I've had an Apple MacBook for the last five years. It's the best laptop computer I've owned -- it's fast, light, reliable, easy to use, virus-free, and looks nice. Given the alternatives available, I'll probably get another when this one gives up, and maybe even before that.
That said, I feel no allegiance or loyalty towards Apple, Inc., which is a scummy tax-dodging slave-driving lawsuit-slinging corporation like any other. And though I like my Macbook, when it comes to other Apple gadgets I remain defiantly asexual. I'm simply unable to lust after the various erotically-styled Pods, Pads and Phones that others find so desirable. Truth be told, I don't even like my MacBook that much. (more....)

This is not a tale of how I found Jesus, of how acupuncture cured my haemorrhoids, or of how my alien abductors revealed the ultimate truth about 9/11. I still have no faith in anything supernatural, mystical, psychical or spiritual. I still regard the scientific method as the best way to model reality, and reason as the best way to uncover truth. I'm no longer a skeptic, but not one of my core beliefs has changed. (more....)

Bores blogging about their breakfast in 140 characters. Touchy, vacuous celebs begging an army of morons to magnify their vanity. Smug new-media types basting in their own self-justifying shit. It's easy to sneer at Twitter, and most of the time, correct. But let me remove my irony antlers for a moment, and say something genuine: as much as I hate it, I think Twitter is probably a good thing. (more....)

As one who defaults to an ironic mode of expression, I'm used to being misunderstood on the Internet, particularly by academics, well-meaning liberals, and denizens of the far western reaches of the Empire. But sometimes the misunderstandings are so bizarre, the reactions so out-there, that I have to wonder if the reader has suffered irrevocable damage to his reading comprehension -- perhaps in a Tweeting accident. In these cases, the reader hasn't just missed the irony, but has also inserted some weird hallucinatory content all of his own. This content alone forms the basis for his response, which is invariably self-satisfied and dismissive. (more....)

On Sunday, my ad hominem page finally hit the big time. Sure, it's made the front page of Reddit now and then, but Reddit nerds don't have the cultural capital. To get noticed by the right people, Metafilter is where it's at -- and that's where I was at on Sunday afternoon, front-page news, my words being raked over by Williamsburg's finest. (more....)

The best way to distinguish a work of pornography from a conventional narrative is to look at its structure. All narratives, to some extent, are concerned with such things as character, plot, exposition, development, climax and resolution; but in pornography these are merely nods to propriety, threadbare garments which barely conceal the real purpose of the narrative: to deliver a particular kind of gratification again and again. (more....)