“I WAS CURED ALL RIGHT.” An excellent piece on the last lines of novels. A few quotes, but look, just make with the clicking why doncha? …The deepest rooted of last lines is the childhood one: “And they all lived happily ever after.” Unlike the first line of such stories, “Once upon a time,” it isn’t just a formula. It’s a reassurance that the result the story has achieved will remain in place even now the story-telling has finished. But... Read more

SOCKS ARE NATURAL. SOCKS ARE GOOD. NOT EVERYBODY WEARS THEM, BUT EVERYBODY SHOULD: Oooooh, you are the rebel! Look at the rebel who does not believe in the socks for the expensive shoes! Such the rebel who eschews the commonsense traditions of the untutored masses! All hail the rebellious non-sock wearing men, who challange the very foundations of our hide-bound society. Manolo says, Pah! more! Read more

HOMICIDE: A YEAR ON THE KILLING STREETS. Just finished this book, by David Simon. It’s the book the TV show is based on. (Haven’t seen show, though.) Book came highly recommended by a bunch of people, including at least one with a law-enforcement background; and I’ll recommend it too, for what that’s worth. It’s basically one year with Baltimore’s homicide detectives, at the early edge of the late ’80s – early ’90s killing spree. Overwritten, but style isn’t exactly the... Read more

ADVENT TIME IS HERE, BY GOLLY!: Okay, I have now officially shot my bolt as far as Vatican-gay-priest-stuff goes. So why not a post about fun Christmas stuff I love? Favorite Christmas movies, in order: “It’s a Wonderful Life.” I expected it to be saccharine, and only watched it because of Jimmy Stewart. It’s actually a hard-earned, powerful story about what it means to be good. “The Lion in Winter.” Ferocious, brilliant from start to finish, despite being bleaker than... Read more

A FEW STARS FROM A CONSTELLATION THAT HASN’T BEEN DRAWN YET: Scattered thoughts, in no coherent order, related to this whole Vatican-gay-priests-Andrew-Sullivan-mishegoss. * Through philosophy I came to accept that if objects in and aspects of the physical world have meaning, they attain this meaning only through the agency of a Creator God–that if nature is a language, it can only be the language spoken by God. Philosophy didn’t, though, convince me that the physical world did have this intrinsic... Read more

Well she has now gone from this unhappy planet,With all the blogwatchers and the destructors on it… Amy Welborn: New book on Christian converts from Islam. Legal Affairs Debate Club: Sanford Levinson vs. Jack Balkin: Should liberals stop defending Roe? Maggie Gallagher: “The Divorce Divide.” …Who are most likely to be in very happy first marriages? The college-educated are about twice as likely as high school dropouts; the “very” religious are also about twice as likely as those who are... Read more

A RUSH AND A PUSH: So I’ve been a fan of Morrissey ever since my first girlfriend gave me a tape with Your Arsenal on one side and The Smiths on the other. So why did it take me until today to notice that the guy’s got the same vocal hitch as Patsy Cline? You can really hear it in “That’s Entertainment,” which I was listening to on the excellent Suedehead compilation (which also features the beautiful, swoony Morrissey/Siouxsie duet... Read more

FORGIVENESS: THE mother of Anthony Walker drew deeply on her Christian faith yesterday to find forgiveness for the racist killers of her son, who face up to 30 years in jail. Gee Walker, 49, had listened to every harrowing detail of the ambush by white racist thugs that left her son, a gifted black A-level student, with an ice axe embedded in his skull. … Within minutes Mrs Walker, a mother of six, emerged from the court arm in arm... Read more

THE END OF THE AFFAIR: Okay, so: There’s this document, see? And it’s about what you gotta be to be a priest. (For example, apparently you can’t be a lesbian. Who knew?) And there are these articles that people write, because the only certainties in life are death, taxes, and journalism. And in one of these articles, somebody says that homosexuality has no “social value.” Which prompts Andrew Sullivan to post a deeply moving photograph of Fr. Mychal Judge, who... Read more

She’s a blogwatchAnd she’s got a terminal case of“Ask too many questions and my Smith & Wesson will answer”… Angevin2: An awesome, ongoing series evaluating Shakespeare-on-film. Notable for hilarious warnings (“Depressing. Very, very depressing. Even by King Lear standards”; “Do not look directly at Malcolm’s sweater. Contains genuinely terrifying Porter”), interesting interpretive notes (“I don’t know that Lear is an entirely hopeless play, and I don’t believe it should be presented as such”; “[P]erhaps the fact that 2H4 is a... Read more