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  • John Kerry, Goddamn Class Act

    A young protester interrupts his confirmation testimony, and he says, yeah, that’s what I was here to do when I got here. Word up, sir. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on9RoCbpIXE&feature=youtu.be Hat tip to Weigel.

  • Toby (3 Years Old) Assesses the 2012 Presidential Race

    My three-year-old boy Toby and I were talking about presidential politics in the car this morning, like we do. (While his baby sister Phoebe said, “RaaaUUUuUuurrrrRRrgh.”) We were looking back at the 2012 election, and Toby has drawn some interesting conclusions. He often asks whether such-and-such a politician “did a good job,” and this time,…

  • The Facebook Trap

    I feel trapped by Facebook. A recent Salon piece by Sara Scribner has rekindled my nascent desire to exit it altogether. Scribner comes to her own loathing of Facebook from the perspective of someone who, having escaped the cliques of junior high, finds herself once again in a social environment in which approval and validation…

  • The Realizable Good Before the Unrealizable Perfect

    Andrew Sullivan, reacting to the president’s second inaugural: Over the years, I’ve never let go of that understanding of conservatism’s core truth – that all politics ends in some version of failure, that we cannot change and should not want to change the whole world over night, that constant failure is integral to human life…

  • Played at Once by Cynics and Crazies

    I just ate up this essay by Benjamin Kunkel at n+1. Chiefly it diagnoses the two main political strains with their corresponding pathologies (Republicans/conservatives are psychopaths and Democrats/liberals are neurotics, and I just can’t argue with that) but I found this encapsulation of the practice of politics to be troublingly spot-on: A tricky thing about…

  • Gun Culture, Running Roughshod

    Josh Marshall speaks up for the legitimacy of the opinion of folks who hate guns: It’s customary and very understandable that people often introduce themselves in the gun debate by saying, ‘Let me be clear: I’m a gun owner.’ Well, I want to be part of this debate too. I’m not a gun owner and,…

  • Deep Riffs: Bussard Collector

    A song of mine from 2006 that’s ostensibly about a plausible spaceship, but really about caring a whole lot about something bigger than yourself. BONUS: This song, though having a sci-fi bent, does not sound like filk. If you don’t know what filk is, just trust me, you’re welcome. Appears on my album Evidence of…

  • Thoughtful

    The only difference for me is that I begin by dreading the responses. Comic by Jim Benton.

  • IV, V, II, III, VI

    Thanks to a Fireballing, I rediscovered this essay by Rod Hilton on a suggested viewing order for the Star Wars films which, he says, makes for a much better story, retains most of the big twists and reveals, and concentrates more strongly on the more compelling narrative: the Luke story over the Anakin story —…

  • Deep Riffs: Running Gag

    The opening track from my 2004 record Paul is Making Me Nervous. It’ll slay the crowd and impress your mom.

  • Grow Sweeter Each Season as We Slowly Grow Old

    One of Toby’s favorite songs for bedtime used to be Toad the Wet Sprocket’s “Walk on the Ocean,” and like all bedtime songs he favors, it had to be sung every night for months. Current favorites, incidentally, include “She’s an Angel” by They Might Be Giants, “Somewhere That’s Green” from Little Shop of Horrors (which…

  • Ruthless Curation of One’s Online Experience

    I’ve been looking for ways to express my feelings about online interactions of late, and rather than articulating them successfully, I’ve been having something of a public meltdown. I am therefore grateful to whoever the hell it is behind the Twitter persona @pourmecoffee for his recent post, which included this: I instantly and irreversibly block…

  • A Rap for Euparkeria

    It can’t be helped. When you have a household with a 3-year-old obsessed with dinosaurs and a daddy with a weird sense of humor and desperate need for validation, silly songs emerge. A late addition to Toby’s Netflix repertoire is Walking with Monsters, a Branagh-narrated spinoff of Walking with Dinosaurs that features pre-dinosaur creatures in…

  • You Just Try and MAKE Me Love Myself

    From Miriam Mogilevsky, who blogs here at Brute Reason, but posted this elsewhere for no reason: . . . our society pushes certain types of people down, and then mandates that we all “love ourselves”—and if we fail to do so it is OUR fault. I do think there are things anyone can do to…

  • Deep Riffs: Information Desk Girl

    Good morning. Play this loud. From my 2004 record Paul is Making Me Nervous.