Rainbow Effect

The Rainbow Effect

One sign of a major societal shift in these past two years is the large swath of the population that's grown so enamored of masks, you'd think they were Greek thespians. The global mask fetish has mutated from early efforts to take reasonable precautions, to mass hysteria, to something darker.…
December 31, 20216 Comments
tube

This Tube

Reader Rudolph Harrier writes in a comment on yesterday's post: I’ve been spending a lot of time with older relatives over the holidays and with the boomer-tier that always means the TV is on in the background, especially for the news (even if it’s the 9 o’clock news and they…
December 30, 20219 Comments
Biden Retreat

Mask Slip

By now, most normal people have tuned out the constant stream of doom and gloom blaming everything from soaring suicide rates to chip shortages on the coronavirus. What gets lost in the shuffle is that most of the systemic failures shaking Western society to its foundations aren't attributable to the…
December 29, 202112 Comments
Comic Book Ages & Generations

Comic Book Ages and Lost Generations

Man of the Atom returns with the sequel to his previous enlightening post on the history of American comics. This time, MotA does a deep dive into the comic book generation gap. “There was a GENERATION GAP in the comic book industry. There were some people in their 50’s and…
December 28, 202113 Comments
bank run

The Bill Comes Due

A week after Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot decreed vaccine passport requirements, it turns out the Second City is broke. The city of Chicago apparently has no money in its employee Payroll account. An employee of the city has uploaded video showing the bank upon which a city paycheck is drawn,…
December 27, 20217 Comments
The Nativity

Unto Us a Son Is Given

The Twenty-fifth Day of December, when ages beyond number had run their course from the creation of the world, when God in the beginning created heaven and earth, and formed man in his own likeness; when century upon century had passed since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds…
December 24, 20219 Comments
Anchorman

Anchorman

About twenty years ago, comedy movies enjoyed something of a renaissance under Gen Xers like Judd Apatow and Todd Phillips. That class of early-to-mid aughts film makers didn't produce high art, but they did turn out the movies your stoner friends quoted incessantly. These were the last comedies to feature…
December 23, 20215 Comments
The Collective

The Collective

Just in case you needed more proof that the internet is dead and has been for a while ... I'm old enough to remember the initial push to get everyone online. The tech gurus promised us that once the web connected everybody, every idea would get a fair hearing in…
December 21, 202120 Comments
charizard

Milo v Beardson

This past Saturday, Trump-era provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos resurfaced on-stream with internet bloodsports veteran and inner circle groyper Beardson Beardly. The occasion was a debate on the spiritual ramifications of grown men pursuing children's hobbies--in this case, Pokémon cards. If you're wondering how the dispute started, one of the Groypers' wignat…
December 20, 202114 Comments
K2 West Face 1908

Second Highest Strangeness

Photograph by By Vittorio Sella (1859–1943) We all know the classic weird tale settings: dark woods, moonlit moors, fog-bound swamps. The gothic tales practically write themselves. But for this horror writer's money, the eeriest place on Earth has none of the above features. Indeed, its stark barrenness is what makes…
December 17, 20219 Comments