The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: power

  • The Tasteless Tale of the Innocent Sexpot

    My least favorite movie on the face of the earth is the Fifth Element. And that’s disappointing to me, because the cinematography and the special effects were amazing. It depicts a fascinating future world, and I’m usually engrossed by that. But along with all the good things about this movie, it crams a cliché down…

  • Get Your Scientific Groove On

    I love science. Whether it’s anthropology, meteorology, sociology, psychology, chemistry, oceanography, astronomy… you name it, I’m fascinated by it. I wish I realized that as a child. In public school, I viewed science as just another damned subject I had to get through. And my teachers didn’t inspire enthusiasm. I might have taken another path…

  • Controlling Makes You Lose Control

    I know someone who insists that people do things simply because she wants to see if people will do them. Unfortunately, as is often the case with people like this, she has been placed in a position of power that she is neither qualified for nor capable of handling in a functional way. She knows…

  • Checks and Balances

    Our Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief seems to be increasingly frustrated that he’s not able to run roughshod over the constitution as he planned to do once Putin got him into office. Poor him. Thank goodness the founding fathers had the foresight to put some checks and balances into the system, or we’d be in even worse shape than…

  • I Just Can’t

    For the first time in my life, I will not be watching an American Presidential Inauguration. I’ve always watched them, even when the incoming president wasn’t the person I voted for. I watched them even when I wasn’t old enough to vote. It has always amazed me that this country, since its very founding, has…

  • Not My Problem

    I spent the first hour of my shift today with a battery operated leaf blower, cleaning off the sidewalks and the bike lanes of my bridge. A clean bridge is a happy bridge. At least that’s my motto. I take pride in showing this drawbridge in its very best light, and in my quarterly reviews…

  • Cop Avoidance

    Back in the early 80’s I was studying abroad in Guanajuato, Mexico. It was one of the high points in my life. I learned so much about myself and the wider world. It had a profound effect on how I see this planet and its many inhabitants. I felt very safe in that welcoming community.…

  • The Stupidity of Loneliness

    One of the problems about writing a daily blog is that you’re always left with a vague sense that you’ve written all of this before. I could swear I wrote this blog entry within the past couple weeks, but I’ve searched and can’t find anything. So, if you’re a regular reader and are feeling a…

  • The REAL Sword of Damocles

    Most of us are sort of familiar with this Greek story. The sword represents peril. It hangs by a single horse hair over Damocles’ head. All well and good. But the moral of the story is actually that people in positions of power can never rest easy in spite of their luxurious lives. They have…

  • Rota Fortunae

    A friend of mine challenged me to write a blog entry about the Wheel of Fortune. Not the game show, thank goodness, but a much meatier topic: the medieval philosophy about fate. So here goes. You see this topic coming up over and over again in the literature of the time. They believed that the…