When folks observe your humble blogger pushing the new Troy-Bilt bad boy over the lawn of the palatial parental estate, they are no doubt tempted to ask, “Jeremy, how do you mow so well? Such speed, such precision, how do you do it?” If they ever suppress their awe long enough to pose the question, I shall wipe the sweat from my brow, point to my chest, and answer them, “It’s the shirt.” Read more
It’s hard to tell for sure about these things and perhaps if someone was waving a gun in my face it would be different, but I am not moved by a great fear of death. The early exit sign has flashed a few times to little effect. Take a typical example: two months ago in Bellingham, a large truck turned the wrong way down a one-way street and charged my tiny Subaru. Had I slammed on the brakes instead of... Read more
The latest in the long chain of creepy e-mails from the White House has just showed up in my in-box. It’s from Barack Obama, subject line, “Meet me for dinner.” Read more
“How was Mass?” asked my roommate, who goes to Lynden’s local megachurch Christ the King. “Pretty good,” I told him. “How was Christus Rex?” He got it, after a tic or two. Mass actually was pretty tolerable this morning. Fr. Flapdoodle’s homily was better because he cut it short. That brevity was used to carve out time to renew the marriage vows of an older couple from the parish on the day of their 40th anniversary. Fr. F. said that... Read more
To play you out for the week, I decided on the Mountain Goats’ “This Year.” The chorus — “I am gonna make it / through this year/ if it kills me” — is pitch perfect and the music video simply has to be seen. Read more
Tucked into that Wellesley High School commencement speech/epic rant that people are talking about today — let’s call it the “you’re nothing special” speech –is a mini rant about weddings. English teacher David McCullough Jr. called commencement “life’s great forward-looking ceremony” and contrasted commencements with weddings, which are “one-sided and insufficiently effective.” “Weddings,” explained McCullough, “are bride-centric pageantry. Other than conceding to a list of unreasonable demands, the groom just stands there. No stately, hey-everybody-look-at-me procession. No being given away.... Read more
The American Spectator is a run by a non-profit, which means that the publication itself is not allowed to explicitly endorse a candidate or piece of legislation. There is some wiggle room for contributors to do so in its pages, but in practice the editors have decided to ixnay endorsementsway. In fact, I only know of one explicit endorsement the Spectator ran in the last presidential election cycle, because I wrote it. In the column in question, I told readers... Read more
It occurs to me that I haven’t yet posted the Rules of Jeremytarianism for my new Patheos readers. They are: 1. You will fail. 2. People lie. 3. Everybody hates somebody. These are distinct from Lott’s Iron Law of Debate: “Whenever you argue with puppets, you lose.” Read more
There has been quite a bit of debate over that ginger YouTube kid who insists, contra South Park, that gingers do have souls. The crux of the issue is whether he’s faking it or not. Is he honestly worked up over anti-ginger prejudice or is he mugging for the camera, for a video that has garnered almost 29,000,000 views? I come down on the side of mugging because, I’ll let you in on a little secret: we gingers actually don’t... Read more
Ray Bradbury, who died yesterday at 91, would be difficult to summarize even for those steeped in his work. The man was a Mount Vesuvius of short story writing fury for page, stage, and screen. He rang up a lot of misses and more hits than any one man could ever reasonably hope for. His most famous novella (Daniel Flynn is right that Bradbury didn’t so much write “novels” as really long short stories), which everybody will be talking about... Read more
Jeremy Lott's Diary
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