“Something is coming. Something hungry for blood. A shadow grows on the wall behind you, swallowing you in darkness. It is almost here.” Mike Wheeler, Stranger Things They’re out there. Lurking in the woods, hiding in the shadows… waiting for the cover of darkness to strike. Monsters are heralds of death, ever seeking new victims […]
(Super) Natural Consequences and the Wrath of God
Faced with the prospect of his own death, all Kaecilius wanted was to live. We all have an innate aversion to death, though experience or philosophy might teach us to try to embrace death rather than to run from it. Most of us, if we believed such things were possible, would choose life. Thus, many […]
Evil Will Come
Do not open your heart to evil… because if you do, evil will come. Yes, very surely, evil will come. It will enter in and make its home within you, and after a little while it will no longer be possible to drive it out.” – Hercule Poirot, Death on the Nile Hercule Poirot is […]
Tumbling Down The Rabbit Hole
“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” Morpheus, The Matrix […]
Tenants of the Tenet
“Mine.” “No, mine.” “NO, MINE!” If you’re chuckling and shaking your head right now, it’s because you’ve spent some time around small children lately. I have two of my own, ages 2 and 4, so the conflict is very real, very personal and always lurking in the background of what is mostly a cute and […]
A Hidden Life
“For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” –George Eliot It happens all the time. We’re going […]
Eatable Heroes
Part of the journey is the end. Iron Man, Avengers: End Game When I learned that Chadwick Boseman had died of cancer this past August, I was both shocked and deeply saddened: shocked because I never even knew that he was sick and deeply saddened because I admired him so much as an actor – […]
Memorable Middle Earth
Frodo “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” Gandalf “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” That conversation between […]
Getting Out of The Good Place
WARNING: Spoilers to follow. I did my best to only discuss the overarching narrative without revealing the destinies of individual characters, but the big picture must be discussed. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this […]
The Fatal Flaw in the Philosophy of the Force
“The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together,” says Obi-Wan Kenobi, in A New Hope. In The Force Awakens, Han Solo reflects, “I used to wonder about that myself. Thought it was a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. A magical power holding together good and evil, the dark side and […]