Stewart and Clive were put into collaboration because they both achieved the highest score – both in the 99th percentile – for short fingers, a trait critical for handling, testing and tying of bowties.

The modern dismissal of mimetic desire is equivalent to Plato’s dismissal of theatre. In both cases, we have intellectuals feeling queasy about raw passion. We have nerds.

It was another summer weekend at Neil McCracken’s mansion in Pine Grove, and this time Theo was there as early as Saturday brunch.

Let’s consider it in the light of René Girard’s mimetic theory, which places human strife and violence at the centre of society.

It was nice to see his grandma, his only surviving grandparent, in a much better condition than he expected, and his mother taking care of her. They greeted warmly and tearfully and immediately sat down to lunch.

It was television that enabled everyone to get on the same page, to find common points of reference, to unify around common and simple narratives.

Father Anselmo had embarked on his first mission to spread the Good News in the South Pacific.

Marco looked like a giant raccoon staring him straight and cold. The junky was rocking back and forth in his chair and staring at the floor.

The Declaration of Independence holds the principle that all men are created equal as self-evident. Well, where is the evidence?

Oozing their country’s liberal goodwill towards the rest of the world, the Americans kept on with their first-world musings, blissfully ignorant of the patriarchal struggle raging all around the country around them.

Below the frozen sheets of ice fifty feet thick and somber blue spreads an ecosystem of queer creatures that never felt the breeze of vicious freeze above.

It seems as though humanity, unable to identify the right scapegoat to cast out from the world, has finally settled on casting humanity itself.

A downtown lawyer is a big upgrade from her last boyfriend.

Browder was befuddled as this was not a club, yet the guardians of the establishment had the muscular built and short-cropped hair, and wore bomber jackets and looked like skin-heads, and had the sharp and fresh look that made them look ready to take on a drunken hockey lineup.

Marvin’s misery made Theo feel better about himself, but Theo was not aware that this is why he hung out with him.

Browder skipped over the prehistoric section. He found those depressing. What inspiration is there in contemplating man’s apish ancestors?

“A king’s heart is unsearchable,” the Bible tells us. How about the hearts of geniuses?

René Girard has made the fascinating argument that kings originated as designated victims of human sacrifice.

The construction work that week had been grueling, and Theo was going out as he did every weekend, to seek powerful stimuli that will make him forget about his mind-numbing daily reality.

Theo’s boss Raul sat cross legged in his hard hat, smoking a cigarette and observing the office workers coming into the plaza for lunch at the restaurants on the first floor.