TK
To think that fast on your feet, you have to be loose, willing to take a risk, willing to keep going if you fail. In the end, it is less dangerous than trying to dot every i, anticipate every objection, please every critic.
By Jeannette Cooperman
The Clockwork Orgasm
Any minute now, all this technology will be mass-produced and affordable, transforming what are now sex dolls with AI heads atop their silicone bodies into the sex robots of science fiction, so sophisticated they are easy to mistake for a human. And then? Will men still bother with real women? Or will they prefer a projected fantasy to a more demanding reality?
The End of Elegance
“Elegance” takes a little time. The word is rooted in the Latin eligio, which means picking out, selecting, editing.
People Who Eat People
Early Christians were terribly worried about cannibals. Not because the practice was nauseating or sinful, but because if a cannibal kept it up, soon his body would be composed almost entirely of matter that once belonged to another human being. So what would happen when it came time to resurrect everybody’s body?
Hunting for the Right Perfume
Perfume is an intimate commodity, something you have to hunt for and save up for. When you find it, you are brought back to your senses, happy to be in your body, protected from anything noxious you might encounter.
Did Shakespeare Have Insomnia?
Sleep is a little death, an end to the flashing, buzzing dopamine hits of consciousness. Was Shakespeare, whose brain hummed with allusions and insight, scared to silence his genius and toddle off to sleep?
Homicidal Pigs, Perverted Roosters, and a Hapless She-Ass
How could we ever have believed animals capable of cold-bloodedly plotting a crime, when we have never credited them with possessing the simplest emotions?
What Ukraine Is Teaching Us
When Ukraine came to us for help, we gave the sort of help we are good at giving: stuff. The Ukrainians already have what we need: the courage of convictions. The kind of patriotism that is not jingoistic, yet is fierce enough to give their lives purpose. They are defending real freedom: the right to live outside a despot’s reach.
Rainy Day Haters
Rainy days are pensive, quiet, thoughtful. They are made for us introverts, and we brew a pot of tea and settle happily into an armchair with a good book while the extroverts paw the ground, check their weather app, pace to and from the window.
Turning Down the World’s Volume
Deep silence is rare; even our thoughts can be scattered and loud. On a hike through an old pine forest to the top of a bluff, a friend and I came upon a sign nailed to a tree. Only one word was scrawled: “Listen.” And so we stopped and listened, and the hush gradually filled with tiny sounds far more interesting than my thoughts.
Spit Take
So how does such a helpful substance wind up a sign of disgust and uncouth manners? There are few signs of utter disdain as eloquent as spitting in someone’s face, and there is an energy to the act, an explosive momentum that must be quite satisfying. Even men of the greatest refinement were once allowed to use spittoons, and they remain next to the seats of the U.S. Supreme Court justices for tradition’s sake.
Stuck on You
Gum was once used by the old to condemn bad manners and the young to rebel against a mannered society. Now manners are a lost cause—and gum is doing real harm. It is just one more example of how we try too hard, whether to have fun or to make a buck, and then the things that once charmed us with their whimsy end up destroying another chunk of our world.