About
This website is the Internet home of respected private citizen and professional bad egg Leonard Pierce. It features his writing on subjects abstruse and arcane; hosts his podcast, the PetardCast; contains links to his work...
HOT CONTENT
The latest from the intellectual property mines.
The Emprise Strikes Back
This has been a rough week and I've had to make some pretty grim decisions. I could tell you all about it, but then you'd just know about another set someone else's problems...
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A Pawn and a King
We live in an age when the Culture War, the most avoidable conflict in human history, continues to drag on. Despite the fact that it turned out to contain practically nothing we haven't...
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A Place of Great Honor
Every so often, a television series appears that is so unusual, so distinct and with such a deliberately crafted worldview, so unlike anything else that surrounds it in the shifting bars of the...
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The Masses Aren’t Asses
Who owns the working classes? The question would not seem to be a complicated one. Starting from a philosophical position, the working classes are comprised of individuals who own themselves; they must achieve...
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The Misfortune of History
The Great Man interpretation of history -- the idea that civilization is driven by a few exceptional men of will who impose their vision on the world and shape the development of humanity...
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Party Before Power
I don't know who coined the delightful term "ratfucking", or when, though I first encountered it in reference to the Richard Nixon administration, which seems entirely appropriate. As a term for acts of...
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We Have Been Nought, We Shall Be All
I've been writing these May Day sermons for, it must be, fifteen years now. I haven't the courage to look back at all of them to see how my politics have changed over...
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Cadavres dans leur bouches
Two weeks ago, in the early evening hours of a mild Paris night, the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris burst into flames. The images of bright orange flames cast against a steel-blue...
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Machines of Losing Grapes
BORING OLD-SCHOOL ANALOGUE-ERA PHYSICAL MEDIA BUSINESS MODEL Hello! Thank you for purchasing our product. It is now yours to do with as you like*, but please be aware that if it is damaged,...
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A Why to Live For
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers." -- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow I have a pretty shaky educational history. I skipped kindergarten; I went...
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Ma Petite Ruine
The dominant mode of the crime novel in pre-war European fiction was much as it had been since the birth of the genre: the whodunit. Unreeling a mystery, clue by clue, until some...
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Laughs as Black as Death
Larry Charles' comedy credentials, if there is such a thing as comedy credentials and his new Netflix docu-series Larry Charles' Dangerous World of Comedy makes a fairly strong argument that there isn't, are...
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Pitter Patter
You'd be forgiven if you didn't know anything about Letterkenny. It came more or less out of nowhere, debuting as a series of one-man web videos starring creator Jared Keeso, then transitioned to...
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El Carcinero de las Américas
In the mid-1960s, a young man from a well-to-do New York family began attending the Little Red School House, a private high school that practiced progressive educational policies and was in favor with...
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Can You Feel It?
So, he's running. Bernie Sanders, who will be 79 years old when the 2020 election takes place, has announced his decision to run for President of the United States again. To say I...
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FILM WRITING
The most beautiful fraud in the world.
A Pawn and a King
We live in an age when the Culture War, the most avoidable conflict in human history, continues to drag on....
Continue "A Pawn and a King"
Ma Petite Ruine
The dominant mode of the crime novel in pre-war European fiction was much as it had been since the birth...
Continue "Ma Petite Ruine"
It Will Always Matter
As monotonous and familiar as the movie scene has gotten of late, films can still surprise you. There are films...
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Man of Steel
Armando Iannucci makes deeply political comedies that are not actually at politics at all. This is not the only good...
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The Strength of Street Knowledge
Let's preface this review by discussing something that made me feel older than anything else has in my entire life: ...
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Pay Back Africa
Tonight's blog entry, which ought to be a relatively simple movie review, is one of the most difficult things I've...
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The Floating World
Stephen King adaptations, as my friend Scott Von Doviak can tell you, are a real mixed bag. When you're the...
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On Thin Ice
There have been a number of films lately -- and are likely to be more, as I continue to get...
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Go See a Star War
As I have to tell everyone around this time every year, I'm not really a big fan of the Star Wars...
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Prince of Dorkness
The older I get, the less patience I have for so-bad-it's-good culture. I get why it's so appealing to the...
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As Above, So Below
Okay, let's first get the obligatory Twitter joke out of the way: The Shape of Water is the best movie you'll see...
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Please Baby Please
I've been defending the films of Spike Lee for a long, long, long time. I'm old enough to remember having very...
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