Digesting Digest
Bradford Cox has always reminded me of Bean, that tiny, brainy kid from Orson Scott Card’s _Ender’s Game_ book series. For the non-nerds among you, Bean is the smartest, and smallest, of a group of preadolescents who are trying to take over a futuristic version of our universe. Somewhere in the series, he discovers that […]
Three Stories
The Date “I guess I just don’t know how to deal with loss.” “No, yeah, me neither.” My date had been crying for most of dinner, and I was kind of getting sick of it. “Hey, I’ve got an idea. How about we play the Shut Up Game?” “What?” She looked hurt, but I think […]
The Loaves and the Pitches
“Have you had a spiritual experience? Out-of-body or near death experience? A flash of blue light or an inner sound? A sense you’ve lived before?” If you browsed through The Daily Princetonian last week, you may have noticed this advertisement for a “free workshop” Thursday evening, September 30, at the meeting room in the Panera […]
The Loaves and the Pitches
The Church of Scientology New York stands right in the center of New York’s Theatre District on West 46th Street. The building blends into the glitzy fare, as loud in its own right as its neighbors—such mainstays of the famously fabulous New York theater scene as _In the Heights_ and _My Big Gay Italian Wedding_. […]
The Lady’s a Politician
Philadelphia, PA It’s the middle of the night in a packed venue in downtown Philly. With one high-heeled foot on the piano bench and another on the piano itself, Lady Gaga puts her hand on her heart and rasps into the microphone, “I, Lady Gaga, swear that I will never—ever—lip sync, in any show, for […]
Mucking Zuckerberg
At 10:55 p.m. on a Sunday night, I am obsessively checking my Facebook. After clearing my notification (singular notification, because it has only been about ten minutes since I last checked it. Okay, it’s been two minutes. Judge me.) and RSVP-ing “maybe” to the event I’m probably not going to attend, the only thing left […]
No Love
Eminem, for all his lyrical violence—threatened and skillful (i.e. killin’ y’all fools on this lyrical shit)—is not a bully. He is the bullied, the victim. He is the wee scrawny white kid from a predominantly black part of Detroit, rescued from peer and parental abuse by his gift of gab. The violence he suggested (“kicking […]
A Case Against Legalization
The drug policies of the United States are horrifically backwards. They promote the incarceration of people guilty of soft drug possession, people who likely pose no threat to themselves or others. They cost countless billions of dollars each year as money is siphoned into enforcement, prisons, and drug “education.” They are even patently hypocritical, protecting […]
