"You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point."
By Cyberquill • 07/17/2010 •
19 Comments
Is our own camp ever engaged in playing politics, or is this proclivity exclusive to our opposition?
Do we ever accuse a person of just wanting to get attention or having too much time on his or her hands even if we concur with his or her point of view?
Do we ever bother to highlight that a person may not be a trained expert on a particular subject even if we like what he or she has to say about it, or do we simply tout them for their intelligence and common sense while saving our doubts about expertise and qualification for those whose views we find less … (Read More »»)
By Cyberquill • 06/07/2010 •
17 Comments
Barack Obama’s presidency is unconstitutional. His place of birth has nothing to do with it. The “birthers” were correct in their conclusion but wrapped themselves around the wrong issue to get there.
Mr. Obama’s presidency is unconstitutional because, at age 47, he was simply too young to have been inaugurated. All his acts as “president” are therefore null and void. For all practical purposes, the nation has been a rudderless dreadnought for going on 18 months now.
Setting forth eligibility criteria for the office of president, Article II of the U.S. Constitution clearly states … (Read More »»)
By Cyberquill • 05/29/2010 •
12 Comments
Last night I, once again, barged into my kitchen unannounced—calling ahead prior to changing locations within my own abode is a habit I have yet to adopt—and in so doing I rudely interrupted a cute little mouse during its preliminary inspection of a piece of pie which had been left unattended on the counter.
Although I cat scant resemblance to a bear … let’s try this again … although I bear scant resemblance to a cat and, to the best of my recollection, neither meowed, hissed, purred, nor licked myself on entrance, poor little Mickey or Minnie panicked as he or she noticed my presence, turned tail, performed an obvious miscalculation with respect to brake speed and counter friction, tumbled over the counter’s edge, landed on his or her spine on the tile floor beneath, instantly bounced back on his or her four little … (Read More »»)
By Cyberquill • 05/05/2010 •
18 Comments
This issue seems oddly confusing to many people, so let me clear it up:
If a Muslim individual robs a bank because he wants to buy himself a bigger flatscreen TV, he or she is a bank robber, not an “Islamist” bank robber. Unless a desire to fund violent jihad prompted the need for cash, the person’s muslimhood has nothing to do with the crime.
If, on the other hand, a Muslim individual blows himself and dozens of others to pieces while screaming Allahu Akbar, he or she is an “Islamist” terrorist, as the act was faith-based.
Jeffrey Dahmer and Adolf Hitler were Christians and homicidal—genocidal in the case of the latter—sociopaths, but not “Christian” sociopaths, as their deeds were hardly motivated by … (Read More »»)
By Cyberquill • 04/28/2010 •
20 Comments
Free state was an ugly expression. Not because being free was bad, but because the term itself denoted the existence of slave states. After all, in the absence of the converse, there would have been no point of referring to certain states as “free.”
Luckily, there are no more free states. Just states. (Yes, I am fully aware that many African Americans vehemently object to the narrative that there has been much meaningful improvement for blacks despite the formal abolition of slavery and segregation, but we’ll leave this discussion for another day.)
Likewise, hobby and spare time are ugly expressions. Freizeit is painful.
Sure, there exists a particular type of creative person who can knuckle down for a limited amount of time, focus, and get stuff done. Novelist Anthony Trollope, for instance, wrote for exactly 2 1/2 hours each morning before going to work, and he left a stunningly … (Read More »»)
By Cyberquill • 04/14/2010 •
21 Comments
Had I known the manner in which talk radio loudmouth Jim Fate shrugged his mortal coil, I never would have opened the package which contained this intelligence.
What a great read! Said I liked it but I lied—I LOVED IT! The perfect escape wrapped in mystery, adventure and danger! Lis is my new favorite author.
—Michael Bolton, Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter
As a television crime writer and producer, I expect novels to deliver pulse-pounding tales with major … (Read More »»)
By Cyberquill • 04/03/2010 •
13 Comments
Sans context or commentary, someone on Facebook posted a YouTube clip of a cute teenager on a fake ship warbling a catchy tune. Per my cursory research, this song was a #1 hit record in 1968. Trouble is, unless one understands English and pays attention to the lyrics, judging from the girl’s performance alone one wouldn’t be able to tell whether this song is about (a) knitting, (b) baking cookies, (c) getting a manicure, or (d) being bored on a boat. Lines such as “when we were young and sure to have our way” don’t seem to carry much meaning for this 18-year-old.
Somehow I’d love to drive a fork into … (Read More »»)
By Cyberquill • 03/30/2010 •
8 Comments
Wall Street almost drove the whole country into the ground. On the flip side, even the most ayatolloid Che Guevara T-shirt-wearing leftist would have to admit to the physical prettiness of New York City’s Financial District, this grid-less labyrinth of narrow European-style streets wending their way between beautifully architectured mostly pre-war buildings whose sheer height nevertheless renders the scenery uniquely New York. Adding a charming hillside touch, the entire area slopes toward the East River, with nary a car to spoil the walking-around experience.
Since money and I naturally repel each other like the negative poles of two magnets, I seldom journey south of the Village, or SoHo at the most; hence it doesn’t happen every day that I can be spotted strolling down Wall Street. (For the Manhattan-challenged, the Financial District is located near the southern tip of this elongated island.) Strangely, whenever it does happen, passers-by seem blissfully oblivious to the rarity of the event they are witnessing. If they saw a giraffe … (Read More »»)
By Cyberquill • 03/28/2010 •
8 Comments
DISCLAIMER: Infertility is a separate issue which does not bear on my central point. For the sake of providing a concise and streamlined presentation, I shall omit prefacing every single statement in this post with Except in the case of infertility… (End of Disclaimer)
Birds do it, bees do it, squirrels do it. All animate entities on this planet—and most likely extraterrestrials as well—are programmed by nature to multiply. Procreation happens automatically. It requires no special training, no talent, no skill, and no higher intellect. In all of nature, there’s no such thing as “too dumb to procreate.” Any living being too dumb to produce offspring would also be too dumb to … (Read More »»)
By Cyberquill • 03/26/2010 •
6 Comments
A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have. (Gerald Ford, 1974)
Are there any Republicans left, pardon the pun, that haven’t suffered at least one televised stroke as of yet? Let us pray they all have medical insurance—under the current system, GOPers must have had a rough time obtaining coverage on account of their pre-existing condition. (In Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You, a father, played by Alan Alda, breathes a sigh of relief upon being briefed by a neurologist about his son’s CAT scan results; of late, the young man had been espousing all manner of radical conservative ideas, perfectly consistent with the location of a small tumor exerting pressure on a particular area of his brain.)
To be fair, the current right-wing meltdown comes on the heels of … (Read More »»)
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