A Hot Drink for My Cold Heart

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“But what is it?” my friend asked.

I repeated what I had just said: “It’s a Starbucks ‘Caramel Apple Spice.'” (I think I even said “Starbucks,” even though we were at that moment sitting in a Starbucks and we certainly knew where we were, because it is impossible to mistake a Starbucks for any other anything. But sometimes when I open my mouth, an advertisement flies out.)

“Yes, but caramel apple spice what? Coffee? Tea? Soup?”

I did not have an answer. What is it indeed? “I don’t think it’s coffee.” I fell back on the charm of insane repetition, something I have not perfected over the years: “Its a Starbucks Caramel Apple Spice,” and I used my eyebrows to tell my friend that she wanted her own one, too. (Picture Groucho Marx.)
Read More

Deus Ex Post Facto

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In classical drama, the term deus ex machina refers to a plot device wherein a plot problem is suddenly solved by the arrival of a previously unannounced character who supplies the answer or solution. “But don’t you know? That’s your brother!” would be a line delivered by a deus ex machina character, thus helping our hero avert or defeat a troublesome situation.

When a playwright or a novelist needs to fix an intractable plot puzzle, he or she might resort to the tool, which is Latin for “god from the machine,” or “you couldn’t figure it out for yourself with the characters you’d created, so you punted,” but audiences since ancient times have tended to see through the fix. “Where did HE come from?” More often than not nowadays, it is used ironically, but when you find yourself reading a book and seeing lines delivered by a character that you do not remember being introduced to, your inattentive reading is not to blame. That character really was not there 20 pages earlier.
Read More

Today’s #OpKKK List: Worth Reading?

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

There are no headline-grabbing names on the list of KKK members that the hacker collective Anonymous released this afternoon, unlike the names of mayors and senators that appeared on the disavowed publication that a rival, attention-seeking, unknown individual put out several days ago. And that is just fine.

What the group of hactivists published today is a list that its members compiled of several hundred individuals and their Facebook and/or Google+ accounts. Their public identities, if they have any. Thus, all of this information is public or as public as any of these individuals may have decided to make it; almost anyone could have compiled this list, but it is Anonymous who bothered.
Read More