Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
Like all other superheroes, Cockroach-man had a special power, which was the power to endure. He could endure the worst trials, and even when his enemies had been swallowed up in the mists of time, he would scamper along the broken ground and find his way back into the light while poignant violins wept in the background.
There’s a war coming. That’s what Brian’s mom said when she gave us some of the cookies she’d baked. We’d been playing in the fort Brian made in his basement, shooting each other in the legs with our BB guns. While we ate our cookies, Brian’s mom told us about the Book of Revelation and how, inside that book, it said there’s a war coming.
why do extrovert and beautifulget three syllablesbut poor plain gets just oneif plain was polysyllabicit would get more opportunitiesvacations in majorcatanning topless in a thongwhile beefcake verbs look ona mojito by the poolthen another and anothertil plain (no longer plain) shoutslook at me i’m populartrisyllabic like all the restlatinate pronunciationno more the blunt teutoni use…
Brian said it first. Nothing ever happened. That’s what he said. Brian was two years older than me, but not old enough to get a real summer job that paid money and stuff. Him and me, we hung out together all summer doing not much of anything …
I’ve never been called a pervert but once, and that once was yesterday when I went downstairs for a swim. The building’s got a nice pool that hardly anyone uses. Most afternoons I do a few lengths. It helps settle my mind and, theoretically, helps to keep the blubber from gathering around my middle.
We aren’t Catholic, so you’ll understand my shock when my mom told me to go get a priest. She had something to confess. The doctor said there wasn’t time for me to be looking for a priest. She was ready for the great heave-ho and I’d better stick close to the bed.
In chapter 32 of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë offers a curious passage, in which St. John Eyre Rivers offers Jane a volume of poetry. The volume, it turns out, is Scott’s Marmion, which was published almost forty years before Jane Eyre.
Every day I walk past the Ontario Fire Fighter Memorial on the northeast corner of College & University. I’m grateful for the service these people perform. I’m also astonished at the sacrifice they make in performing that service.
I reread pieces long after the fact. At the time of their writing, they seemed persuasive; they could have moved people to see the world as I do. But now they seem clunky. I want to cut the facets of a diamond with my prose, but my only tool is a sledgehammer.
Today I heard someone refer to Remembrance Day as an expression of civic religion. If so, it’s a religion without the benefit of theologians. In our more conventional expressions of religion, theologians help in the task of interpreting religious expression, of giving it meaning and depth and context. Remembrance Day has none of that.
A couple weeks ago, as part of Glasgow’s Doors Open Day, volunteers offered tours of the Necropolis. Located behind Glasgow Cathedral, the Necropolis is a crumbling celebration of Victorian Glasgow’s elite.
It’s a Sunday in September, and as an act of revenge against all the construction companies snarling Toronto traffic with their new condo builds, books take to the streets. Pavilions go up all around Queen’s Park Crescent diverting traffic east to Bay & Yonge and west to Huron & Spadina.
Jackson had it bad for a Russian girl named Olenka. She spoke hardly a word of English and he spoke hardly a word of Russian. Jackson figured this was probably a good arrangement. His last girl had left him because she understood too much of his English.
I was standing there with a box of Lucky Charms and a pack of dental floss when Joe pulls me outta line. Says: “Hey, Sam, you gotta come see this.” And he drags me down an aisle like there’s no tomorrow. And you should see him move.
The judge gave Jackson time served plus community service. Since Jackson had half an English degree behind him, the judge let him do his community service at the Oak Ridge Rest Home. The staff there needed help with a special project. They wanted to interview all the residents—or at least all the residents who were…