“The Redcoats are coming! The Redcoats are coming!”

“What?” the newcomer asks. “The red what?”

“The Red Coats. You know, Redcoats — the British soldiers: the Regulars, the King’s Men, the Lobsters, the Bloody Backs, etc. etc. etc.”

“But why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you yelling? Why are you trying to warn me about…the British, you said?” The newcomer pauses and kneads his hands. “I mean, they don’t seem that bad.” He does a quick scan of the area. “And I don’t think I see any here.”

Amidst the glut of über-chic boutique eateries crowding the labyrinthine streets of Manchester’s resurgent North-West district nestles the new venture of renowned gastronaut Harley Figgs-Baumgartner. In keeping with its so-trendy-it-hurts postcode, the restaurant plies its trade under the near-unpronounceable moniker of Xtcokpøt, and spreads it tables over seventeen floors in a tall cylindrical building, converted from an industrial chimney.

After all these years of suffering under a hopeless crush, I’ve finally gotten my heart’s desire. I am literally (sort of) sleeping with John Stuart Mill. And let me tell you, darlings, People magazine needs to make up a new contest, because he is the sexiest man no longer alive. Or at least he’s the sexiest moral philosopher no longer alive. For one thing, he is HUGE—485 pages, not even counting the extended bibliography and prodigious notes. Now like most women, there’s nothing I like better than a long, slow read. But it’s not just the size. From the first time I read the Autobiography, On Liberty, and of course On the Subjection of Women, I was sure JStill was the only man who would ever really get me (except maybe Captain Kangaroo).

So, I while ago, I made an Abridged Classic for Pathfinder, an appalling example of racism in cinema, and also an appalling example of cinema. And man, there was plenty to show you. Especially because writing about this movie just doesn’t do it justice. It’s one thing to write, “The Native American characters are useless.”

[continue reading…]

Inspired by a conservative website’s project to create a new Bible translation that “eliminates liberal bias” and incorporates “free market meaning,” I have taken another look at the lost years of Jesus. In light of free market meaning, I have tried to fill in the gaps.