Culture – Scripturient

Harold Hill and the Apostle Paul

2026-06-17 2026-06-17 Christianity / Film & Reviews / MusingsOne Comment

As I was watching the musical, The Music Man, recently, it struck me that there were obvious parallels between the plot of the musical and the story of the Apostle Paul and the origins of Christianity as Paul grew it from an obscure apocalyptic sect into a widespread religion. Are these similarities deliberate? Or merely coincidental? I don’t know, but the musical sure seemed to me an allegorical and maybe even satirical take on how the apostle Paul (aka Saul) created and spread Christianity. Let me explain.* In the musical, “Professor” Harold Hill (played brilliantly by Robert Preston) is the … click below for more ↓

The Stepford Wives in Novel, Film, and MAGA Policy

2026-06-02 2026-06-02 Books & Reviews / Film & Reviews / MAGA cultists / Rightwing claptrap3 Comments

They never stop, these Stepford wives;/The work like robots all their lives. That little ditty is said by Joanna, the protagonist in Ira Levin’s 1972 novel, The Stepford Wives. She said it to herself while watching a neighbouring woman through a window, as the other mechanically polishes one of her husband’s athletic trophies. It’s a tell: we are soon to learn that the neighbour is — and most of the other women in Stepford are — really a robot controlled by their husbands. Which, we know now, is the perfect MAGA wife: a sexbot that can cook and do the … click below for more ↓

The Age of Doubt

2026-03-08 2026-03-08 Cults / Musings / Politics / Social media issues / What I'm Reading Now3 Comments

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of scientific advancement; it was the age of flat-earthers and chemtrail fanatics. It was the age of medical discoveries; it was the age of anti-vaxxers and homeopaths. It was the age of information; it was the age of Qanon conspiracies and creationists. It was the age of liberal democracies; it was the age of rising fascism. It was the age of technology; it was the age of 5G paranoia. It was the age of reason; it was the age of fundamentalist religions. It was … click below for more ↓

Back on the Open (World) Range

2026-03-06 2026-03-06 Culture / Games & Gaming / Musings2 Comments

This week, after 300 hours of play, I came to the end of the Ubisoft game Assassin’s Creed Valhalla game. During those hours, I spent my time as a Viking, pillaging and looting, building my settlement, raiding enemy camps, and exploring across a massive map of England, with side trips to Norway, the Isle of Skye, Francia (France), Ireland, Asgard, and Vinland (North America). I hunted game, fished, upgraded gear, went on quests, sailed a longship; boxed opponents; trades insults in flyting contests, assassinated enemies (hence the name…), solved puzzles, delved into underground labyrinths and dungeons, battled monsters, went into … click below for more ↓

The Moreness of Everything

2026-02-11 2026-02-11 Books & Reviews / Media / Musings / Psychology & Sociology4 Comments

The title of this post comes from a subhead in Thomas De Zengotita’s book, Mediated: How the Media Shape the World Around You (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005) in which the author writes about choices, and “how much the screen of human consciousness can register at a given moment.” This is an important question for today, with so many people (younger people, especially) glued to their phones, always online, always engaged, always scrolling, clicking, texting. And scrolling past the headlines, not reading the whole story, getting only a few words before scrolling on to the next headline or jumping to another source … click below for more ↓

Musings on Colour vs B&W

2026-01-17 2026-01-18 Culture / Film & Reviews / Musings / TVLeave a comment

I grew up in the technological end of the black-and-white era. In the 1950s and early ’60s, our TV was black and white (technically called monochrome). So was everyone else’s, as were all TV broadcasts for the first decade. I watched everything in greyscale, and the day ended with a test pattern. Movies at the theatre were sometimes in colour, sure, but a lot were still in B&W. Colour filming was a more expensive and complicated process, and ballooning budgets mattered enough to keep many producers using B&W. I remember going to a drive-in theatre with my parents in the … click below for more ↓

Godzilla Minus One: Some Thoughts

2025-08-06 2025-08-06 Film & Reviews / GodzillaLeave a comment

I have been watching Godzilla films since the late 1950s or early ’60s, when the edited American version (1956) of the 1954 Japanese original was released and was finally shown on TV. I have since seen all 37 films in the franchise at least twice, some even more, and still enjoy watching them (readers here will recall my previous posts about Godzilla and the films…).* The ’54 original film became my favourite of the franchise when I first watched it in the early 2000s (it was not released to North American audiences until 2004; until then all we had was … click below for more ↓

The Disappearing Semicolon; Has English Education Failed Us?

2025-07-11 2025-07-11 Grammar / Reading & Literacy / Style & usage4 Comments

The media, both legacy and online, continue to herald the death of the semicolon. Perhaps this is meant merely as a distraction from the events unfolding in world politics, particularly the death of democracy as fascism rises in the USA. I’ve previously lamented the misuse and unuse of the semicolon here, but usually in the context of sloppy local media and townhall writing. However, judging at least by the linked articles below, it is a much larger issue than differences over usage and style, and it affects English writers worldwide. It may be the metaphorical ‘canary in the coal mine’ … click below for more ↓

The Honeymooners: The Imaginary Greatness That MAGA Wants to Return To

2025-05-20 2025-05-20 Culture / Culture wars / MAGA cultists / Politics / Rightwing claptrap2 Comments

Ever see The Honeymooners? Unless you’re at least as old as I am, it’s unlikely you ever saw the TV show when it was first broadcast in the mid-50s. It starred Jackie Gleason and, in lesser but crucial roles, Art Carney, Audrey Meadows, and Joyce Randolph. I was young, and today can barely recall seeing it on our TV set at the time; it wasn’t a parental favourite like some other shows, but I have since seen many episodes, most lately through the DVD set of the series. I watched several of them recently because I wanted to look back … click below for more ↓

The Rise and Fall of Self-Checkout

2025-01-12 2025-01-12 Culture / Culture wars / Predatory capitalismOne Comment

I refuse on moral, ethical, and simply human grounds, to use a self-checkout at any local store where they are installed. My initial reaction to them was outrage: this is how big retail chains get rid of employees and reduce their staff and thus human costs. This is how people at the lower end of the wage scales get unemployed but CEOS and executives get bonuses. It also means the customer is forced to play the role of cashier without any monetary benefit from doing so. I am almost always pro-worker and believe any so-called innovation that affects workers and … click below for more ↓

Home on the Open World Range

2025-01-01 2025-01-11 Culture / Games & Gaming / Musings2 Comments

A recent article in the Journal of Internet Research described a study that came to the conclusion that open-world games (OWGs) “may offer unique cognitive escapism opportunities, potentially leading to relaxation and enhanced well-being.” Well, duh! Pretty much everyone playing OWGs has known that for the past three decades since those games were published. After all, isn’t escapism the whole point of gaming? People have played games for millennia: to gamble, for intellectual challenges, for entertainment, learning, competition, and often for simple solo pleasure. But open-world games are a recent invention, and while not unique to the computer era, have … click below for more ↓

When I’m 64…

2024-12-10 2024-12-10 Daily life / Music & Reviews / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I’m sixty four… it seemed cutely remote to consider being that old when the Beatles sang “When I’m Sixty-Four” back in 1967 on their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Sixty-four seemed so far away then. My father wasn’t even that old in ’67. Sixty-four was to my teenage self somewhere in the distant future, like science fiction or The Jetsons. Old age was somewhere in the time zone of my grandparents, an exotic foreign, and wrinkled land. Unimaginable being there, at least for me when that song … click below for more ↓

Normalizing Fascism: The Paradox of Tolerance

2024-11-30 2024-11-30 Critical Thinking / Media / Politics / Rightwing claptrap6 Comments

The Brexit campaign succeeded on a platform that cultivated anger, fear, conspiracies, and racism based on lies and disinformation. Donald Trump’s campaigns have succeeded twice on platforms that increasingly cultivated anger, fear, misogyny, conspiracies, and racism based on lies and disinformation. Pierre PoiLIEvre, head of Canada’s now far-right MAGA-mimicking CONservative Party campaigns on a platform that cultivates anger, fear, conspiracies, and racism based on lies and disinformation in the hope of succeeding as the next Prime Minister. If Canada’s electorate is ignorant enough, and has not learned the lessons either of history or the American experience with fascism, he might … click below for more ↓

Why Are People Leaving Xitter En Masse?

2024-11-15 2024-11-18 Culture wars / Internet & Social Media / MAGA cultists / Trump fascism6 Comments

The exodus from X to Bluesky has happened – the era of mass social media platforms is over. That’s the headline for a piece in today’s Guardian newspaper. People and corporations are turning to other social media platforms because of what Xitter has become since Musk bought it and started using it as his own platform to spread racist hatred, lies, disinformation, and AI fakes, while enabling the far-right extremists to spread their own propaganda. Anyone surprised that users and advertisers are fed up with the toxic, angry, anti-democracy, pro-fascist quagmire that Xitter has become? Me, either. Xitter has been … click below for more ↓