The Post-Partisan Emporium

  The Preposterous Nature of “Reality” Edward J. Curtin, Jr.     It is not uncommon to be doing something seemingly innocuous when one is flooded with wild thoughts, musings that seem randomly meaningless, leading nowhere.  Thoughts that think us.  To dismiss them, however, is a mistake.  For me, these unbidden guests usually visit me when I am out walking or lying in bed right before sleep. Recently, as I was again walking across the meandering Housatonic River through the covered wooden bridge in Sheffield, Massachusetts, I found myself waylaid by the thought of the word “preposterous,” which is usually understood to mean absurd, very silly, or foolish.  Being happily eccentric and language obsessed, I thought of its etymology, which from the Latin means before-behind or before-after, which makes preposterous an absurd, nonsense word itself, which seemed appropriate to thoughts that were approaching me from the other side as I walked ass-backwards (my behind behind me) toward them. 

  Hollywood, Predictive Programming and You: Are We Living in a Science Fiction Movie? By David Gosselin As part of our on-going civilizational short story project, enjoy this latest deep-dive into the magical world of movies and fiction. It’s one of life’s great ironies that fiction often comes closer to truth than anything else. The latest wire, headline, or speech notwithstanding, the greatest stories handed down to us over generations endure in ways that the typical Hollywood blockbuster or major news headlines rarely can. These stories do so because they capture something immutable and timeless about the nature of man, transcending both the time and space we inhabit. And yet, they are perennial reminders of the revelations awaiting within each of us daily. How many other things can we say that about in life? However, while fiction ironically possesses the magical ability to reveal the transcendent and poetical dimensions hidden beneath everyday reality, another kind exists. Unlike