suspended in her jar
Part of the problem is that unless you have a child every two years or so, people begin to eye you with that beady "is she using contraception?" glitter. Read more
Part of the problem is that unless you have a child every two years or so, people begin to eye you with that beady "is she using contraception?" glitter. Read more
And would people of Jewish descent - or other genetically at-risk demographics - be especially targeted for mandatory testing? Read more
If you're passing around memes mocking contemporary feminists, you are the type who would have applauded the arrest of Pankhurst in 1914. Read more
The old stories that come to us out of an older, folk mythos, have been as altered as has the idea of "faerie" itself - made into a genre that exists to be harmless...and, of course, to make a lot of money. Read more
If you wake up one day with a violinist attached to you it is unjust, difficult, terrible, oppressive....but, you still have a moral obligation not to act in a way that will result in the death of the violinist Read more
The purpose of ritual licence, in which everything but violence is permitted, and no guilt incurred - in which the usual order of things is turned upside down - is not nihilistic or destructive. It is in fact in the service of true, wholesome order - and community. Read more
My son, usually very relaxed about conversations on topics of justice, rolled his eyes. "But mom, I didn't do any of those things! I think it was awful that those things happened, but it was a long time ago, and it wasn't me! So why are you saying I'm supposed to feel guilty about it." Read more
But when I think about hereditary disease, and those who have not been as lucky as I am to escape carrying it, it does look a lot like a curse. Not the kind of curse that falls on you as a punishment, but the kind that descends for no reason, or because you made an innocent mistake: you plucked the white rose instead of the red. You opened the forbidden door. You fell asleep and let the candle burn down. Read more
Our image of the loser guy in his mom's basement drooling over porn and proliferating memes is a kid of contemporary avatar of the loutish thick-headed beast crouching in a cave chewing a leg of mutton. This isn't even a worthy enemy, we feel: this is just something to be killed. Read more
This is what I think of at the corollary to the Banality of Evil: the tackiness of it. It leans ultimately towards ugly art, bad hairstyles, absurd histrionics, and a moral vacuousness that tries to cover itself with shiny externals. I am reminded of Dante's depiction of the damned as "those who have lost the good of the intellect" - and the further down Inferno you go, the more nasty and stupid the souls there. Read more
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