If you flinch while you watch Tyrannosaur, that is the right response. For an angry person, a flinch is a form of communication. It is a sign that their grievance, nameless as it may be, has been heard and felt by someone else. There isn’t anything therapeutic about the chain of events that results in […]
Advent is a season of waiting, of being drawn into the spiritual discipline of anticipation. Our spiritual director is Mary, the mother of Jesus, the one in whom we see revealed the patience of God. Mary waits for the Messiah, and in doing so she invites us into a way of life that welcomes the gospel through a posture of waiting.
As we move into the darkest season of the calendar year, daylight runs in short supply, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, where The Other Journal makes its home. By the time the winter solstice arrives, we’ll experience about eight and a half hours of daylight, with plenty of thick, low-hanging clouds to obscure our rare […]
David Wheeler is the author of Contingency Plans and a fair number of essays around the internet. He’s been selling books for the last few years, currently at the Elliott Bay Book Co in Seattle. He works on the events team to introduce authors and sells books during any number of the 500 readings we put […]
This site/blog/whatever is brilliant. It’s brilliant because few people could pull this off well. Yet, this guy nails it. For instance, take a look at this particular review. I am also, it should be noted, completely unbiased. Just because he gave me a favorable five second review does not in any way dictate my feelings […]
It’s another gray and misty morning here in the second district of Vienna. The church bells toll to invite the sleepy-eyed revelers from the night before to churches that, except for Christmas tourists, will probably remain mostly empty. The second district is historically the Jewish district of Vienna, where Freud lived and hung out. For […]
The documentary The People vs. George Lucas, with all its jokes about Ewoks and midi-chlorians, is perhaps destined to be enjoyed most by Star Wars superfans. However, it raises a series of intriguing questions about creativity and control which extend far beyond a certain “galaxy far, far away.” Who “owns” a film or work of […]
Once upon a time — 1979, to be exact — along a freeway in the southwest, a car carrying the Muppets broke down. And their pursuit of a dream (“to make millions of people happy!”) came to a crashing halt. So they built a campfire beside their broken-down car. Kermit the Frog walked into the […]
I was downtown talking with people at Occupy Chicago last Monday, and I met a man named Les, who I mistook for the leader of the movement. I’m sure you all know that OWS is leaderless, but I’ve always assumed this is reall just code for Leader-Les, who happened to be a 67 year old […]