Category: cultural analysis

The Most Dangerous Account on Twitter

This guy: You’re a smart guy, so I probably don’t need to explain why, but here goes. Wholesome, positive, and uplifting. And worst of all, it’s uplifting men.  Those horrible, no good, very bad villains who are responsible for every evil that ever befell man or beast.  They come...

Lost Cities of Pulp

P. Alexander, the man behind Cirsova Magazine, one of the best of the new breed of independent short fiction magazine and now one of the longest running, is something of an explorer of lost realms.  Through his friendship with Michael Tierney, author of the Wild Stars Collection, he has...

True Detective Season Three: One Final Thought

Most of Hollywood’s offerings are dismissive affairs, driven in part by a desire to hack away at the roots of Western Civilization. And then you have True Detective. The third season features one of the most profoundly pro-Christian messages ever shown on TV. One of the threads that runs through...

A Testament to True Detective

There is a strange thing about the show True Detective that I haven’t seen anyone mention before, and it’s a good thing. These shows – each season represents a self-contained 8-10 hour movie than one episode in an on-going narrative – are at their heart mysteries on tow orders:...

The Two Kinds of Twitter D&D

Here is a handy scientific reference chart, to help you track which one you encounter in the wild:...

Regressing Harder: Post-Colonial American Lit

Those Americans who paid attention in high school carry around in their head an understanding of early American literature built upon a foundation of two works: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter (1850), and Edith Warton’s, Ethan Frome (1911*).  Both fine works, but both on the heavy side for high...

Around Masks, Don’t Relax

“Masks on in public,” is a common refrain in my household. Oh, the subtext.  Subtext so thick you could stir it with a spoon.  Let’s stick with the surface level interpretation of that phrase for today, shall we? The drawing of the lines around the Masked Eloi and the Maskless...

We Are Hama

Been thinking about this scene a lot lately. You know the one.  An old and senile king has been corrupted by his handler into thinking that the best thing to ever enter his throne room, a man in white, poses an existential threat to him.  They both thought the...

My Dog and My Gun

I mean, dogs can be very dangerous in the wrong hands.  So why do dog owners have more rights than gun owners?  I think we should bring the ownership laws of those two possessions into better alignment:...