I had just left the Tim Horton's kiosk, fuming; they had sold out of chocolate chip muffins and orange juice. I had been compromised with apple juice, which on worse days I have considered to taste like Satan's pee -- my indignance, however, was not merely comestible-related. While I had been daw . . . (More)

The arch is a prominent feature of Roman architecture; capable of supporting enormous amounts of weight, it allowed the Romans to build to heights previously impossible, with less material. The arch appears on all sorts of imposing civil structures: bridges, aqueducts, forums, basilicas . . . (More)

Yip Chei Yin. Yip .. leaf. Chei ... verdant, crisp, green. Yin ... morning dew, as a droplet, shining like silvered glass. It invokes a backdrop of a dawn sky, thick with smoky white mist. Mossy crags, worn smooth and round by time. Air, smelling of fresh rain, wet earth. A great lake, . . . (More)

"'Behold the Man'," Other Brother says, "was one of the paintings we studied today." "Oh, yeah?" I say. "I've seen a lot of variations on that theme. 'Ecce homo' is the usual phrase." A pause. "What?" "It's Latin. It means the same thing." "Oh." "So, yes. 'Ecce homo'--" "Don't say that." . . . (More)

Someone once remarked on the Blogdrive main tagboard that he found it interesting that there was a term for the hatred of women ("misogyny") and yet not a term for the hatred of men, implying a double standard. I, in the course of composing an ode to men following the hurtful accusation th . . . (More)