Ah, you human monkeys and your penchant for violent fiction! Of course, this question has no meaning for me, because I have neither been influenced by the collective delusion you…
I think it depends a bit on where your talents lie. For example, can you carry a tune? Then maybe a kazoo. Or even a harmonica if you’ve got some…
This is a fun and page-turning read about eugenics, institutionalized child abuse, and interstellar genocide. Humanity is at war with a distance race of aliens (called “Buggers”) and for some…
I read this originally in French class, sometime during my high school career. (Where I was a music nerd, and a hard-core nerd, long before that was remotely cool.) Most…
In 1950, J.D. Salinger was hired by the New York City Tourist Bureau to write a jazzy and young novel about the city that never sleeps, in hopes of increasing…
Lord of the Flies follows a group of boys as they go to the worst summer camp ever. There are no tents or cabins for them to sleep in, the…
Dune is an epic science fiction tale about religion, inter-stellar politics, and the awesomeness of riding around on giant worms that crap out the greatest drug ever.* The drug in…
The Odyssey The Odyssey is a story about a homicidal maniac (Odysseus) who refuses to ask for directions. This tragic flaw, shared by many men, leads his crew to disaster.…
You can relax. I don’t know where you got your information, but our best scientists don’t currently think the earth will be destroyed by the sun. In about 4-5 billion…
Not to be confused with the movie, the book version of The Fellowship of the Ring includes several scenes with the mysterious, and quite possibly brain damaged, Tom Bombadil. On…
Current research in developmental psychology shows that if caretakers allow a toddler to assert more control over what they do, there are definite benefits to the child’s autonomy, self-reliance and…
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?… Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the…
It’s hard to process the idea that Kurt Vonnegut died last night. He wasn’t immortal — at least in the “not dying” sense — but it felt like the world…
If you haven’t seen Midnight in Paris yet (and if so, shame on you), then these quotes from the movie may be mild spoilers. Hemingway: No subject is terrible if…
Alltop is damn funny. Twain silhouette via Hirsute History t-shirts.
child of the corn, a photo by imagecarnival on Flickr. Little Jehoshaphat was born in 1832 to a family of carnival performers and technicians that roamed the Americas. From Georgia…
Taxonomy of Things, a photo by lunchbreath on Flickr. This is extremely helpful, but the taxonomy is not complete. I believe it should also include the following, which can be…
There’s nane that’s blest of human kind, But the cheerful and the gay, man, Fal, la, la, etc. Here’s a bottle and an honest friend! What wad ye wish for…
He survived a tour of duty in Afghanistan. He’s tough. He’s a marine. But Adam was not prepared for the lying ways of the carnies operating the Giant Slingshot. Alltop…
Feeding the Beast
This is a script for a piece I read on CBC Radio back in 2006. Feeding the Beast by Mark A. Rayner Hi, my name is Mark, and I am…