PicoBlog

Foreword by Aristo: I have some friends who write over at a traditional Catholic focused publication called Middle Earth Magazine (@MiddleEarthMag). They are avid fiction readers, and one by one, they keep reading and raving about this series, The Domination of the Draka, and one of them wanted to guest review it. Draka was published by my friends at Baen Books. They’ve stayed incredibly stalwart against all odds throughout the madness of the last 10-20 years and when I rag on traditional publishers, I never mean them.

God knows, I have tried to avoid writing about the grinning gnome known as Jackson Hinkle. This diminutive pro-Russian internet troll is so hungry for attention that you want to avoid giving it to him at all costs. However, after getting way too many naive and downright inane responses when I joked about Hinkle’s trip to Russia, I feel like I need to set the record straight: Yes, surveillance of Americans is commonplace in the Russian Federation, including surveillance of Americans who scream that they love Putin.

We live in dork times. Yes, you may have read many an essay or watched many a YouTube video or looked over magazine articles discussing geek culture or the revenge of the nerds, but we don’t hear so much said about the sheer dorkiness of the times we live in. This might sound mean-spirited, a little callous even, but I think there is a whole layer of nuance, a whole conversation that isn’t being had when it comes to how dorky seemingly everything (and everyone now) is.

Welcome to the 74th Pari Passu Newsletter. After learning about the Implosion of Voyager a few weeks ago, I am excited for today’s restructuring case study: Party City. A 2017 Business Insider article once declared that “Party City has a reason to celebrate.” The company appeared to be defying all the odds in an abysmal environment for retail, with moder… ncG1vNJzZmiokae2sa3SrKxnq6WXwLWtwqRlnKedZL1wvM9mq6GdXaWus8DYZquhmaRiu6bCxKtkn6Gqr7mmsIyorK0%3D

Of the 259 players selected in the 2021 NFL Draft, 34 of them played their high school football in Texas. That’s 11 more than any other state. In small town Texas, high school football is a religion, right alongside things like bumper stickers about the Second Amendment, the constant threat of succession, and cows. While my relationship with much of the Lone Star State is tenuous, my relationship with the television program “Friday Night Lights” is not.

On June 6, 1933, 90 years ago today, the first drive-in movie theater flickered to life, in Camden, New Jersey. That’s why today is National Drive-in Movie Day. By the summer of 1958, Americans had their choice of 4,038 cinemas under the stars. That summer proved to be the zenith. TVs, VCRs, Nintendos, Netflix: The next half-century of distractions helps explain the decline. But drive-ins, they haven’t played their last reel, although those reels are more often than not digital files these days.

It seems that those most unlikely of things, a Klingon exobiologist, turns out to be that other unlikely thing, a Klingon spy, who Worf gets to beat up (Worf 9, Aliens 13) - and that’s just the set up for the story! After the credits things get really interesting as Admiral Satie is brought out of retirement to run an investigation... but surprisingly, by the end of Act One we have caught our spy, and we still have four acts to go.

I’ve honestly lost track of the number of documentaries I’ve given interviews for this past year. Six maybe? Seven? Eight? It feels like at least a dozen. As you may have seen, two of the biggest released this week. Amazon’s Shiny Happy People premiered last night, and it’s already getting a huge amount of attention: This comes on the heels of Hulu’s The Secret’s of Hillsong: In addition to these two, I’ve given interviews for documentary projects on Christian nationalism and contemporary politics and on evangelical celebrities and sex abuse.

“Everybody” (including this creep) loves big-smiling Jan and her infectious positivity, especially certainly Toyota. Many little girls want to grow up and be Jan. I, do not love Jan. Every time she comes on my TV, a nervous nausea wells up in my innards. I can’t help but think of End Times. Wardrobe apparently has a walk-in closet full of perfectly-fitting red Jan clothing that matches the Toyota brand Red (PANTONE: PMS Red 032 C).