So many circles of hell for so many or these people to dwell in for all eternity.

"I'm tired of being fucked with by inferior people." -- Robert Stone, DOG SOLDIERS

Clearly someone at the Bureau of Labor Statistics needs to be fired. Wait for it.

I sure wouldn't want to be a dog or goat on the old Noem homestead in the days and weeks to come. Run!

Hoo boy. Remember how well it all worked out when we armed the Afghani people who became the Taliban to give the occupying Russians fits? What could possibly go wrong?

So, boots on the table? A new phrase enters the lexicon of lying.

"The American writer . . . has his hands full in trying to understand, describe, and then make credible much of American reality. It stupefies, it sickens, it infuriates, and finally it is even a kind of embarrassment to one's meager imagination."- Philip Roth, "Writing American Fiction," 1963

How I arrived on Bluesky.

Jerry Lewis

In my view the best sci-fi film (after 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY) ever made, although the original THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD gives it a run. A very smart update on THE TEMPEST -- Robby the Robot standing in for Caliban and Dr. Morbius for Prospero.

You could say that the United States is committing slow-motion suicide, but really, it isn't all that slow now. We have very little time -- Congress, nb. -- to come to our senses.

You could say that the United States is comitting slow-motion suicide, but really, it isn't all that slow now. We have very little time -- Congress, nb. -- to come to our senses.

Haven't had kidneys since, oh, 1967. My mother used to cook them with lamp chops and bacon, probably an Irish Catholic thing. "Inner organs of beasts and fowls" making a comeback! The Leopold Bloom Diet!

A giant. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/b...

Talk about a question that answers itself!

Good lord, what's next, kinder gentler Visigoths, Vandals and Huns? Genghis Khan, civilizing influence?

My parents, Brooklyn natives (as I am) loved this book and this movie equally. They always told me that "This was the way things were."

Okay, finally -- finally! -- the dam has broken on the John Brockman portion of the sordid Jeffrey Epstein saga. There is much more to be said, as in from publishers who did all that business with Brockman and, by extension, Epstein -- but this is a good start. www.chronicle.com/article/jeff...

Basically "We had to destroy the village in order to save it." "The son [read "fail son"] of a successful real estate developer." God save us from the billionaire nepobabies. And for fuck's sake, put on some socks, wouldja? www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/b...

I was connected in a peripheral way to Colson Whitehead from the beginning of his career at Doubldeay. I want to let everyone know that he is not just a seriously sly literary genius, he is also a terrific guy -- funny and kind and lots of other good things.

Stair wit: I of course should have written "brain worm," not "mind virus."

I was Walter Kirn's editor for UP IN THE AIR and three other books by him. He was terrifically smart and talented and I enjoyed working with him. But we parted ways and by degrees he has drifted into a very strange space, like he caught some mind virus from RFK Jr. I've seen him on Fox and it's wha?

Trying to imagine this in the seventies -- specifically what items of ill intent might have been packed into the snowballs. NYC -- only the strong survived.

Dawn Powell Don DeLillo Iris Murdoch Gilbert Sorrentino Herman Melville

For just once I wish someone would say the loud part quietly.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me over and over and over and over again, I'm a complete fucking idiot. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/22/b...

Looks great, whatever it is.

I think that reading at all levels is a pure pleasure and should not be turned into a job. (Unless you happen to be a book editor, in which case. . . )

Our big recent literary discovery is Celia Dale, who writes what you might call "LIttle England Noirs." Bleak, precise slices of late 20th century British life, gripping and addictive. You -- you know who "you" are -- need to get onto her. Now.

May I suggest "The Wilting Lettuce" as a name for this club?

Happy birthday. Chuck!

Humans be so wasteful! Who needs all these humans? What good are they anyway?

😕

My Ivy League school used to be staffed by a large population of professors and grad students, all of whom taught undergraduates. Now it seems to be a vast administrative entity with a decreasing number of professors and a whole lot of semi-starving adjunct serfs.

His superpower is to be able to turn everyone around him into servile clowns. Both appalling and amazing.

“my children might see the children I voted to put in shackles, how shall they grow up”

Quite a lot of rape and treachery and incest and murder in GAME OF THRONES. Guess that IS "white culture." What a self-own.

Feels more like "The Future of Journalism Canceled" to me.

Because the damn thing is taking the only job you'll be able to get once AI replaces you at the job you currently have.

Deleting old posts and now I wonder: What's Olivia Nuzzi up to these days?

My wife is a passionate needleworker. I have just found her birthday present!

Tarantino's foot has really "found the range" on his mouth. Maybe time to STFU and make a movie?

So messed up I want you here In my room I want you here Now we're gonna be face-to-face And I'll lay right down In my favorite place And now I wanna be your dog Now I wanna be your dog Now I wanna be your dog

The look that says, "Hi! I'm a douche!"

Maybe he can find employment in a Peter Frampton tribute band.

Well, for Christ's sake, can I say, as a retired editor myself, that this so-called "editor" person is nothing but a linguistic Quisling, betraying the high and necessary art of saying things with clarity and grace and economy in a genuinely disgusting fashion. And betraying his writers. Shame!