Category Archives: Columns

Order of the Golden Phoenix

The holiday season often begets a Harry Potter mood in me, so I've been on a kick going back to my blogcat about Lockhart. Since then, I've continued a half-assed binge, which among other things has included watching all of, and reading most of, The Order of the Phoenix. I have some thoughts - on that tale, and HP as a whole. Before we start, Read more [...]

In Praise of Wawa

Gas stations and convenience stores are so properly termed, I just googled for an antonym to the word misnomer. What I mean is, they only exist to serve a very specific purpose: we need gas for our cars, and when we need to purchase a limited, defined item we prefer to do so as conveniently as possible. Thus, the value these retail businesses Read more [...]

Pong Pod #5: Mechanics & Training

In the fifth installment of the Pong Pod, Ezra, Bullets and I discuss how one can improve his/her odds of winning at pong - tackling that topic specifically from the angle of what we feel proper mechanics and training regimes might look like. Please enjoy responsibly: Also of note is the new paddle Bullets designed, which we referenced Read more [...]

Order of Merlin: Worst Class

There are many things in the world of Harry Potter that don't quite hold up under scrutiny - or at least, are somewhat absurd. One of my favorites, for instance, is this scene, in which Harry - a full five+ books in, and in complete belief that Dumbledore is likely the greatest wizard of all time - is downright amazed that his headmaster knows Read more [...]

KamBamTV

The current state of TV is fascinating. Peak TV reigns. Thrones hangs on as our last "monoculture" show - unless Amazon has anything to say about it. The Golden Age of shows about Bad Men Doing Bad Things has come and gone, with no real Pantheon successor looming. Netflix, losing 30 Rock and Disney, is shifting away from its core "binge all the Read more [...]

Pong Pod, Episode 3, Pong Rules!

Welcome to the third installment of our weekly monthly whenever-we-feel-like-ly podcat, the Pong Pod! This is actually part ONE of an extra-special two-part podcat, since we talked for so long you might have thought we were playing water pong. In case you missed our first two episodes, you can listen to them on SoundCloud: in Episode 1, Live Read more [...]

Sharks & Recreation

In his seminal book, The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart, Noël Carroll examines the aesthetics of the horror genre, in an attempt to understand why we seem to find it so viscerally appealing. As he writes, "the imagery of horror fiction seems to be necessarily repulsive and, yet, the genre has no lack of customers." While there Read more [...]

Nognarok

If I think about this website's library, I invariably land on one particular topic that's woefully underrepresented. It's sort of like, when you got a fever, and there's only one prescription. It's time, once again, for Pong analytics. Welcome to Nognarok. Premise The format for this spring's beer pong tourney was different than prior Read more [...]

La Familia

On February 4, 19-year-old Timothy Piazza, a pledge of Penn State's Beta Theta Pi fraternity, died after a night of drinking and being hazed. The particulars of this happening are certainly disconcerting, but this all became especially close to home when I learned that a graduate of my alma mater Niskayuna High School was involved, and is now Read more [...]

Moron Mountain

There's been an elephant in the room for a long time. Something we've all known about, but none of us have been willing to address. In today's post, I'm finally biting the bullet, speaking out on what everybody's been thinking for the past twenty years. This needed to happen. For all of us. Over a decade ago, sports & media mogul Bill Read more [...]