The Trustworthiness of Beards
Finally, a new advance in the Beard Sciences! Here at the Institute of the Hirsute, we applaud this initiative. This exhaustive study of trustworthiness, vis-a-vis a gentlemen’s hair foliage, will…
Mark A. Rayner
An unwavering band of light
One of my favourite quotes from Breakfast of Champions: His situation, insofar as he was a machine, was complex, tragic and laughable. But the sacred part of him, his awareness,…
Ask General Kang: What do you do when you ask God to smite your enemies, but no smiting ensues?
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…
Ask General Kang: What musical instrument should I learn?
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…
Ender’s Game
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…
The Stranger (The Outsider)
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…
The Catcher in the Rye
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
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
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…
Classics of Travel Literature — The Odyssey & The Hobbit
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.…
Ask General Kang: I’m freaking out! I’ve just learned the earth will be destroyed by the sun. Is it true?
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…
The Fellowship of the Ring
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…
Tales of the Second Amendment
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…
Orthodoxy is unconsciousness
“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…
Death of a humanist
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…
Woody Allen’s Hemingway Is Hilarious
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…
Just as it should be
Alltop is damn funny. Twain silhouette via Hirsute History t-shirts.
Memories of Antietam
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
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…
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…