Archive for the ‘Conflict’ category

How I learned to stop worrying and love the run

Jesus, I can’t believe that’s the title of this post. Love the run? Seriously? Cause I fucking hated running. My whole life. Totally hated running. I thought runners were kind of bonkers. (I’m sorry lovely darling runners out there, I know I’m a total judgey asshole.) But I thought people who ran a lot, like [...]

Snobbing on…

I missed my post two weeks ago. I apologize. It’s been hard for me to keep track of what’s going on. I’m ending a single year in a new place I’ve never been before, and heading off to another single year in another place I’ve never been before. My friends here have almost exclusively been [...]

Anxious racists are the worst

There have been a couple of news items recently that have led me to start conversations about how certain journalists are racist. I posted a few things on Facebook, and brought them up to people I know, thinking that of the people I know, they’re at least the sort who would acknowledge that these are [...]

A little fiction

Here is a thing I wrote. I hope you like it. The Lottery It wasn’t until the jackpot hit $62 million that Sharon even considered buying a ticket. Until that point, she’d never really paid attention to the lottery. As far as she was concerned, “Powerball” might be some obscure Olympic event dominated by Romanians. [...]

Today is Victory Day

It is only in the last few years that, thanks to one of our resident Russophiles, LP, I have come to appreciate a good May 9th party. May 9th, as you may know, is the day that Russia and the other former Soviet republics celebrate as Victory Day, when the Allies finally overcame the Nazis [...]

The yellow wallpaper

It’s been close to two years now since I bought my first house. It’s a ninety year-old Craftsman-style home on Main Street in a small city in Wisconsin, full of hand-rubbed plaster walls, oak built-ins, and birdseye maple floors. Despite my occasional restlessness and a love for urban life, this is well and truly my [...]

Is this editorial cartoon objectionable?

Apologies in advance to those who believe it is:     This cartoon ran in the student newspaper of the University of North Carolina, a decision for which the editor was assailed. (The cartoon was drawn by a syndicated editorial cartoonist, not a student.) Questions: – Was it wrong for the student paper to run [...]

Black box

Kony 2012 – the musical

I trust you’ve all been following the strange story of Kony 2012, the half-hour video that went viral last week? The 83 million views, the criticism of its makers for overstating the strength of Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army  in Uganda, the subsequent very public meltdown of the lead filmmaker Jason Russell? I [...]

Stop him! He’s getting away!

I searched and searched because I was sure I must have written something about this before here, but I can’t find it. Oh, who am I kidding? All my posts are basically meditations on the same five or six things. I’m OK with that! Whenever I hear someone say, often in a voice that betrays [...]