Category Archives: Arts
“Take my love, take my land, Take me where I cannot stand. I don’t care, I’m still free. You can’t take the sky from me. Take me out to the black, Tell them I ain’t comin’ back. Burn the land and boil the sea, You can’t take the sky from me. There’s no place I can be Since I found Serenity, But you can’t take the sky from me…” Those words, from the theme song of Firefly, perfectly capture the … Continue reading
Something has enraged Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democratic Senator from New York, and for once, it’s not the latest stratagem of the Republican Party. What has inspired her ire is… a video game. Specifically, this: I haven’t played the game, but I’ve read it allows players to control a main character who fights both street gangs and corrupt police, during the course of which he can hijack cars, participate in shoot-outs, etc. A lot of people say it’s fun, but … Continue reading
Before the trial against Michael Jackson started, his prosecutors, with the aid of an eager media, promised the world damning evidence against the superstar. Finally, we were led to believe, the allegations that “Wacko Jacko” shopped for partners in the junior section would morph into facts. After the prosecution was done with him, the whole world would see him for the child molester he supposedly was, and he’d be going to jail for a very long time. Reality has developed … Continue reading
WASHINGTON, DC (JV) – In a landmark vote, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill today that would create a Christian church regulated by the federal government, with a clergy composed of presidential appointees. “This is a great day in the histroy of America,” President George Bush said after the bill’s passage. “For the first time in millennia, Americans will be able to worship the creator of their choices, without having to tolerate the Islamic and the atheistic heathen.” … Continue reading
Americans think of themselves as the freest people on Earth. After all, they say, they have rule by majority, equality amongst themselves, freedom to do whatever they want, and most importantly, freedom to think whatever they want. The First Amendment to their United States Constitution proclaims the government may not infringe upon freedom of speech. Americans can generally say whatever they want without fear of legal sanction or physical violence. Yet in his seminal work Democracy in America, Alexis de … Continue reading
“Killing to Acquire and Secure Power, for Dummies” would be an apt subtitle for Niccolo Machiavelli’s book The Prince. Within this work, Machiavelli advocates the unrestrained pursuit of power as its own end, without allowing such paltry things as ethics to interfere. If massacring a slew of people will help one get power, one should by all means do it, according to Machiavelli. These advocacies of violence for one’s own selfish ends are not Machiavelli’s only breaks with the teachings … Continue reading
“I profess myself a Mazda-worshipper, a Zoroastrian, having vowed it and professed it. I pledge myself to the well-thought thought, I pledge myself to the well-spoken word, [and] I pledge myself to the well-done action.”1 This oath to believe in God and act according to his principles comes from Zoroastrian scripture, a representative of the millennia-old literature of Persia. Despite its age, scholars have not examined Persian literature to any great degree. Many of its few extant remains lay spread … Continue reading
Object of discussion: Barthelme, Donald. “A City of Churches.” The Best American Short Stories. Ed. John Updike. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2000. 503-506. Prester is a town where everyone follows the same philosophy and lives the same way. The town’s residents are not individuals with their own distinct identities, but units comprising a ubiquitous and soulless collective. Surprisingly, Prester is not a city in the old Soviet Union; instead, it is the setting of Donald Barthelme’s “A City of … Continue reading
