Dirty Tricksters ‘The thing about tricksters is that they inevitably try to trick you. They play dirty. They promise you the sun and the moon to get you excited, then deliver a cockroach by the name of “The Sun and the Moon,” and then look you straight in the eye…
Salinger, Suttree and me
Knoxville Predystopia Blues D. Salinger’s iconic voice of the disaffected postwar generation serves also to signal a coming dystopia, where the entire world run by the so-called adults would prove to be “phony.” Salinger’s hook and vehicle in Catcher in the Rye is the voice of the narrator, Holden…
Narrative Convergence
I have a new theory I will call narrative convergence. It was triggered by recent media coverage of three disparate events/issues, which demonstrate the convergence of competing narratives. Those under the spell of cognitive dissonance, by definition, will have no problem holding these contradictory premises without question, or denying them.…
Swipe This
Digital love song: Swipe the One You’re With Photoshopping the Brain ‘The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is perfect, the engineer is nobody. Every new step in improving the engine restricts one more act of the engineer,—unteaches him.’ —Ralph Waldo Emerson This week I began upgrading my…