MAKING SENSE OF THE SENSLESS SINCE 2004
Years ago, I heard a passage from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass on Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast. It was in episode 68, “Human Resources.” What impressed me was not only its power […]
In 2015, I met a retired lieutenant commander in the United States Navy who had purchased a small townhouse about a block down the road from mine. He was often in the yard doing renovations […]
An appliance can become art, like Duchamp’s urinal did. But to do that it must give up being an appliance. A gallows installed on the National Mall on January 6, with a sign on it […]
During the 2016 election, a Buzzfeed News analysis found that “fake election news stories generated more total engagement on Facebook than top election stories from 19 major news outlets combined.” This, no doubt, is what […]
You know the joke about the three guys who encounter dog shit? They smell it, touch it, taste it, confirm that it’s dog shit and walk away glad that they didn’t step in it. America’s […]
When I started temping, the personal-computing revolution hadn’t yet rescued the American economy. The Internet as we know it did not exist—it was something called “The Well,” which had to be accessed by a 96-kb […]
A few years back, when Dubya was ridin’ his wooden horse hard, I was in a bar talking to a gal who at some point proclaimed, or admitted, that she was a republican. I asked […]
The drawbacks of a positive attitude are clear enough: first, you can assume one in regard to almost anything from the beneficial to the depraved, thus it is arbitrary; second, having encountered a number of […]
Getting hired by a temp agency is relatively easy: make an appointment, appear in your second-hand monkey suit, fill out the application, take the software test, and discuss your resume with the “analyst.” Provided you […]
Awhile ago I was flipping through the New Yorker and saw an interesting cartoon: two men in uniform, guns trained on a pedestrian, behind them a van with “Fashion Security” on the side. The caption […]