On Being A Leech

I recently performed a calculation of approximately how long I have been a “real person” for. Dani was witness to this bit of mental masturbation, and can testify that it was extremely obnoxious, but I think that the idea holds some merit, and this is my blog anyway, so don’t read it if you don’t [...]

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Armistice Day

A confusing thing has happened, somewhere between 1918 and 2009. What used to be Armistice Day, a celebration of a treaty to end killing in Western Europe, signed  for the most part by the same rich, smug bastards who sent other people’s kids off to die four years earlier, has been transformed into Veteran’s Day, [...]

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I Hear America Singing

Reflections on patriotism are always puzzling for me – take, for example, Whitman; as a gay man, he was excluded from American society and condemned by the religious beliefs of the majority of the population. Yet the sonofabitch loved America. How do you square that? Semantic debates aside, the guy was all about a whole [...]

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All Out of Red Ink

This title is a not-terribly-subtle allusion to an old Eastern European joke that Zizek recounts in one of his books, where two Polish comrades are separated, one is sent to the Siberian mines, and before he leaves, he tells his friend: Look, we will establish a code for writing letters, since they are obviously going [...]

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On Truth and Lie in the Extra-Moral Sense

I often wondered what the significance of the hyphen in this title indicated – if the word extra was taken to mean simply “outside of morality” or if it implied that truthfully, in an almost meta-moral way, one is being more moral by embracing the sort of non-absolutist Truth that Nietzsche endorses. The distinction is [...]

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Pedagogy of the Oppressed

I’ve just switched nine time zones and spent most of the day drinking alternately coffee and wine (a good Chianti, if it helps the imagination) , so apologies in advance if this post rambles slightly. But then, you’re used to that.  The title is, of course, not only a bit of a nod and a [...]

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Sorry America, People in Iran Still Fucking Hate You

I like to think of myself as a person who, if not unbiased, is at least aware of his biases. This doesn’t mean that I’m working to overcome them, but at least I know where they are. Part of this system of prejudices is that I generally hate Republicans more than I hate Democrats. This [...]

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Love in the time of Cholera, pt. 2: Where it gets all mushy

This part will, with any luck, be the section that the previous one was meant to be. I’ll confess, I chickened out – Dani said that I never write anything personal in my “journal,” and loathe as I am to admit it, she may be right. This entry will be, then, my attempt to come [...]

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Love in the time of Cholera, pt. 1

My response to hearing people use the phrase “in real life” is generally akin to hearing nails screeching on a chalk board. For those of you who don’t have ears, this feeling is bad. I’ve been meaning for quite some time to write about this sort of bucolic, folksy ideal of “common sense” that’s quite [...]

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It’s Just A Human Life

As far as I can recall, the only significant fight that Dani and I have ever had occurred as we were stumbling (drunk, because normally I’m extremely graceful) down Franklin Street to buy more beer on the evening of some NCAA championship game. Because we’re both fairly intelligent and not total assholes, we were having [...]

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