Brown Shirts ’n’ Skins

Last week a clip from something called “Timcast” went viral. Some round-faced, beady-eyed stoner (I think that’s “Tim”) was debating a manic Robert Downey Jr. look-alike (I guess that’s “cast”) about trannies. Robert Downeysyndrome was telling Tiny-eyed Tim that the massive uptick in young people declaring themselves tranny isn’t due ...


Damien Hirst

The Broken Publicity Machine

“As flies to wanton boys,” says Gloucester in King Lear after his eyes have been put out by the Duke of Cornwall at the behest of the evil Goneril, “are we to the gods: they kill us for their sport.” This could be updated to ...

Waste of Ink

There are no sheep more ovine than those who get themselves tattooed in order to individuate themselves. Judging by the statistics, such sheeplike behavior is becoming more and more common. I still remember the good old days when ...

The Fallacy of the Real Me

According to a Gallup poll, the percentage of the American population that now “identifies” as LGBTQ+ has doubled by comparison with ten years ago, and now stands at 7.1 percent. Among the youngest cohort polled, it was over 20 ...

Fit to Be Fat

A curious example of the power of social trends on thought is that two years into the Covid pandemic, nobody of any influence has yet bothered to launch a campaign to persuade Americans to do the one obvious non-pharmaceutical ...

Norman Mailer

Be Your Own Advert

To mark the centenary of the birth of Norman Mailer—which I shall not be celebrating wildly—a publisher decided to reissue a volume of his essays. An employee of the publisher’s objected to the inclusion of the essay “The White ...

Ventura, CA

Isle of L.A. Part I: The Changing Colors of the Landscape

In honor of my upcoming 53rd birthday, I’m launching a two-part (or three...haven’t decided yet) series on the changing face of my native city. I’ve never understood why some people want to be lied to. It’s why so many opinion ...

If It’s All the Same to You…

Nearly a century ago, in 1925 to be precise, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig wrote an article for a Berlin newspaper titled “Making the World Uniform.” It began: Despite the pleasure that every voyage has given me these last years, ...

The Pain Principle

There is a lot of misery in the world, it would be useless to deny it. The description of the world as a vale of tears surely conveys something to every one of us. And yet, all things considered, it could be worse, even much worse, at ...

Humility on a Cellular Level

Recently I have been dreaming a lot, unpleasant dreams but not nightmares. What this means, or even if it means anything at all, I don’t know. Perhaps it is a cerebral form of indigestion. I have never gone in much for Freud’s dream ...


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