I love tiny things. Love them. Tiny things, filled with tiny details. This is why, somewhere in my closet, I have a box of random tiny dollhouse items that I’ve bought in various places or made myself, despite not ever having owned a dollhouse or the dolls that would accompany it. (My dolls were either…
…if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things The quote above is from Raymond Chandler’s superb essay, The Simple Art of Murder. If you’ve never read it, do yourself a huge favor and do so, right now. Google the title and read Chandler’s prose and then come…
Spring is sprung The grass is riz I wonder where the boidies is… Ah. Spring. No matter that if you live in the midwest there may be snow on the ground, and if there isn’t, there was recently. It is, dammit, spring! What you gonna believe, Skippy – your eyes or the calendar? And to…
Why doesn’t Batman use a gun? Because his parents were shot down? Really? I mean… really? That’s weak. Even for an obsessive-compulsive who’s borderline psychotic, that’s just silly. He’s got a belt full of lethal weapons, he’s got more in his car, and even more in his cave. And, speaking of OCD, they all have…
Young and mostly silent Jake, the enigmatic hero of the television program Touch, doesn’t look ancient. Nor does he look particularly Greek. But ah – might he be a reincarnation of Pythagoras? Or at least a fictional character inspired by Pythagoras? Who? Okay, for you hordes of non-philosophy majors pit there: Pythagoras was probably the…
The Cookie Monster finished duct taping Kermit to the chair, stepped back, removed a cattle prod from somewhere within his fur and growled, “Where cookie?” “I don’t know where your cookie is,” Kermit whined. The Monster brandished the cattle prod. “Last chance. Where cookie?” Then he jammed the cattle prod into the part of Kermit’s…
…wind down through the labyrinthine passage to the farthest depth of the cavern and there find a wire, and from the wire will come a spark, and from the spark a flame and from the flame a light that will illuminate the truth… Well, sometime, maybe. But not today. Today is for blobbing – or,…
Did Fredric Wertham imitate superheroes? And if so, did he realize that he was doing it? But let’s back up and give you latecomers an establishing shot or two. Way back in the early 50s, Dr. Wertham, a New York City psychiatrist, wrote a book provocatively titled Seduction of the Innocent which claimed to use…
Cowboys who gallop and ride Know how to take things in stride They always have their pride Cowboys who gallop and ride Atrocious! Add your own melody and hold your nose. I made up that ditty, or one close to it, years ago and I don’t know why. (To provide a contrast to good verse?…
DC Comics is hiring a very anti-gay writer named Orson Scott Card to write for them. That’s bad enough in my opinion, but they are giving him Superman to write. Damn DC. Giving a guy who wishes gay people were wiped off the face of earth is one thing, but giving him Superman is just…
I guess the angels were scratching their heads real hard, and so when I awoke yesterday there was three feet of white stuff all over everything. It’s still there, mostly, except for the streets, where our tax dollars have been at work, and the driveway where a nice man who didn’t ask for a king’s…
Way, way back in the day, when Harry S. Truman was president and that thing in the living room, that teevee set that daddy brought home, well, we watched whatever was on. I mean, it’s not like there were a lot of choices. In St. Louis we had no more than three channels, and back…
