Thursday, November 16, 2017

20 All-Time Worst Novels Among Best Sellers

This list comes from Crafty House. I agree with most of it.


  • The Twilight Series, Stephanie Meyer
  • Fifty Shades of Grey, E.L. James
  • The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown
  • To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
  • A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
  • The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
  • Moby Dick, Herman Melville
  • Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy
  • The Road, Cormac McCarthy
  • Into the Wild, John Krakauer
  • Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
  • For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
  • Cold Mountain, Charles Frasier
  • The Secret, Rhonda Byrne
  • The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
  • Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
  • Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks
  • Moon People, Dale Courtney
  • The Fault In Our Stars, John Green
  • A Reliable Wife, Robert Goolrick

Monday, August 7, 2017

Profanity is Just Another Sign of Devolution.

You've probably noticed that in recent years, the use of profanity in the English language has grown dramatically. At first I thought it was just kids doing it on the interweb. After all, the majority of posts / comments you see on the web (with the possible exception of Facebook) are made by people under the age of 20. Like smoking, it's a way for 12 year olds to show-off for 11 year olds. Now we're seeing it on just about every single TV show and movie too. Lord knows almost all of them seem to be written by children. The stories, hackneyed and all around horrible to begin with, are punctuated by nudity, simulated sex, profanity, mixed race couples, and homosexual characters, not to mention plot holes galore. Now I fully realize that most of these things are there for the sole reason of liberal Hollywood doing their best to offend Christians, but that doesn't account for the horrible stories and plot holes. Stupidity accounts for those. We all know now that human and other animal genes are breaking down and have been doing so for at least the past 35,000 years. The use of profanity is not just an attempt to be cool or to tick-off Christians. It's a sign of an inferior or diseased brain that doesn't have the capabilities to use words that have deeper meaning. The Greeks during Plato's time had a 5-million word vocabulary, something almost no one today has the mental capacities to even aspire to. English, the most sophisticated language in the modern world has only 490,000 words, and very few people know even 10,000 of them. Now we've delved into a world where well-thought-out adjectives and adverbs with good and proper meaning are being replaced by simple-minded profanity that has only a vague meaning at best. There's no greater measure of mankind's intelligence than its collective vocabulary.

Monday, July 31, 2017

Bürstenhaus Redecker Long Bath Brush

Suffice to say I really like this back scrubber. The plastic ones never last long, so I've always preferred wood. This one is made of Beachwood, the same kind of wood used for tool handles like shovels and rakes, so it's very sturdy. Some manufacturers will make the handle and brush separate with a slot in the brush head for the handle to slide into. Those are nice too in case you want to take the handle off and just use the brush to . . . heck, I don't know—scrub your chest and stomach area or maybe your feet, but those always break in that slot area eventually. I think a single piece of wood for the whole thing will likely last longer. This scrubber is nearly 20" long and really feels substantial when you hold it. It's not some cheap, flimsy item. I believe you could actually drive a nail with it. The bristles are made of pig fibers—not too hard, not too soft. I paid $22 for mine. I'm sure Amazon stocks it, but please do the world a favor and buy it from someone other than that smut giant if you can. Hipster Market has it for about the same price.