The Plague of “Even”
A devil’s bargain in word processing is the quick-find option. David Lodge foresaw this curse in Small World, when his character Frobisher found, through an old-tyme computer, his unwitting penchant…
Why the hate…?
There is so much bigoted venom for animal-rights activists and in general for people who advocate for animal rights that it sluices its way into unexpected places. In a not-so-recent…
Character devolution
Who are the best whiners in cinema history? Not whiners like Luke Skywalker, who was going through a standard space farmboy phase, but full-on crybabies, where whining isn’t a phase…
One Fat Englishman
One Fat Englishman, by Kingsley Amis, was a decent read – but it was one of those works where reading plodded along, drawn more by the thought of finishing the…
The Supernova Warning
I have seen Supernova twice. Those who have seen this sci-fi movie from 2000 (with James Spader and Angela Bassett) – or at least know about its history – understand…
The Printer Moat
It is the ageless challenge in every office – how do you get people to stop printing crap they don’t need? At the end of every workday, there are printouts…
Writing…
Six Feet Under was tops from beginning to end, despite a few (shallow) valleys in the later seasons. Alan Ball has a tendency to slip little profundities into his dialogue…