Bowen Craig I came of age in the strange era when frozen yogurt was a popular pretend-diet snack. There was a little drive-through wanna-be ice cream parlor called T.C.B.Y. right off the main drag in my hometown. Even though, knowing they couldn’t compete with Greece, it still had the gall to name itself The Country’s Best Yogurt, … Read more
Any time you hear the phrase “Real Time Crime Center,” it means that your government is stealing your privacy. It’s the police watching everywhere you go, everything you do. It’s one of the primary reasons that America is NOT a free country anymore. Period. Unless we pass some massive national privacy laws in the next … Read more
As tends to happen in autocratic countries, America is now, clearly, in a Government versus the People situation. I wish it weren’t so, but it is. The state is now, almost routinely, just killing people. Killing people in boats in the Caribbean, killing American citizens legally protesting evil, killing the few brown people whom they … Read more
Maybe our grandparents had it right. Meet a girl when you’re seventeen, marry her, spend your lives together, pumping our kids, raising them, and never knowing that there were any other possibilities for life. It’s what our grandparents did, and theirs before them, on down the line. The Sixties, specifically the birth control pill, the … Read more
I just heard someone say the phrase “The Red Queen Effect.” I didn’t know this one, but basically it’s when you have to run faster and faster just to stay in the same place. It’s a perfect descriptor for America’s economy in the 2020s. With inflation rising everywhere on everything and wages staying essentially stagnant, … Read more
Before a decade ago, America had gotten so unbelievably complacent. We all figured that, generally speaking, things were going pretty well and the problems were fixable glitches in the system or human error. My how things have changed recently. Democracy is inherently fragile, and the only reasonable conclusion is that, until recently, America actually had … Read more
As loath as I am to admit that either national political party has gotten anything right lately, the Democratic Party was right about Trump’s being a Fascist, wanna-be dictator. It’s harder and harder to deny that every day, which is one of the main reasons his supporters are ditching him faster than rats off the … Read more
Social movements are bizarre things. They sprout up, they simmer down to nothing, they flame brightly and then fade. They have their own little lives. The funniest and weirdest one of my lifetime has got to be the Black Lives Matter/All Lives Matter marches of five years ago. Fed up with young black men getting … Read more
In a supposedly “free” country, and one so devoted to capitalism that it’s willing to give up democracy, wouldn’t you expect more choices for types of everything? It seems to me that we’re getting to a point where we do have a few choices, though they’re really just marginally different from the other options. CARSCars … Read more
I think their proper name is Yoga Pants, but if so then 90% of the women I know are constantly on their way to a yoga class, because these things are everywhere. And every woman I know, regardless of age, size, shape, race, sexual orientation or marital status owns at least a few pairs of … Read more