As reported by City & State New York, a candidate for U.S. Congress has recorded, and released, a sex tape as part of his campaign. Here’s some of City & State’s reporting:: “In a grunt for attention, third-party Congressional candidate Mike Itkis has released a sex tape to highlight his sex-positive campaign platform. The 53-year-old Army cyber operations officer is bound to lose to Rep. Jerry Nadler in Manhattan’s 12th Congressional District. But he posted the 13-minute video to a popular online porn site of him having sex with porn …

‘Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight’: Saga of a sonnet and a sex tape Read More »

Abardseyeview now has its own Shakespeare-themed novel(!) In order to bring the bard to people and people to the bard, I spent the last year writing We’ll Always Have Verona. It’s a comic novel that takes place in present-day Charlotte, North Carolina, and that brings Shakespeare’s Juliet not only to life, but a little too much to life. It’s a fun take on Shakespeare, and I’m proud to have it take its place among our other titles. So without further ado, here are the cover and blurb. Here’s the cover: …

We’ll Always Have Verona – abardseyeview’s new Shakespeare-themed comic novel Read More »

There are democracies, dictatorships, monarchies, communist states, and more, and then there are corruptocracies, if we may call them that, where blackmail and bribery of high officials goes unpunished, and spreads ever further, until it starts to play a defining role in our governance. Are we there yet? It’s for each of us to decide, but the Wall Street Journal just uncovered stock trading by more than 2,600 federal officials in companies that were lobbying the federal agencies where those officials worked, at the very time those bureaucrats made their …

‘O negligence! Fit for a fool to fall by’: Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII, and our corrupt public officials Read More »

Bread is getting more expensive, and there have been some as yet minor food riots in the Middle East, which has seen its traditional supply of grain, from Ukraine, disrupted by the war. England saw grain shortages and food riots regularly in Shakespeare’s time, and the bard knew he would find a reponsive audience for a tale of food riots in antiquity, specifically the shortage of 491 B.C. Here’s a citizen of Rome laying out the people’s complaint: Citizen: “If they would yield us but the superfluity, while it were …

‘I speak this in hunger for bread.’: Coriolanus and the rising cost of food Read More »