Al Qaeda to Iran: Darn Tootin’ We Done It!

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:03 pm By Max Lindenman

Remember that scene in A Few Good Men, where Colonel Jessup, his pride having conquerd his instinct for self-preservation, screams, “YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT I ORDERED A CODE RED ON [WHATEVER THAT KID’S NAME WAS]”? Well, it looks like Al-Qaeda has reached that point, with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the role of Lieutenant Kaffee. In response to Ahmadinejad’s address to the U.N., in which he called the September 11th attacks “mysterious,” and urged investigation into “unknown elements involved,” an official... Read more

Pretty As A Picture

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:03 pm By Max Lindenman

During my last miserable year of grad school, I found occasion to court the woman who had, in my last year as an undergrad, taught the German class I took as an elective. Though she’d lived most of her life in the Valley, she looked the part of Biergarten waitress, at least judging by how beer advertisements depict such people. Blonde, with a complexion Russians call “blood and milk, she was also slightly zaftig. To switch countries once again, if... Read more

Phoenix Goes Dry; I Weep

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:03 pm By Max Lindenman

In a Bill Mauldin cartoon that ran in Stars and Stripes during World War Two, two officers are standing on a peak somewhere in the Apennines or Vosges, gazing at a breathtaking sunset. Turning toward the other, one asks, “Beautiful view! Is there one for enlisted men?” This image, I’m afraid, is exactly what comes to mind when I consider the news that, beginning at some nearby but unspecified date, the Diocese of Phoenix will distribute the Precious Blood to... Read more

The Addict Saint

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:03 pm By Max Lindenman

When I taught ESOL in China, the first thing that struck me was the English first names the students had assigned themselves for the purposes of the class. They’d chosen them some years ago, when they first began studying, and were already quite attached to them. I can only assume they were inspired by their British textbooks, published in the 1960s, and apparently edited by scholars who’d been born in the reign of King Edward VII. Nothing else could explain... Read more

The Meanest Jesus Ever

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:03 pm By Max Lindenman

In her short story “Parker’s Back,” Flannery O’Connor describes the reaction of a tattoo aficionado to an image of Jesus that confounds all of his expectations. The ink lover, one O.E. Parker, employed as a farmhand since his bad-conduct discharge from the U.S. Navy and unhappily married to the dour Sarah Ruth Cates, has taken it into his head to cover his back with an image of the Lord. Accordingly, he appears in the studio of his favorite artist, requests... Read more

Ask; They’ll Tell