The Devil's in the Downward Dog

So apparently “anti-yoga Republican” is a thing now.

The satanic sin of stretching, I guess.

The Remembered Taste of Grape Soda

Doing Photoshop art upstairs, I had a sudden urge to watch Father Knows Best, and wondered why. Not really a great show, after all. 

Then I realized it may have been because I was drinking a grape soda, something I’ve tasted very rarely since early childhood. 

I think it took me back to living with my grandparents in those earliest years, with that warm-as-a-blanket sense of absolute security that never comes again. 

I used to watch that TV show with them on CBS Monday nights, often drinking a bottle of grape soda from a six pack that my grandmother would buy at the neighborhood grocery store just down the block.

When the GOP Dial Got Stuck

I wrote this: “The problem is that at least half the country is being fed a largely fictional narrative, every day, and accepts it to be true. That’s the Fox News Effect.

“I realized 20 years ago that if lying propaganda could be substituted for news, this country’s ruin would follow in short order.”

And I got this thoughtful reply from Mouse Detective on the Washington Post website: 

“Same here professor. Believe it or not, I grew up in a Republican family, and used to listen to Rush Limbaugh every day. I remember during the first Gulf War, he was always enraged at CNN, and wanted them muzzled for reporting what happened, and whined about the “liberal media,’ 

“I remembered what Ben Franklin had written about an informed electorate, and felt uncomfortable. It took me awhile to leave but I have never looked back. 

“That was before Fox ‘News,’ but it was universally accepted by Republicans that the media was biased in favor of liberals. I thought that was BS, and that you had a rich buffet of choices from both extremes to the middle. But I think that was a time when many Republicans began to choose only far right sources. AM radio was loaded with Rush wannabes and I think that’s when my generation got stuck. There, but for the Grace of God go I! I don’t think I’ve voted for a single Republican since about 1995...”

Of Thee I Sting

Our national symbol shouldn’t be an eagle. It should be a scorpion stinging itself to death.

China in the Sky

A sky as blue as

bone china, and a silence

as deep as the snow.

Less Than Meets the Eye

The whole hackneyed concept of being “seen” now has narcissistic vibes.

What we actually need is to be moving toward a principled goal — whether we are “seen” to be doing so or not.

Care for Some Very Stale Pie?

Evangelical Christians will burn the whole Earth to warm their pie in the sky.