The first trick is to stay alive for 40 years. Do not under any circumstance commit suicide; succumb to a terminal illness; drive an automobile by carelessness over a sheer cliff; or get murdered by a thief, disgruntled loner, enemy combatant, or jealous spouse. Begin making love to famous women when you turn 14. Fourteen years allows more ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

      Thought experiment: suppose you support slave labour. You're th captain of a trireme. Below deck, 170 oarsmen row yr boat to war. Never mind -- Wikipedia says that, contrary to popular belief, triremes' crews were composed of free men. Suppose you're th pharaoh's niece walking in th shade of a palm frond held by a nervous Israelite girl ( Read more... )

44 Presidents | Order from GCpress.com

( Read more... )

44 Presidents | Order from Amazon.com

( Read more... )

an iconic redneck from my high school died last month of cancer. We weren't friends at all -- I didn't have any -- but I clicked through 120 photographs of him on Facebook, anyhow. The Facebook miracle mirrors the miracle of capitalist democracy generally: absolute access to things we didn't know we wanted. A box on his profile contains " ( Read more... )

how I can watch a whole season of Th Wire in one day but fail to finish Tarkovsky's Th Mirror (1975) in five days is a mystery to me, but I prefer never to blame th artist. Unlike advertising, education, and politics, all art is a gift; it begins when we accept it and ends when we say, "No, thank you." If I'm trapped in Th Mirror's first half- ( Read more... )

kevin Shields: Don't you owe me a work of art?

MZA: Do I? I seem to owe everybody I know a work of art.

Kevin: I seem to remember a mural. To be painted in an extremely public and preferably illegal place. All th work has to be carried out in one night. Stealthily.

MZA: For instance, I owe my Obama friends an Obama movie and an Obama ( Read more... )

( Read more... )