Those desperate to prove their masculinity are out of options
What has happened to literature’s manly men? Hemingway, arguably the most masculine of writers, ran repeatedly toward danger throughout his life — along with any other intense experience he could find. This done, he’d write about it: both fiction and nonfiction, covering “manly” topics such as hitmen, boxing, fishing, hunting, bullfighting, racing and extreme sports.
War, the subject of Hemingway’s two most famous books, is perhaps the quintessential subject of such manly writing…
It was still dark when most Americans set off for work and school the morning of Jan. 7, 1974. Commuters grumbled about having to descend to the subways and report to work without glimpsing the sun. Some kids carried flashlights on their way to school.
One woman was so overwhelmed, she simply went back to bed.
“It’s the end,” Terry Minz, of Long Island, N.Y., told the New York Times. “I can’t cope anymore. The comet, the energy crisis, now darkness. I’m just staying in bed.”
So it went the last time the United States took a run at year-round daylight saving time. The experiment, which meant a sunrise of 8:30 a.m. or later for large swaths of the nation, proved short-lived. Amid a swell of public displeasure and a series of early-morning traffic fatalities, Congress voted to undo the change 10 months in.
Just 18 individuals held more than $50 billion in wealth last year
The division of society between the richest 1% of the population and everyone else has become a common way of conceptualising inequality.
However, 1% is still a very large group. For instance, in the UK it comes to more than half a million people or over a quarter of a million households. According to Simon Lambert of This is Money, an income of at least £120,000 is required to make the cut. That’s a great deal of money for most people, but not an extraordinary level of wealth.
I brought flowers to her resting place this morning. I have visited frequently, in fact almost every weekend since her service in September though I know Kath would not approve.
I was reminded of this in a recent dream of her where I was pointedly told she was ‘not there’ but in fact everywhere. I interpret that as a suggestion I better catch up on the house cleaning.
I believe the visits have been doing me good however. The drive there and back is like a form of grief therapy. That said I can see Kathy’s perspective on things and so will endeavor not to let them become a crutch.
“They” say the first year is the toughest. Each day has it’s own little landmine and then of course there are the Big Ones, birthdays, anniversaries etc.
And then come the “Holidays.” I looked upon their approach with dread initially but perversely found an unexpected balm in the realization that while they could not be the Joyous occasion of old without Kathy & Mum nothing could possibly be so grim as the preceding Christmas and New Year. You gotta take solace where you find it I guess. I do wonder if Kath didn’t plant that thought in my head. She works in mysterious ways.
They came and went. I was supposed to spend Christmas with my brother’s family but came down with a suspected case of the Omicron and stayed home with the cat instead. Though I did sneak out Christmas day to visit K’s resting place. So far no outbreak at the cemetery has been reported.
I think of Kathy constantly though sometimes I am busy enough to be lost in myself and even on occasion ‘wake’ and wonder if it all really happened.
It’s funny how the little reminiscences are often the best at helping me through the day.
I miss the way she would make out like I was the greatest guy in the world because I brought her coffee in the morning.
Who else would think to nickname ‘America’s History Channel’ the ‘Alternative Hitler Channel’?
Kathy hated cooking so much she pretended I was good at it and never failed to compliment my efforts.
Then there was the Christmas eve we discovered Korean BBQ because we forgot everything closed down at 5pm and went on a frantic search up and down Yonge to find something, anything open.
I miss how she always overpacked.
How she seemed to know the name of every dog breed, not to mention dinosaurs.
Her love of Pip.
Her love of pajamas.
Her insistence I watch yet another cat video on Lovemeow.
We are falling back into history, by which I don’t mean the history of the West or of any particular nation but the history of the political world and human settlements from time immemorial, that is, for as long as we have records, monuments, artifacts, cave art, primitive tools and other memorabilia. (I use the term “history” to incorporate what we call “prehistory,” which is pre-literary but discoverable.) Whether we consider Thomas Hobbes’ description of the state of nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” or the erection of a harshly authoritarian governing Leviathan to ensure self-preservation, the picture is one of endemic inequality, poverty, famine, perpetual conflict, and despotic control of a laboring and subject population.
Meet the very clever people who think our world is a simulation
With the release of the fourth Matrix film this week, the idea behind the original movie is once again being talked about. The notion that the “real world” is a computer-generated simulation was considered pure science fiction when the original film was released in 1999, but philosophers have long argued that there are good arguments to suggest we could very well be.
In their interview with Elon Musk that debuted Tuesday evening, the Babylon Bee boys brought the funny, as expected. But what viewers might not anticipate is just how many compelling, thoughtful answers their questions managed to elicit from the billionaire.
Everywhere we turn these days we see evil in action. It was always thus, but in the current social, political, and medical environment it seems especially prominent. We observe a pandemic that has caused global and historically immense damage and devastation, a cataclysm of biblical proportions. We see governments, official agencies, and corporate consortiums that have fed the public with lies and misinformation as to the origins, causes, and cures of the plague…
The Lord of the Rings is more than nostalgic medievalism
It’s exactly 20 years since I stood in line to see a film I had dreamed about since I was a little boy. Ever since I had first turned the pages of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, I had wondered what it would be like to see it on the big screen: the hobbits, the battles, the sweeping landscapes, the blood and thunder. When I read that the director Peter Jackson was filming a trilogy of Tolkien’s masterpiece in New Zealand, I felt almost sick with anxiety. Would it be terrible? Would they sound like the All Blacks? What were they going to do about Tom Bombadil?
We have abandoned the taboos that held us together
A century ago, as the Great War raged, Oswald Spengler wrote that “Western mankind, without exception, is under the influence of an immense optical illusion.” The Decline of the West, Spengler’s grand, ambitious, poetic theory of Western downfall — well underway, in his telling, by the time he began writing — has had its followers, detractors and imitators ever since. It has also, in recent years, had something of a renaissance.
Decline is in the air, mingling with the smoke of burning forests in Greece and the shocking footage coming out of Afghanistan. Much of what Spengler wrote about the West’s dissolution — which he predicted would make itself fully known in the 21st century — has proven prescient, and he hadn’t even heard of climate change or the Taliban. You would have to have a strong will — the kind which old Oswald admired — to deny, as nations angrily fragment, the gulf stream stutters, the supply chains choke up, that he might have been onto something.
I have a snazzy new BenQ 27″ that has what may be the best monitor stand I have ever had the pleasure of using. This was on sale for 249.00 bucks, 150 off they say. Nice picture.
Thank God it wasn’t the graphics card. The sales rep said they can’t get cards, or if they do it is one at a time and immediately sold.
If nothing else this has taught me to gear up with some back up equipment.
Black and white America alike suffer from the failure of functional older men to socialize younger men
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, my stepfather worked as an auto mechanic in Upstate New York, at a ‘youth camp’ nestled in a pine forest. The bucolic sobriquet was a euphemism; this ‘camp’ was a medium-security pre-prison of sorts for boys 14-17, mostly from New York City, sent up following precocious encounters with the law. These youthful offenders were not the worst of the worst. Boys implicated in rape, murder or similarly terrifying offenses were assigned elsewhere, to compounds with barbed wire and armed guards.
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Hello everyone.
Thank you all for sustaining me through this worst of years.
Your love of Kathy and Mom along with your kind words and prayers have had an immeasurably positive effect on my ability to cope.
Since lockdown restrictions have been eased to a reasonable degree I have been able to make funeral arrangements.
Kathy will be laid to rest in early September, I will announce the time and place as the day draws near for those wishing to attend. Mom will be laid to rest in August.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, my stepfather worked as an auto mechanic in Upstate New York, at a ‘youth camp’ nestled in a pine forest. The bucolic sobriquet was a euphemism; this ‘camp’ was a medium-security pre-prison of sorts for boys 14-17, mostly from New York City, sent up following precocious encounters with the law. These youthful offenders were not the worst of the worst. Boys implicated in rape, murder or similarly terrifying offenses were assigned elsewhere, to compounds with barbed wire and 