Prose

Narrative writings: essays, reviews, polemics, short stories, etc

Professor Trompsky #2
Welcome back professor Trompsky, glad you took your time to talk about the controversial Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. - Thank you. These are very serious matters yes. I think he is the least capable person in America today to become a Supreme Court Justice. Every which way you look at it, this nomination ...
Objet trouvé: modesty
A great man is always willing to be little. - Ralph Waldo Emerson A modest little person, with much to be modest about. - Winston Churchill I want to stretch out my tentacles to tackle the idea of modesty. Sound the clarions, hoist the flags, this self-proclaimed writer marches in to lecture about a virtue ...
Professor Trompsky #3
Professor Trompsky, what do you think of the intellectual climate of today? There is a worrying decline of what I call the culture of wisdom. More often than not, people engaging in debates are more concerned with cementing their own argumentation, making their own narrative waterproof as it were. Instead of trying to integrate the ...
DARK HUMOR
How many Catholic priests does it take to change a lightbulb? . . . . . .    
Professor Trompsky #1
Professor Trompsky, welcome to our studio. At 87, do you have any plans for retirement? Listen, the burden of the world rests on my shoulders. I can't just give up because the fragility that is slowly but certainly shutting down my body. My responsibilities are grand, and with grandure I shall go to the grave. Can ...
This image got me BANNED from Facebook
Last month I posted the above image as a commentary on a Facebook post. The image is a caricature of a campaign poster in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, on which a veiled Muslim woman and a Jew are kissing in front of the iconic Erasmus bridge. I greatly dislike the puritanical culture that Facebook imposes ...
Review: Spent by Geoffrey Miller
Geoffrey Miller's 2008 book Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior about conspicuous consumption uses the relatively new science of evolutionary psychology to analyse modern humans' consumerist behavior. The bottom line is that we engage in conspicuous consumption to show potential mates, like animals, that we have desirable traits. Through countless examples, some of which are ...
We breathe calmly. The word purpose agitates. Propos, to 'put forth' says the etymology. We are familiar with a hierarchy of purposes. At the end of a curious child's inquisitive series of "why?" every adult will resort to "just because". The purpose of growing up is to contribute to society. The purpose of society is ...
Meditation on Value
What do we mean when we say of something that it has value? And isn't all our speaking inherently evaluating? Isn't every utterance we make freely, an assignment of value? Isn't it much more elegant if we consider ourselves living in a 'soup' of value, rather than in a generally valueless world, in which we ...