RECOMMEND A CHILDREN’S BOOK! Read more

SUBTEXTUAL CRITICISM: Helen contributes to the porn/adultery/norms discussion (which is also ongoing if you scroll around Ladyblog), asking, “Instead of ‘negotiating’ or being all American and sincerist about your relationship, couldn’t you be doing something more exciting with your mouth?“ She adds, “Like pedagogy?” More on that second link’s subject–eros and education–soon. ETA: She also offers her intro-to-decadence reading here. Read more

HE HIT ME AND IT FELT LIKE A RSS: In which I suggest that marriage is a genre, and Internet pornography might change that genre for the worse. Go and comment! Read more

It was an exalted festival. Even the envoys from the outside world sensed this, and proclaimed it; and in the course of those days a good many new converts were won over to the Glass Bead Game forever. In the light of this triumph, however, Joseph Knecht, at the end of the ten-day festival, made some highly curious remarks in summing up the experience to his friend Tegularius. “We may be content,” he said. “Yes, Castalia and the Glass Bead... Read more

THREE DREAMS: 1) I am at what was billed as a conference on marriage, but has, so far, been just a lot of household tips, like Hints from Heloise. I am very, very bored. Finally the last speaker gets up–I’m pretty sure he was a Hispanic guy whose first name started with a G.–and gives a speech about how gay marriage is the result of a quest for Heideggerian authenticity*. He’s against it–he argues that gay marriage, like all attempts... Read more

GUESS WHO’S BACK! And she’s in DC! Read more

KITCHEN ADVENTURES: WANTON! WANT ONE? In which I make some things with wonton wrappers! This was ridiculously easy–not sure why I was so intimidated beforehand. Basically, I bought a $2 pack of wrappers. I set the oven to somewhere in the low 400s–I did several batches of these, generally between 400 and 420, adjusting the cooking time accordingly between about 8 minutes and 10 minutes–and covered a baking tray with parchment paper. I laid out lots of wrappers on the... Read more

My friend, Steve, told me this once: “All the girls I’ve ever loved should have their faces on the backs of milk cartons.”–Sherman Alexie, “Distances” (in The Business of Fancydancing) Read more

GROTESQUERIE AND GRIEF: ABORTION IN HORROR MEDIA. A column by me at the First Things blog. …And yes, I moronically said that David Lynch and David Cronenberg are the same person. As exciting as that horror-movie premise would be, it’s false, and I’m about to email FT to ask them to correct the post. If you want more on A Small Killing, I wrote about it here; I wrote a bit about other short stories featuring abortion here. Hat-tip for... Read more

FANNIE LOU HAMER’S CONVENTION. Powerful post at Balkinization. Hamer, like many minority American women, was also sterilized against her will–a practice which continued through the 1970s. Read more