Holy crap, Lord of the Rings is so damn depressing.

This is why people should not aim for "epic".  I would take obscure, inconclusive Cormac McCarthy endings over all that grandiose let's-watch-everybody-die-so-people-know-not-to-expect-sequels crap.  I won't ask you for a sequel, ok?  I won't ask you for a fucking sequel.

This is also directed at ( Read more... )

Recommended read from my class - which is called, incidentally, Colonial Encounters.

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph.  1997.  Good Day, Columbus.  In Silencing the Past: Power and Production in History, 108-140.  Boston: Beacon Press.

In the 1990s, quite a few observers, historians, and activists worldwide denounced the arrogance implied by this ( Read more... )

Today there was a hawk eating a pigeon on one of the lower branches of a comatose tree beside the campus interreligious center.  At least I assume it was a pigeon, by the little pink fork feet sticking out.  There was no blood and no debris.  Just layers of matter, pink and white, being stripped.  The hawk looked puzzled by all the giddy students ( Read more... )

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My mother commented recently that I really like the whole theme of extinction, don't I. She's right, I am oddly preoccupied with it. I sent a long, hasty email in explanation, but in the days since I've been thinking a lot about that. One of my pipe dreams is publishing a short story collection that is strictly apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic. I ( Read more... )

"It doesn't matter at all whether one is religious or an atheist, whether one likes the miniature or not.  What's important is that we've lived on this earth, and we're bound to it."

- Abbas Kiarostami

"Each society constitutes and perpetuates itself through setting and prompting certain standards it expects every member to follow, and those standards can only be made visible if some people are seen to fail to meet them. Such people can then be declared a 'problem' which the rest of society must and should cope with."
- Zygmunt Bauman

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