Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
Mar 26 2022
What Is The Diminutive Of “Snark?”
Occasionally, I experience a spike of irritation that briefly deflects my train of though onto a semi-humorous side track. I think that henceforward I’ll indulge myself at such times. Like just a moment ago. Here’s “how it goes” in this Year of Our Lord 2022; Speaker 1: Why aren’t your pronouns in your …
Mar 25 2022
We Won’t Get A Clearer Warning
Sorry, Gentle Readers, but time is up: Earlier today, the hapless president of the United States emerged from one of his NATO huddles to answer questions from the reporters he had been instructed to call upon, as per his SOP. One of them brought up the potential for food shortages, and Biden’s answer …
Mar 24 2022
The Sane And The Insane
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson pulled off quite a lot of masks yesterday with her non-answer to a single, putatively nonthreatening question posed by Senator Marsha Blackburn (R, TN): Sen. Blackburn: Can you define the word “woman?” Brown Jackson: I’m not a biologist. I’m sure my Gentle Readers, as engaged with current events as …
Mar 23 2022
Outsourcing Tyranny
Many Gentle Readers are already acquainted with this subject, owing to the rise of cancel culture and the impediments the giants of Big Tech have dropped upon our freedom of expression. Mind you, while there are many persons ready, willing, and able to offer opinions about what should be done, the subject is considerably …
Mar 22 2022
Back In The News?
No, not the Hunter Biden laptop. (I almost typed “Hunted Biden laptop,” which might soon be “breaking news,” but we’ll have to wait and see.) Rather, it’s one of the ideas that was floated shortly after Gregor Mendel discovered that fruit flies like sex: deliberately, eugenically breeding people as a way to improve us …
Mar 20 2022
The Numbing
I wrote not long ago about the fraying of the norms that bind Americans together as a coherent society. That process is been going on for long time now, and has almost reached the level necessary for complete social collapse. However, while the fraying of our norms is necessary for collapse, it is not …
Mar 20 2022
I Try Not To Use Certain Words
Indeed, I try really hard. But sometimes, I can’t resist. Today’s word is inevitable: Analysis of the Russian attack on Ukraine has rightly focused on the strategic, military and humanitarian considerations of the conflict itself. Soon, however, domestic implications will begin to impinge on the geo-political. Maintaining public support will be critical …
Mar 19 2022
The Wide World Of Pranks
We’ve all heard about them. Some of us have perpetrated them. The easier and more common ones – filling someone’s bedroom with Styrofoam® peanuts, or turning every item in his room upside-down – have lost their humor value through overuse and are merely irritating. But there are still a few that can tickle one…as …
Mar 19 2022
The Neglected Patriarch
Today is the feast day of a remarkable saint, the stepfather and protector of the most important Child ever to be born: Joseph of Nazareth. Yet few give him much thought, as virtually nothing about his life is included in the New Testament. For a modest taste, one must turn to a “non-canonical” document: …
Mar 18 2022
Theorizing Unbounded
First, a few quotations – hey, quotations are my thing, you know: “The Shing law forbids killing, but they killed knowledge, they burned books, and what may be worse, they falsified what was left. They slipped in the Lie, as always. We aren’t sure of anything concerning the Age of the League; how …
Mar 17 2022
The Gods Of The Not Quite Copybook Headings
You know the old Kipling poem, don’t you? You should, really. Like many of his poems, it speaks of something beyond our preferences: laws that no amount of human effort or ingenuity can repeal. That there are such laws is a reflection of what Clarence Carson called “the moral order of the universe.” That …
Mar 16 2022
One Melody, One Rhythm, One Agenda
It’s Ukraine all day, these days. You can hardly go to the corner store for milk without hearing some talking head blustering about Ukraine. Congress is feverishly debating how to help the Ukrainians resist the Russian invaders. Elected officials of both parties bloviate endlessly about Ukrainian sovereignty and the evil of Vladimir Putin. And …
Mar 14 2022
Fun As A Sociopolitical Weapon (UPDATED)
Good morning, and Happy Pi Day, to all my Gentle Readers. It comes but once a year, so make the best of it. Do something round. Do something irrational. Perhaps – if you can work it out – do something Eulerian: eiπ + 1 = 0 And do it loud! Now, on …
Mar 13 2022
No Title Could Possibly Serve
There are days I wonder if it’s even possible for a human being, however vigilant, to keep track of all the truly significant events and precursors that flood past us each day. I read several dozen news sites and aggregators, and I still miss developments that make me kick myself when I finally do …
Mar 12 2022
Painful Remedial Lessons
If you’ve seen Tucker Carlson’s show of last night — I catch it on YouTube – I hope you paid close attention to his exposition on inflation. The Usurper Regime and their media handmaidens are doing their damnedest to persuade Americans that the cause of today’s inflation, which we experience as price increases in …
Mar 11 2022
Love, Duty, And Adventure
Politics? Bah! Economics? Please! Current events? Enough already! Perhaps my Esteemed Co-Conspirators will provide some such material a bit later in the day. Just now I have storytelling in mind. *** Some years ago, when I was finding my stride as a fictioneer, I had something of an epiphany about plotting. Crafting …
Mar 11 2022
If You’ve Been Puzzled By The War on Cash…
…have a brief video from a British subject that will chill your blood: Rogan: “Do you feel like you are sounding the alarm for People that don’t understand what the Fuck is going on?”@MaajidNawaz @joerogan pic.twitter.com/2pJCq3D0K2 — Peter Lardelli (@QuestCovidTruth) February 20, 2022 Could it be any simpler?
Mar 10 2022
The Anti-Reproduction Movement
There are things we’re “not supposed to say.” Quite a number of those things are tied up with sexual variations. The reason we’re not supposed to say them is that a small community of activists has deemed them “offensive.” And of course, we wouldn’t want to be “offensive,” we confrontation-averse Americans of the Twenty-First …
Mar 09 2022
Fidelity To “The Narrative”
A reposted Jack Cashill article (the original American Thinker posting is apparently inaccessible) on the George Zimmerman / Trayvon Martin episode illuminates exactly where the media stands on “facts” and “truth.” Cashill was offended by the appearance of a deceitful Trayvon Martin canonization piece, on February 26 of this year, the ten-year anniversary of …
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