I AM CALIGULA. Triple-hee! Which Julio-Claudian Emperor Are You? Via Angevin2, who reminds us of the immortal lines from Pinky and the Brain:“Caligula was no Boy Scout;He did things we can’t even talk about.The Romans knew he was off his headWhen he filled a vacant Senate seat with Mister Ed!” Read more

“THE GILDED AGE”: STRANGEWAYS HERE WE COME. Next section of current short fiction. Um… some notes. 1. I didn’t know the plot of this story when I started. So it’s much too cryptic, and many things will be made clearer in the final draft.2. This episode, apparently, is my big tribute to envy and resentment. Woohoo!3. (related) No characters are me. No characters are entirely not-me.4. I’m still not sure what to think about this story. It may be useless,... Read more

WHAT’S A GIRL LIKE YOU DOING IN A NICE PLACE LIKE THIS?: So I wrote a thing for the Yale Free Press‘s 2005 commencement issue, about how my Yale education had shaped my career or later life. The YFP hasn’t put that issue online yet, so I’m posting what I wrote, with a few sentences excised because I don’t think they work as well for the general blog audience. (That’s one reason it ends so abruptly.) Enjoy, or not, but... Read more

NINOMANIA has a host o’ posts examining John Roberts’s Senate testimony, from a Scalialicious perspective. Read more

TOO TRUE: I have said that jobs can force men to wear proper shoes. One of the most demanding jobs for women is sexuality, for which the proper footwear is high heels. The informal summertime substitutes for these are flip-flops. Some women may believe that high heels and flip-flops are functionally equivalent, since they both show skin. Flip-flops may even seem more effective, because they alone show toenail polish. This belief is deeply mistaken. High heels give you lets like... Read more

EX CORDE ECCLESIA, MY @##: …STUDENTS AND STAFF at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., and Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tenn., seemed more shocked by their school’s place on the anti-gay list. Staff and alumni at Holy Cross said they were at the forefront of supporting gay students’ rights at Catholic colleges. Holy Cross administration recognizes its two gay student organizations and one support group. “I think Holy Cross was the first Catholic school to officially recognize and... Read more

2 LINKS: That Heritage list of where to stick the knife in the federal budget. Via lots of people. Amy Welborn, characteristically, talks sense in re Vatican coming to turn US seminaries upside-down and see what falls out of their pockets. Be sure to read the comments as well–many powerful personal stories and worthwhile thoughts. Read more

When you were mineUsed to let you watch all of my blogs… Oxblog: Persecuted Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji has been perversely and cynically returned to prison by the Iranian government after he broke a four-month hunger strike in hospital after being told he would be given his freedom. The journalist, whose reportage in 1998 connected former President Akbar Rafsanjani and other leading conservatives with the murders of five writers and intellectuals and was thought a decisive factor in the conservatives’... Read more

RELIEF CONNECTIONS: “The mission of Relief Connections is to provide a forum where community, religious, and civic groups affected by Hurricane Katrina can connect with similar groups across the nation and world who can aid in their recovery.” And BeliefNet has a weblog compiling “inspirational stories of hope in the wake of Katrina.” Lots of really moving posts. Both links via Amy Welborn, I think. Read more

BLOG/RELIEF: ARE YOUR DOORS LOCKED? David Wagner, alias the Ninomaniac, gave to the Red Cross and requested a post about Iago. This was timely, as I recently saw the taut, utterly fun Shakespeare Theatre production of “Othello.” It’s showing now and you should go see it!!!! The actors are at the top of their game; the director is the amazing Michael Kahn; the show evokes a wartime, cultural-mixing atmosphere swiftly and believably, using the cultural specificity of Venice and its... Read more