If You Try Hard Enough, You Can Make Anything Ugly

Back in the Day

I just learned that today is the twenty-seventh anniversary of the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Back in that year, your old friend Keyser was in the middle of his second year of doctoral studies at Harvard. I was feeling disaffected for various reasons (the Horned One wasn’t being cooperative), so I was thinking of dropping [...]

Growing Shit in the Garden of Your Mind

You know, back when Keyser was a tyke growing up in the eastern marches of the Pannonian Plains, we used to get bootleg tapes of PBS shows. Supposedly, these were more wholesome than the tiresome crap you could see on the Magyar Indoctrinational Broadcast Service. Sure, Nova was great (I still remember vividly a show [...]

Heart of Darkness: God Help Him

As long-time readers may recall, in fall 2010 your old friend Keyser was horrified to discover that a high-school acquaintance was first accused and then convicted of charges of child pornography. The sentencing was supposed to have taken place within sixty days of the conviction, which was January of last year at the latest. Googling [...]

Heart of Darkness: Too Close for Comfort Edition

Readers may recall that Keyser animadverted back in August to his horror at having learned that someone he was familiar with back in high school had been accused of pedophilia of the worst kind. Keyser felt sullied at having been friendly with such a person, even thirty years ago. But he held out the hope [...]

What the Fuck is the Matter with People, Anyway?

For years now, the local paper is bought only on Friday in order to get the TV guide, and the rest of it is just s really big and unnecessary wrapper, which can also be used to light the barbecue. This afternoon, Keyser and Mrs. S. were in the supermarket, when Mrs. S. wandered off [...]

Heart of Darkness: High School Chums Edition

So last year, Keyser found on Facebook somebody that he he’d been friendly with back in high school. (It seems that one of FB’s main purposes is to find people from grade school and high school and see if you look better at this age than they do.) This friend was on vacation at the [...]

Heart of Darkness: UK Edition

You know, sometimes you read things and you think, No, that can’t be true. But unless the (Daily) MailOnline has been bought by The Onion (and developed a very ugly sense of humor), something’s seriously wrong in the modern UK. A gang of sadists who tortured a ‘naive and vulnerable’ man for ten years before [...]

Heart of Darkness: Knoxville Edition

Whoa. Somethings really have to make you doubt how human humanity really is. Here’s the background (or at least Wikipedia’s run-down, which is close enough): According to news reports, Christian and Newsom had gone on a date at a local restaurant on Saturday, January 6, 2007, but did not return home. During their night out, [...]