A couple years ago, I was enrolled in a Gothic literature class, and I took some heat from the professor because I hadn’t read the foreword of the book we had just started. (As I recall, the book was Ann Radcliffe’s 1791 novel The Romance of the Forest.) My defense…

Tell someone you don’t like being hugged and you’re likely to encounter some amount of judgment, even if it’s only unspoken. People will look at you like you’re some strange new alien life-form who has just slithered out of a saucer-shaped UFO. They’ll look at you like you’re a cold…

He lies in bed and debates running to the closet for the ski mask. He’s almost positive Sheri left it there, tucked into the pocket of her coat. Almost positive. He thinks of the mask with the longing of a child on Christmas Eve, waiting for morning. …

When I was fourteen years old, my father asked that I go hunting with him. I resisted. We lived in rural Georgia and hunting was an ingrained part of our culture. For as long as I could remember, there had been a deer’s head stuffed and mounted on the wall…

Sunday morning, going on noon, and we were headed to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport. My sister was in a long-distance relationship and we were picking up her boyfriend, flying in from Texas. …

A little over two weeks ago, Gillette aired an ad that received a significant amount of pushback from the public. As of this writing, the video has 741k likes and over 1.3 million dislikes, putting its approval rating at somewhere around 36%. Though the words “toxic masculinity” are never uttered…

A lot of fans really, really do not like The Last Jedi. The reasons why are legion. There are the trolls who say the film is being too inclusive, that it’s pushing diversity and a political agenda. These fans are best left ignored. There are people who had certain expectations…

It’s a quote first said, as near as I can tell, by Carl Sagan, and repeated by nearly every noteworthy skeptic who has followed in his footsteps: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” I’m conflicted about it. On the face of it, I think it’s a great quote, and one I…

I have a confession. I think the first 20–30 minutes of Batman v Superman are very nearly a masterpiece. The rest of the film is a mess, have no doubt about it. …