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Category: Slogged

That Aged Poorly

What began as a simple Slog update has unsurprisingly morphed into another long-winded reflection. I’m (overly) introspective by nature. I reflect (too) often. Before I can fully move forward (clears throat) in LOST parlance . . . Reason being, I am addressing some writings floating on the Internet where I…

Great Fantasy Stories Are Powered by Metaphor

Next time you feel empty or underwhelmed watching fantasy of any genre, ask yourself if the supernatural or technological leaps are analogous to anything a human goes through.

What I Got Wrong in 2016

The outcome of the last presidential election required me to undergo some serious self-reflection. “Keller wakes up the morning after the election thinking that he doesn’t know his own country anymore.   We’re not, he thinks, who I thought we were.  Not who I thought we were at all . .…

Hate Trumped Love: Why, How, And What Now?

Donald Trump is the 45th President of the United States That vomit-inducing sentence is particularly awful for me to write, because of the crow I’ve had to eat recently (from myself mostly, because I punish myself more than anyone else can for failure). I wrote in December 2015, in the…

Election Day 2016 Final Thoughts

It’s (almost) over. While the earthquake of the 2008 election of Barack Obama, America’s first black president, was synonymous with “hope & change,” the aftershock of the 2016 election between the first female presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the anti-Obama Donald Trump is more likely to have words associated with…

The American Gun Debate: How Can We Curb Gun Violence?

Last New Year’s Eve, in Florida, a mother shot her daughter to death because she thought she was an intruder. In California, a father killed his son’s bedridden mother, girlfriend and friend before the son wrestled the gun away and killed him. And just Tuesday morning, an Ohio father shot…

Dear Republicans, You Need to Evolve, Part 2

(UPDATED: December 8, 2015) Dear Grand Old Party, Hey. It’s me. Listen, I know we don’t get along. At all. The animosity has gotten out of hand at times but who hasn’t forced their roommate to invade another guy’s house based on lies or allowed the bank to short our mortgage knowing…

Dear Republicans: Not To Trample On Your Religious Liberty, But You Got to Evolve

The best view death I’ve ever read was from Steve Jobs, a former hippie who became one of the biggest corporate icons of the modern era. In other words, he was a Frankenstein monster conservatives and liberals still love to debate. He gave a commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005, an…

The Times, They Are A-Changin’: Old Media, New Media, How They Shape Our World – And How We Shape Them

(UPDATED: 6/20/2015) Media is changing. Newspapers are going the way of the dinosaurs. The Internet, once praised as a bastion of political activism, has become a battlefield. On Friday, a feature piece published in The New York Times detailed one journalist’s investigation into coordinated cyber-trolling, a journey that took him…

A White Guy on Women in Hollywood and Feminism on Film

I’m a privileged white guy in America and, as patron saint of comedy Louis C.K., that makes a huge difference. What I find detestable as a person is when other men (and sometimes even women) are ignorant of the forces greater than themselves, who even deny the effect of class/gender…