And I wonder why I never wake up feeling rested.

So I had this dream last night, in which someone had created a meme that worked like a computer virus on the human brain. Every person it infected, it began to reshape to fit the template of a particular identity--a sort of cyberpunk John Wilkes Booth--including aiming them at a particular assassination target and subtly revising their beliefs about and knowledge of history to make them believe that the target deserved to be killed.

This same dream also had me standing in the aisle of a grocery store for at least ten minutes trying to decide between Oreos and chocolate chip cookies.

My subconscious either has too much to think about or not enough.

Elizabethan playwrights

matociquala is saying brilliantly smart things about William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, history, and biographical criticism.

My responses are here (W.S.) and here (C.M.). I also have a rant about the pitfalls of biographical criticism from when I was reading Leon Edel's biography of Henry James back in 2003. And those three links between them pretty much sum up what I would have written an entry about tonight anyway.