tome that is Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives (Picador Edition). “…[S]trange ideas would come to my head. Ideas that were like dead…
Cliven Bundy – Welfare Queen
We have finally found the fabled Welfare Queen, first postulated in the Reagan Era, but only now has its existence been confirmed. And it was an easy discovery since this…
A War on “Casual Violence”
Let be known on this date, and for ten years hereafter, the phrase “casual violence” is heretofore stricken from usage in the English-speaking world. No longer will embryonic Nabokovs carry…
David Backes is…
David Backes rescuing dogs in Sochi
Breaking Bad did NOT Oiler it
And it wasn’t just the perfect musical choice at the end (and throughout) of the episode. The highlight for me, beyond “Baby Blue,” was Walt’s parting admission to Skyler, “I…