22 August 2010: Flushing with J.D. Salinger
News that the standard white porcelain toilet from J.D. Salinger's North Carolina home is selling for $1 million on eBay gives one pause (the kind that refreshes). It's a commodity unlike no other, because it's where the famously reclusive author might have written the earlier drafts, which he subsequently rejected, of such disemboweling works as…
17 August 2010: Incoming Class of Tabula Rasa
Beloit College's Mindset List for the incoming Class of 2014 is both comic and tragic. It makes me happy to learn that, born in 1992, "a quarter of the freshmen class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority unless it involves real aliens from another planet." But…
16 August 2010: Obama and Antigone
Kreon's downfall in the play Antigone by Sophocles is that he chose to pursue the Letter of the Law instead of the Spirit of the Law. Although "freedom of worship" is one of our most sacred constitutional rights as American citizens, Republicans are now vehemently against the building of a mosque within two blocks of…
1 August 2010: Mel Gibson and John Milton
As an undergraduate English major, I dropped out of a class on John Milton (1608-1674) when I couldn't deal with the poet's arrogant presumption in Paradise Lost to "justify the ways of God to man." And then, as a graduate student, I dropped out of a Milton seminar when I came across accounts of how…
27 July 2010: To Russia, With Love
News leaking out of BP indicates that wayward CEO Tony Hayward is stepping down in October, and will be assigned to a key post at TNK-BP in Russia, where he will presumably oversee all offshore drilling for oil in that part of the world. No one is saying it, but I have a deep suspicion…
18 July 2010: In and Out of Bed with Zsa Zsa Gabor
Before Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, celebrities who are celebrated for doing nothing well or worthwhile except to promote themselves as celebrities, there was Hungarian-born Zsa Zsa Gabor, former beauty queen, socialite and occasional actress who starred in such howlers as Queen of Outer Space and Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood. There's…
I Write Like…Who???
LIMERANCESBy Paul July 17, 2010 3 Comments
Having read about the new website "I Write Like" (http://iwl.me/), which matches samples of one's own prose with those of famous authors, I decided to have the site analyze some of the longer entries from my "memoir in flux," and here are the results. My recollection of the one time I met Arthur Miller was…
10 July 2010: Shapeshifting With Sarah Palin!
Sarah Palin has done it again! Although she was born in The Year of the Dragon (1964), she is not content being a mere Dragon Lady. Through the years, she has, by her own account, been a barracuda on the basketball court, an attack dog on the campaign trail for the GOP, a pitbull with…
8 July 2019: Rachel Maddow Plays With Trucks And Guns!
OUT ON A LIMBy Paul July 8, 2010 1 Comment
I watch The Rachel Maddow Show assiduously, not only because it's the best-researched cable news program on the air, not only because Rachel is erudite and isn't afraid to use big words or to indulge in her love of puns, but also because Rachel herself is one of the most joyous and gleeful political commentators…
2 July 2010: Loose Lips Sink Ships!
According to The Washington Post, U.S. Marines are being warned to be wary of foreign beauties they might meet and mate while they are on shore leave in the Seychelles islands. Pictures of Anna Chapman, the ravishing redhead who has been arrested recently as a Russian spy, are being circulated among the 3,000 sex-starved marines who have now been…