Are you like me? In the absence of any information about him, did you entertain a weird moment of hope that Kim Jong Il’s son was maybe going to be somehow more grounded and in the real world and might be like some sort of storybook prince who makes up for the evils of his [...]

This is the coolest kid. She reminds me of another, once-upon-a-time AP History 10th grader who took on the then-Vice President of the US. (P.S. Of course, the classy folks in the Right-Wing Troll Patrol have threatened her life and called this bright young girl a whore and expressed a desire to rape her.) Share [...]

Lest you think the billboard-buying, THE END IS NIGH! guys are a recent phenomenon, let me hip you to one of the weirdest chapters in comic book history. Back in the 70s, things were a bit more cowboy than they are now concerning licensed characters and brand-identity.  So one day, a right-wing-born-again comic book artist [...]

When I was a kid and my dad would attend the “Psychic Fairs” that sprung up in Spring and Summer (as a function of his TV-talk show, Journeys to the Mind) there were always some whacko religious infiltrators among the whacko new-age would-be psychics. They’d litter the grounds or tables with Jack Chick tracts, they’d [...]

Here’s where my head is: The celebration and high-fiving seem kind of tragic-comic to me. I am very glad that at long, long last, we got this guy. But he won already. Not with 9/11, but in what we as a nation did after it, for 10 years in response to it. We were led [...]

Unless you’ve seen someone brain another person with a brick for no reason at all this morning, I’m reasonably certain this will be the worst thing you see today. It is crazy how unbelievably condescending and racist stuff was about Asians not so long ago. There was this weird rule that no Asian person could [...]

Ohmigod. Our president was the cutest pirate in the world. And wow, look how much he grew up to look like his mom; that’s the same face-shape and chin. Watch for Donald Trump and/or other birther-assholes to use this photo to try to prove that he was born in Somalia. Share this:PrintFacebookDigg

It is an internet, facebook and Twitter meme that today is “Skynet Day.”  According to the Terminator movies, the Armageddon-bringing computer network known as “Skynet” became self-aware at 8:11PM, April 19, 2011. Shortly thereafter, according to the movie and its series of lesser sequels (don’t get me started with claims that T2 was somehow better. It [...]

This is amazing news. Now, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln researcher has discovered nearly 3,000 previously unknown Whitman documents from that era — a trove of information that sheds new light on the legendary poet’s post-war thinking, as well as on Whitman’s published reflections on the state of the nation. The documents they found were things [...]

So it is “national poetry month,” whatever that means. I tend to think we make poetry unfortunately inaccessible in how we approach it or when and how we read it. We treat it as the literary equivalent of having to eat your Brussel sprouts; ostensibly good for you, but to be suffered through in order to achieve [...]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy     Unfortunately,  our president does not.  I really wish he would, though. Share this:PrintFacebookDigg

So there was a recent election for a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin (that’s how they do it there, by election) that would have been a shoo-in for the conservative judge under any normal circumstances. But Walker’s over-reaching, union-busting brand of republicanism has proven to be spectacularly unpopular in very short order, so this election [...]