Author Archive

Let a smile be your umbrella. Especially with all the crap raining down this election cycle.

In a rare show of bipartisan goodwill, the Clinton and Trump campaigns issued a joint statement today saying: “Indoor plumbing is the bomb.” The two camps were quick to paper over what few differences remained. For example, Clinton supporters tended to sit on the pot longer, brooding about global warming, while Trump supporters had a penchant for gold-plated seats and tweeting about how unfair the media are. The unanimity displayed in appreciation of the great porcelain altar was striking. Usually cracks appear early in these agreement, but the few cracks that did appear were quickly obscured by a great darkness that descended over the offending split as it eclipsed the seat.

Clinton Bathroom Fixture Liaison, Maria Higginbotham explained, “Bathroom activities are the kinds of things that bring us together and bind the country – not so we’re constipated, but you know what I mean. People need to be in a position (usually sitting down) to freely express themselves in the privacy of their own little booth where citizens do their duty and then pull the lever to send their choice into the public domain. And, in the absence of webcams, no one is watching whether you pulled the lever for #1 or #2.

“Morning evacuation is a universal ritual we all share in and have an equal stake in. Speaking of steak, it doesn’t matter that our supporter’s contributions tend to contain more ethically-sourced and sustainably-farmed organic matter and theirs is practically all Cheetos (It’s why they’re so orange). In the end though, it all goes to the same place. Just like our souls do. It’s a perfect metaphor for life.”

Trump Hair Wrangler, Katie Hallmark agreed, “While it’s true our constituency tends to admire our work for a moment longer before flushing and the other side would prefer to compost theirs, we recognize that both camps – no matter how deplorable we are or how uppity they are – quietly celebrate the vortex-siphon action of watching our morning contribution to the water treatment plant spin merrily down the drain till it disappears forever.

“Obviously we have more in common than we have in dispute. And while polling has shown our supporters tend to “bunch” and their supporters prefer to “fold”, in the end it doesn’t really matter. It’s of no consequence to the sewer.”  

Supporters of both camps briefly held hands and bowed their heads in appreciation of the non-discriminatory policies of toilets. They’ll take on anyone regardless of SAT score or whether or not they use their turn signal. They don’t discriminate, although I’m sure it wouldn’t be their chosen profession if they had a choice. They’re just built that way.

In a further sign of unity, both the Clinton and Trump campaigns were said to be preparing a joint statement on the virtues of baseball, hot dogs and apple pie.

What hath Nobel wrought? A deft recovery from a sordid situation.

The reason Nobel Prizes exist is found in the guilt-ridden remorse of Alfred Nobel. Mr. Nobel (1833-1896) was a Swedish arms merchant who invented dynamite. Unlike nitroglycerin which can explode merely by jostling it, dynamite is a very stable compound – at least until it’s detonated. And for the record, TNT (despite AC/DC’s lyrics to the contrary) is not dynamite. Nobel invented dynamite a few years after the less stable and less powerful TNT came to market. OK, so much for a crash course in mid-19^th Century explosives. The question is, how did we get from a rapacious arms merchant in Sweden to the revered Nobel Prizes we have today? Read the rest of this entry »

The real fictional characters: Harry, Hermione and Ron.

Living in the shadow of a more illustrious brother is never easy. Just ask Jesus’s baby brother James of Nazareth. Sibling rivalry is one thing but try being in competition when your brother is the Son of God – “Hey mom, here’s an ashtray I made at school.” “That’s very good Jimmy.” vs “Behold Mother Mary, here are 5000 loaves of bread I made out of thin air.” A brother could develop an inferiority complex living in the shadow of such an overachiever.

Sibling rivalries run deep – sometimes even into the lives of fictional brothers. Case in point; Harry Potter’s younger and less publicized brother, Clarence. This black sheep wizard of the family was no miracle worker. The best he could do was transform a loaf of bread into 15 pieces of toast. It was difficult following in the broom exhaust of his high-flying brother Harry. For example Clarence was not admitted to Hogwarts due to low test scores on his WAT (Wizard Aptitude Test), so instead of Hogwarts, he attended Hogwash. Whereas Harry took advanced classes in Charms and Potions, Clarence took remedial classes in Pull-my-finger and Got-your-nose. It was very demeaning. At one point he even blew-up the Alchemy Lab trying to transform ice into water. This kid was limited. He couldn’t get a Bunsen burner straight. Some even suspected he was a Muggle and had no magical powers at all except for writing his name in the snow with his magic wand. Read the rest of this entry »

This is what the unseen looks like.

Growing old is a contradiction in terms. It’s more like “shrinking” old. Aging is like doing the bad kind of pucker-up. But before I pile on and make growing old sound like a death sentence (which it is), let’s remember it’s perfectly natural and obviously part of our architecture. Reaching one’s expiration date might seem unpalatable, but it can actually be quite tasty when we sugar-coat our terms and serve it up with a dollop of perspective. What’s actually being destroyed here? It’s the body and not the spirit. In fact they’re 2 completely different animals – one really is an animal (the body) and the other is eternal (the spirit). Isn’t that comforting? Maybe it’s cold comfort, but I find great solace in the natural rhythms of the universe. Of course I might not revel in the virtues of nature if I’m attached to a morphine drip because my self-driving car decided to drive myself off a cliff. But that’s another story (Note to self: Make next story about a suicidal self-driving car.).
Read the rest of this entry »

Me (Zak) and Sadie. Blissfully together for 3 years, which is like 21 in dog years.

After a string of disastrous dates I decided to pursue a new relationship strategy. Did I want a girlfriend who would be loving and grateful (a Rescue Girlfriend) or one that would be stable and well-trained (a Service Girlfriend)? I opted for the former and visited our local rescue shelter (Our Lady of Mascara) on a scouting trip. Critics say these shelters are just meet markets where shifty men go to pick-up damaged women on the cheap. And while that may be true in some cases, it’s not true in this case because the man doing the picking-up (me) was just as damaged – and yet I’m considered the rescuer?

Body language is an important part of the initial encounter. According to the shelter, if the bitch (their term, not mine) wags any part of her body toward the male rescuer, she’s released to his kennel (my term, not theirs). And while the shelter may look for body language, from my Pavlovian male perspective, I look for a woman who smells good (more on that later). Read the rest of this entry »

David Foster Wallace endeavoring to explain the box of stars in his head.

Take I: In attempting to power through David Foster Wallace’s brilliant and dense Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays, I was stunned into a literary-induced coma by the following sentence:

The positivist assumptions that underlie Methodological Descriptivism have been thoroughly confuted and displaced—in Lit by the rise of post-structuralism, Reader-Response Criticism, and Jaussian Reception Theory, in linguistics by the rise of Pragmatics—and it’s now pretty much universally accepted that (a) meaning is inseparable from some act of interpretation and (b) an act of interpretation is always somewhat biased, i.e., informed by the interpreter’s particular ideology.

By the time I came to, I had been knocked into the next chapter. Wallace’s arguments, which he conveys with the force of a firehose pressurized at 200 psi (enough to keep a Mini Cooper airborne for 6 minutes), are tossed-off with easy éclat – like he’s armed with a ready nose-dropper of concentrated insights and pinches a tiny tincture into each sentence. However stingy he may be with his pinches, they swamped me like a tsunami. When I finally surfaced I realized I didn’t understand much of what he was saying – at least at first. But when I thought about it some more I realized, I didn’t understand any of what he was saying. Read the rest of this entry »

They told me I was through with this world. Imagine my surprise when I showed-up in this body.

What am I doing back here on Earth?  It could be God’s reincarnation file was hacked and I was mistakenly assigned the “Earth end of the stick.” Or perhaps it’s just an easily rectified clerical error. Either way it’s the worst do-over since Milli Vanilli got back together. How an enlightened soul like me could get conscripted (shanghaied really) into fighting this Earthly battle again is beyond me. I’m not even on anybody’s side. I’m just a shell-shocked spiritual vagrant, tramping around down here on some kind of unrevealed maneuvers. At least in the military there’s a defined mission with a clear goal and all activities support the mission. But on Earth the mission is alarmingly vague. Is it to: Live long and prosper or To relieve suffering or To do unto others before they do unto you? – I’m perplexed. The good news is I’ll never suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder because I suffer from Current-Traumatic Panic Attack. Read the rest of this entry »

Chang and Eng: Siamese twins before Siamese twins were cool.

The “There but for the grace of God go I” wince-factor associated with the misfortune of conjoined twins, often morphs into a head-shaking, disbelieving giggle when confronted with the sheer absurdity of 2 people sharing one belly button or the same eardrum. As is the case with many strange things in life, this condition is a very unfunny cosmic joke. The closest we stand-alone creatures come to experiencing this involuntary merge is when we run in a 3-legged race or file joint tax returns. Conversely the closest Siamese twins come to experiencing separateness, is when they’re happily dreaming about deftly slipping through a revolving door all by themselves.

Oh well, “There but for the grace of God go I,” said the author, shaking his head while stifling laughter.   Read the rest of this entry »

Think this afterlife scenario is wishful thinking? It probably happens to dearly departed people millions of times a day – billions of time if you include bugs and stuff.

Professional sports leagues provide the best euphemisms for those souls who’ve dearly departed the playing field. For example, the NFL describes death as being placed on the “Permanently Unable to Perform List.” If you do not go gently into that good night, Major League Baseball will put you on the “Involuntary Retirement List.” And to the NBA death is that strange thing where you suddenly find yourself playing for the 6 feet and under league. And while some run in terror from the Grim Reaper, others see an opportunity in being Reaped by His Grimness. For instance, after your body has been repossessed by the Grim Repo Man, you no longer have to watch in disbelief while it slowly delaminates and its once sculpted contours begin to look like something you’d see in a Funhouse mirror. Death also makes you very easy to shop for at Christmas. I mean what do you get for the person who has no pulse? – Defibrillators? Read the rest of this entry »

Although suffering from a disfiguring dimpled chin caused by an errant harpoon, Kirk Douglas nonetheless became a major movie star and an exemplary human being. However…

Kirk Douglas will be 100 on December 9^th. When he was born, radio was in its infancy and so was King Tut. Doesn’t he know his time has come…and gone? Kirk buddy, there are no more Oscars for you. No one is going to throw you roses anymore; just orchids.  At least your chum Burt Lancaster had the good sense to exit the stage at 80. But you, my friend, don’t seem to want to take that direction – and you call yourself a “Directors actor.” Phooey. What can we do to get you an epitaph? I’m not encouraging you to die exactly, it’s just that I suffer from an OCD and I need to put you in a category whereby you can only make underground movies – 6 feet and underground movies.

You were old when I was born 55 years ago and your dimpled-chin presence unnerves me to this day. Your son Michael I get. He’s from my generation. If Tom Brokaw wrote a book about yours it would be called “The Sootiest Generation.” Weren’t you a character in several Charles Dickens’ novels? Paul Newman, Marlon Brando and most of the Bee Gees have passed on. Can’t you take a hint and quietly exit stage left? Why are you still hanging around? There will be no Spartacus 2. Read the rest of this entry »