Table of Contents

Sometimes the bikini would glow in the dark. The fading photo of Ray’s wife on the beach was duct-taped to the dashboard under the dangling rosary. She was prettier in real life. The bikini was orange against a blue honeymoon evening. It seemed to glow on the darkest nights . . . [READ MORE]

Part One: The Graceful Nihilist

Ashley sat by the lake, breathing rigidly. She was the ideal woman–a bodacious blonde bodhisattva. 

“Everything is nothing.” She murmured to herself. “Everything is everything.”

Her neighbors floated by, bringing with them intrusive thoughts, but Ashley skillfully ignored them. If they all avoided eye contact, they could pretend they were alone, in oneness with nature . . . [READ MORE]

In a graveyard in New Orleans, stands a tomb with an open grave. One night three college students hopped the fence and crawled into the open grave and smoked a joint. The ghost in the tomb above them was disturbed by their conversation. They talked about life being meaningless and they said they didn’t have souls. “Kids these days,” thought the ghost. But then one of the college students, wearing a yellow suit jacket, said, “if there’s a ghost in here, we mean you no harm" . . . [READ MORE]

Gus always found himself watching the jewelry channel. Then he would go sit on the porch and watch the chickens. In between spells of silence and wind, he drove truck, looking at the cows in various types of weather and season, thinking about what they wanted and what they needed as one might muse through a book of poems . . . [READ MORE]

As Narrator, Dan speaks over a strumming guitar, in the style of “Luke the Drifter.” 

Narrator: I’ll tell you a story, sad but true. 

It happened to me, it could happen to you. 

I wish it weren’t my tale to tell, 

let it be a warning, a vision of hell. 

The year was nineteen-thirty-one, 

the so-called “depression” had the banks on the run, 

In the town of Grey Pines, lost in confusion, 

ready to welcome a minister of delusion. 

For me it was another day at the office, 

trying to regain my Pappy’s losses, 

Driving my hot rod with the cops giving chase, 

when I saw a hitchhiker with a big black case . . . [READ MORE]

The first take is usually the hottest. There’s one famous can of soup, but not two. Mono Lisa has only one mustache. God died once, and there have been no other gods to stand in the breach, despite the efforts of many prodigious Ubermenchen.

Too many takes, and folks reach for the martini. The best actors don’t act, and reality is hard to fake. The movie budget is tight for make-up, explosives, and birds for Hitchcock to throw at actors. This is why computer-generated movies are less dazzling: the potential for infinite takes of “Superman vs. Doomsday” leaves the audience yawning. Inevitably, industrious media moguls seek a computer-generated audience. Actors are not robots, but they might as well be — and why not the audience too? Thus, what began as robots trying to be human, ends with humans trying to be robots . . . [READ MORE]

Fairy Stories: 

What if the fairy tales are true? Tolkien, Star Wars, Harry Potter. Wouldn’t that be nice? What if Science is just another fairy story. 

After reading Tolkien, I look at the world with new wonder. On the surface, it seems I wish it were true, but deeper than that is an inkling that it is true. A gnawing suspicion eats away at my secular assumption that the forest can be reduced to an ecology textbook. Perhaps the fairies are a symbol for the harmony enjoyed in nature. But on closer inspection, is that not just a bunch of words to explain away mystery? As C.S. Lewis says, “you see through something to see something. If you keep on seeing through, you see nothing.” If you hear music, don’t you assume someone is playing the music? . . . [READ MORE]

Though Ayn Rand grew up ensconced in the atheist ideology of the Soviet Union, after she escaped to the United States, she remained an ardent Atheist. 

A beautiful truth is that all good things point to God. Rand's John Galt is a good character, because he is Christlike. 

An interesting thought: Maybe God has gone on strike, like the tycoons in Rand's novel . . . [READ MORE]

Our modern debate about the inerrancy of scripture is stupid on both sides. On one side, dumb Christians want us to not question anything. On the other, dumb skeptics say we should doubt everything. Both of these viewpoints are ahistorical, ignoring the nuance of words which have survived thousands of years and continue to shape reality . . . [READ MORE]

Coming soon . . . [READ MORE]

Coming soon . . . [READ MORE]

On the slippery slope of AI doing all the work, we’re pushed to the question: What can humans do that robots can’t? Answer: Have fun. 

With all this AI, could we please have time for more fun?

How? How. How: how we’ve always — With sexual bodies, and embodied music, and plants and animals, and stories from old people, and wood, fire, food, laughter, and eye contact . . . [READ MORE]

It was a time when no one read anymore. Well, maybe some old people and secret young people still enjoyed the scent of pages. No one talked about books, and the library hosted the homeless and checked out laptops. Tom wanted to be an author, after not being able to read till age 10. His first “chapter book” was All Quiet on the Western Front, which he read in a weekend. Later, Tom discovered the only book that matters, and now he lives it every day. Last night he dreamed he got rich and famous on social media . . . [READ MORE]

Coming Soon

Coming Soon

Mountain & Tree

The north is decked in Mountains; the south festooned with giant trees. The north is only winter, the south is ever summer . . . [READ MORE]