1. Happy New Year! 2. This marks a new low in that I’ve procrastinated through the whole weekend and the flotsam is going up on Monday. I wish I could say there was a good reason for that, but there isn’t, unless it’s reluctance to talk about the year that is passed. One of my … Continue reading New Year Flotsam
Friday Flotsam
Friday Flotsam: Christmas, ‘Avatar’ and ‘Rebecca’
1. A Merry Christmas! 2. It's been a very laid back, half-hearted kind of Christmas on my end, keeping with the whole of these past few months. The experience has been (so I imagine) similar to that of a functional alcoholic; there are good days and bad days, and a kind of fog over everything, … Continue reading Friday Flotsam: Christmas, ‘Avatar’ and ‘Rebecca’
Sunday Sundry: End of the Semester and ‘Animal Farm’ Hypocrisies
1. Another semester done at last! And exams were mostly pretty fun this year. For my English students (all high schoolers this time around), I opted for a discourse method in which students had to give a verbal answer to a question regarding one of the books we read, followed by a general class discussion … Continue reading Sunday Sundry: End of the Semester and ‘Animal Farm’ Hypocrisies
Saturday Sundry: Gods of the Copybook Headings and Ten Years of Misery
1. I had my students read The Gods of the Copybook Headings this week (it's almost exam time and I didn't want to start new lessons, so we're just reading Kipling poems). It's really amazing that this was written in 1919, when its subject matter and thesis are a pitch-perfect match to the present. But … Continue reading Saturday Sundry: Gods of the Copybook Headings and Ten Years of Misery
Sunday Sundry: Principles of Unity
1. A bout of insomnia this week left me only half-rational, hence why this is extra late. 2. Unity – ‘Oneness’ – is one of the transcendentals: qualities of Being that transcend the Ten Categories. It is the ability to speak of something as a single unit or concept. Coupled with this is Distinction: that … Continue reading Sunday Sundry: Principles of Unity
Sunday Sundry
My father's out visiting, so my schedule is a little off (as far as I have one). That means no Flotsam this week. Sorry.
Friday Flotsam: ‘The Running Man’ and ‘Epic’
1. Last week's movie night was The Running Man, starring Ahnold. It was more or less your typical action-sci-fi film of the 1980s: over-the-top violence, bitingly funny satire, mounds of creative energy, and a charismatic cast (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Conchita Alonzo, Richard Dawson, Yaphet Kotto, Jesse Ventura, Jim Brown, etc). It's not brilliant, but solidly … Continue reading Friday Flotsam: ‘The Running Man’ and ‘Epic’
Friday Flotsam: Mostly Politics, with a Godzilla Chaser
1. The supreme law is the well-being of the people. It is not the well-being of the economy. 2. The Right Wing - Left Wing dichotomy is a product of Revolutionary politics and does not exist outside them. They mean the same thing today as they meant in 1793: Right Wing means favoring a limited … Continue reading Friday Flotsam: Mostly Politics, with a Godzilla Chaser
Saturday Sundry: US History, Politics, Strategy
1. There are two possible readings for the American Revolution: either it was a matter of sincere, but politically incompetent idealists blundering their way into civil war or it was a matter of men who had settled on rebellion from the start taking every opportunity to deliberately escalate the situation (or, most likely, a combination … Continue reading Saturday Sundry: US History, Politics, Strategy
Friday Flotsam: Happy Halloween!
1. Happy Halloween! I love Halloween; the day of horror, macabre, the spooky and gothic. 2. For Halloween, I think it's healthy to have this particular day to contemplate the darkness, the evil, the veil of life and death (not too closely or too realistically, of course). It's the day of horror, the day of … Continue reading Friday Flotsam: Happy Halloween!
Serpent's Den 