The title of this chapter pretty much covers it. Smaug is not at home. This is a lucky break for the company. They are trapped in the tunnel by the back door, as the door has been destroyed, so their only option is to go down to Smaug’s lair and explore. Of course it isn’t…
We had to get through eleven chapters and almost two-hundred pages, but we finally get to meet the dragon, Smaug. It’s totally worth the wait. There is a lot to this chapter, pompous dwarves, brave hobbits, treasure, tunnels and a bird, but really it all comes down to the dragon. The chapter opens with the…
I. One thing Sarah hates about Todd is that he’s always late. She’s been sitting at McKinney’s for half an hour. She’s watching a basketball game between Duke and Kentucky, not quite sure which team is which. A man with a neatly trimmed goatee and too much Calvin Klein is trying to explain the intricacies…
Gene Glotzer and I started this blog almost a year ago. In our friendly discussions, we often found that our opinions on many topics didn’t fit into the traditional political and social categories, and we assumed that most other people’s don’t either. We began Nutmegger Daily as a way to share our writing with an…
Before I was dealing with my own depression, I knew people who were depressed and I often wondered what it was like. I know the definition, a persistent low mood or loss of interest, but that doesn’t really say much. At least it never helped me understand it. Now that I have a pretty good…
The teaser trailer for The Last Jedi was released today. It has one huge problem. It is promoting a movie that is a sequel to The Force Awakens. And The Force Awakens was a really bad movie. It wasn’t, “I like the originals better,” kind of bad or the, “I’ve seen better,” kind of bad. It…
I was listening to the Radiolab podcast yesterday, and they were discussing the history of presidential authority regarding the use of nuclear weapons (specifically, whether there was any check on the President’s authority to order a nuclear strike). Harry Truman had no idea about the atomic bomb until he became President, and the authority to…
On April 10th, 2017, around fifty five million children, from pre-school through high school, went to school. At least one of them didn’t make it home that day. Jonathan Martinez, eight years old, was killed when Cedric Anderson shot him. He shot and killed his wife, Elaine Smith, and wounded another student before killing himself. This appears…
I had to get slightly buzzed at a pub with a friend I’ve known since elementary school to finally feel comfortable enough to say out loud what I’ve been thinking recently: “Identity politics is bullshit.” Even then I half-whispered it, despite being in a room full of people who were too drunk to care. In…
I’ve been asked whether I’ve thought about hurting myself a lot in the last six or seven months, always by medical professionals. The short answer is no, I haven’t thought about it. And that’s the honest answer for why I’m being asked. They want to know if I’m a suicide risk, and I am not suicidal. …
