Anora

I struggled to watch this, not because it was emotionally difficult, but because, as it turned out, there are three parts to this film, which, using a graphic metaphor, started out with spray paint on the side of a discarded dumpster, transitioning to colored comedic sharpies on drawing pads, to a master stroke of oil on an expensive canvas. I was at first disgusted, then entertained (slightly) with the comic relief, and emotionally punched by the last scene. But, all that work to get to that brief interlude was not worth it. At all. On the other hand, Yuriy Borisove's taciturn performance was deeply beautiful. He didn't have to say a word to express his perfect love for Anora. You could feel the love. The Academy Award for Best Actor in a Taciturn Role.

The Theory of STUPIDITY | Dietrich Bonhoeffer

My Appalachian Catchment

I have dear friends and clients, past and present, alive, dead, and dying, for whom I care deeply, who reside in spots with names like Owl Hole Gap, Poor Valley, Tate Springs, Rock Haven, Ni**er Hollow, Wildcat Hollow, Joppa Mountain, Washburn, Treadway, Thorn Hill, Chinqupin, Yellow Branch, Spruce Pine, Pressman's Home, Hogg Lot, Cloud Creek, Cloud Creek Hollow, Mulberry Gap, Natty Branch, Duck Creek, Snake Hollow, Newman's Ridge, Vardy, Clinch, War Creek, Stoney Fork, Cool Branch, Short Mountain, Boatman's Mountain, Stone Mountain, Devil's Nose, Treadway, Thorn Hill, Round Mountain, Grassy Fork, Kyle's Ford, Viking Mountain, Blackwater, Turkey Creek, Five Point, Three Springs, Stubblefield Creek, Morristown Mountain, and Gravel Hill, down on the southside slope, where I live. These people make mistakes, requiring at times my help, not punishment because punishment don't help. From a distance the mountains and hollows seem idyllic, but it's not so. In fact, ignorance permeates the rise and fall of my catchment and its topography. I'll only be able to change things one family at a time, introducing the ideas of neither killing nor consuming animals, mutual aid, community, and secularism. Unfortunately, upon learning that there are people who think differently, their faces blanken as if there's nothing's going on. But, in the words of my Torts professor, Hon. Bill Woods, "it ain't necessarily so."

Short Mountain in Mooresburg, Tennessee

Albert Einstein's Highly Relevant Observation on the Rise of Fascism with a Contemporary Adjustment

"The present state of affairs in Germany is a state of psychic distemper in the masses. Hitler picked up human flotsam in the streets and in the towns and organized them around himself." Contempoary Translation: The present state of affairs in America is a state of psychic distempter. Trump picked up human flotsam from the provinces, hills, and hollers, and organized them around himself.

Mountaintop Destruction in Mooresburg, Tennessee

Holler branches feed the creeks that churn the rivers. Somebody needs to tell these mother-fuckers.

Resisting Pouring Hemlock Into One's Own Ear - Eckhart Tolle on Transforming Suffering into Awakening

An essay on the dialectical nature of life.

An Atheist Every Other Day

God keeps some of us unlucky and long living because deep down she knows that a long and painful life is way worse than a slow bedded death, the goddamn bitch.

Neutral Milk Hotel - The King Of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1

Bedwetting, Nail Biting, shallow breathing, and impending doom afoot

The undertow of lifetimes of anxiety disorders where babies sometimes wash away from mommy's arms in muddy French Broad flood waters leads to ancestral lifetimes of morbid depression. Now imagine that shit.

Clark | Official Trailer | Netflix

Pleasant thoughts for neural pathways

Frost flowers, iron weed, wingstem, wild carrot, corn flowers, cup plants, the trees at Fulton Hill, the green giants, forsythia, cosmos, milkweed flowers, garlic flower, dutch iris, dandelon, black eyed susans, yellow cone flowers, rattlesnake master, norway spruce trees, the grand maple, foxglove, snowball bush, spice bush, eldeberry, button bush, hops bush, blue bells, pink dots, and white tulips. Dandelions, Firepink, Indian Paint Brush, Larkspur, Marigold, Shasta Daisy, Oxeye Daisy, Zinnias, Heather, Wysteria, and Flox Flowers.