Author Archive

Ignorance is bliss…if you’re dumb.

Jonah Scrimshaw was never too keen on the whole earthly model of “Born, live and die.” It sounded too much like a rejected state motto. He resented being subject to the karma of a world he neither asked to be born into, nor had any say in how it was run. Revolutionary thinking? Hardly. It was simply the old Colonial quarrel of “No taxation without representation,” whereby the King (God) taxes us from afar as he sees fit, and we the people (souls) have no vote (influence) on how our fate is determined. As Jonah considered the implications of this argument, his heart raced, his mood soured and he developed a supremely unhip outbreak of jazz hands. Then he thought, “Maybe it would be better if I didn’t drink a 4-pak of Red Bull so close to bed.” Read the rest of this entry »

Fallen Idol Joe Jackson

What began in the sports world as a deceitfully reliable method of boosting one’s athletic performance, and then sadly extended into the cycling world where previously heroic Lance Armstrong fell from his lofty saddle with an inglorious thud; has now invaded the completely mental world of writing where simple declarative sentences have given way to rambling opening sentences unlikely to conclude until the author grows weary of finding ways to extend it.

Villainy is never pretty. Lance Armstrong should know. He has left his disbelieving fans lamenting to their hero, “Say it ain’t so, Lance.” And now, easily proving that no one is immune from such temptation, a performance enhancing scandal of another kind – a prose-doping scandal – has ruffled the literary world right down to its feathery quills. Several highly regarded writers stand accused of using performance boosting drugs to enhance their stories, prompting disbelieving bookworms to lament to their heroes, “Kindly deny what we know to be true.”  Read the rest of this entry »

Russian Birthmark

I always had a strange fascination with the old Soviet Empire. Being born into the Cold War era, I just accepted its’ peril as something burned into my existence. It was always there operating in the background of my early life like Bonanza or Spaghetti O’s. Even though I was only 7, I was mystified on how something as dispiriting and toxic as Communism could take root in the bosom of Mother Russia. And as a disbelieving adolescent I followed Soviet events with prodigious avidity – not an easy thing for a 7 year old to do. Their culture seemed so poisonous; like being on chemotherapy all the time, but with nothing to cure. Things were so bleak in the Soviet Union that Russian children didn’t wish they were Oscar-Mayer wieners. Even the Soviet Keebler Elves were banished to a Siberian Gulag for putting too much sand in one of Stalin’s Pecan Sandies.  Read the rest of this entry »

The Little Lord Bono having a Beautiful Day.

Beginning an essay with an italicized quote is a sure way to impress readers – David Hardiman from “I Was Wrong About Me”

“Good morning children. Our God is silent. Now if only I could get the rest of you to shut up,” and with that cheery credo my kindergarten teacher Miss Casey, began each day at Loretta Lynn Elementary School in Backwater, Tennessee. And even though I’m 30 years old now I can still clearly remember her daily testament. No great feat really considering my adoptive parents, in an effort to give me an academic advantage, delayed my schooling till I was 29. They tried home schooling, but I was expelled for truancy (it would’ve been too easy to say “expelled for having sex with the teacher”). My friends used to comment on my parent’s rectitude saying, “Your parents are so kilter.” It was true. They were straight shooters. I was the one who was off kilter. Strangers would look at us and immediately say, “What a beautiful adopted son you have. He looks just like Bono.” In this case the acorn fell very far from the grafted tree. I should probably mention that for tax purposes they adopted me when I was 21. Read the rest of this entry »

Jacqueline Kennedy likes Applebee’s and Hardiman’s story: Fordyce & Drybutter.

I, Kenneth Drybutter, was born in the first person, by my author, just after his release from the observation unit of Bedlam Hospital. He hatched me like he’s hatched so many literary turkeys before me; by self-fertilizing a stray idea tantalizingly perfumed with his egocentric pheromones. He’s very attracted to himself and his promiscuously fertile mind will impregnate any idea on two legs – as in this case, my birth as a fictional character. His creative process draws primarily from things he learned in kindergarten; where he claims he learned everything he needed to know. His stories, when read backwards, sound like a tourist complaining about the hospitality. In any event, as to my creation, he began by encasing my embryonic personality in a funny kind of eggshell filled with self conscious yolks. Hastily extruded through his literary orifice, he brooded over me until I generated enough gravity to shake a stick at. Using his pen as a sword, he delicately cracked me open like a soft boiled egg and, after scooping out the soft succulent innards, seasoned me with fresh cracked peculiarities and served me on toasted talking points. I thought I was well on my way to becoming a character in full. Read the rest of this entry »

Being shaped the way he was, Jim Katcavage fit into any square hole.

Foremost among Jim Katcavage’s many attributes is the ability to set your watch to his haircut. The Atomic Clock at the Bureau of Weights and Measures in Washington DC is less accurate than his crew cut. I actually owned this football card and found it to be the least inspiring card ever produced. This card spoke to me with the same passion as a man hole cover. I’m thinking it wasn’t Photo-shopped and was probably cropped by the Indiana Home for the Criminally Insane. The background color was selected by Zsa Zsa Gabor. And of course hair and make up was provided courtesy of General Motors. Suffice to say this card possesses the artistry of a blast furnace.

This “Big Ugly” grunted in the NFL trenches from 1956-68 — when men were stereotypes and “Mad Men” women were strictly scenery. I’d go back to the New Frontier, but I probably couldn’t see through the haze of Chesterfield cigarette smoke. I predict a mania is about to occur for this phosphorescently florid football card. Katcavage’s blockheaded still life will soon grow to iconic status much like Marvelous Marv Throneberry or Warhol’s soup cans did. Some will call this mania Kat Cavage Fever. Others will refer to him as The Fab One. The larger point is; Rosie Grier, Andy Robustelli, Dick Modzelewski and Jim Katcavage once formed a forbidding defensive line for the NY football Giants and their bravura performances and fierce camaraderie paved the way for what today we call luxury boxes.

Mr. Katcavage, who died in 1992, had his last haircut on October 28th, 1962. And although it grayed as he aged, it never dared to grow out in defiance of its owner’s wishes. He was the master of his hair follicles. When all the world was in tumult one merely had to look to his unerring crew cut and revel in the surety that there was indeed order in the cosmos. Time and tide stop for no man, but once upon a time, long ago, it did at least slow down for Big Jim Katcavage.

To fully appreciate this tale you’re going to have to know a few things. English would be nice. Although Para Español oprime número dos. If you’d like this story to entertain you, blink once. If you’d like this story to inform you, blink twice. If you blinked at all, please seek psychiatric care immediately and then just read the damn story OK.

Sign of the times: Unemployed pick up moves back in with parent.

I’ll set the stage. The year was 1976 and as a 15 year old hormone factory living in frigid Syracuse, NY I was privileged to work on the most mega-ginormous off road equipment ever built. I use the non-word mega-ginormous to convey my sense of adolescent shock and awe at the sheer enormity of these machines. I’m talking monumental dump trucks, massive front end loaders and colossal excavators. My route to this “It’s a Large World” Disneyland of construction equipment was through my family’s glass and mirror business. Whenever I wasn’t in school I was immediately and profitably absorbed into the work force doing anything from cutting glass (actually scoring glass, then exploiting the fault line) to slapping up mirrors in cookie cutter tract homes. Great work if you can get it, or are fortunate enough to be born into a family that has it. In any event, one of our heavy industry accounts was LB Smith. LB Smith was a General Motors dealer, but not in the traditional sense. They were a dealership in GM’s steroidal Terex division. This division didn’t manufacture Impalas or Corvettes, instead they produced the world’s largest collection of outrageously gargantuan off road equipment the universe had ever seen. Bigger even, than a Dolly Parton wig. Read the rest of this entry »

Thomas Jefferson: Polymath extraordinaire.

When I meet with a proposition beyond finite comprehension, I abandon it as a weight human strength cannot lift, and I think ignorance in these cases is truly the softest pillow on which I can lay my head — Thomas Jefferson corresponding with John Adams 1820

Few fantasies would give me more pleasure than stealing a couple of contemporary hours in the cherished company of that revered forefather and complex Renaissance man Thomas Jefferson. Oh, would that I could lovingly lay before him the fantastic national landscape he carefully cultivated so many years ago. Patriots everywhere herald his Declaration of Independence as the Big Bang in our 232 year old Colonial Chemistry set and I’d thrill to show him all the new elements discovered in our federal laboratory. If only God would grant me a few precious moments with Thomas Jefferson, I’d promise never to tax without representing. I’m not asking much, merely the transubstantiation of matter, energy, space and time. Jesus got to do it. Why not me? Read the rest of this entry »

Sublime Electroencephalographic imagery reader experiences after finishing this story.

God Speaks with One Voice…Through 7 Billion Translators

After our Lord created the Universe, I found him lolling on a chaise in the lobby of the Hotel Sui Generis, blithely reading, “A Catcher in the Rye.” So typical of him. I recognized the Lord from peripheral glimpses I’d stolen during orgasms or that time I almost choked to death on red skin potato juice while trying to heal a spastic colon. He knew who I was but feigned ignorance. Our relationship is freighted with misconception.

So this was my frame of reference when I confronted his Plasmatic Manifestation. It seemed my entire life had led to this moment when I could finally posit the irreconcilable question that troubled me most. His numinous response would gracefully dissolve ignorance, remedy years of tedious inertia and remove the veil of happy distraction so common to postmodern man. I wasn’t asking much. I was only asking everything. Not hesitating for an instant I strode over to the Godman, got right in his face and earnestly posed my momentous query: “Why do people ask rhetorical questions?” Read the rest of this entry »

Inside the bathyscaphe there’s an eerie background din of whirring fans and humming battery packs pinging off the smooth white enamel paint. An other worldly reality pervades the spherical submersible as Colonel Jack Wisdom and Major Fillmore Artery meticulously unwrap that evening’s dinner rations and slowly begin chewing on their extruded sustenance. The now stuporous crew is obviously suffering from either too much or too little oxygen. They eyeball each other like a psychiatrist stares at his diploma; not knowing what to say, but knowing that if anyone does say something, it will be very significant.

Colonel Wisdom (his left foot resting on a ledge that warns in red stenciled letters: No Step): Y’know Major, I’ve known you for what, five years now. And in that time I’ve heard you talk a lot about how much you like pizza. <10 second pause, strokes his chin> But y’know something Major – In all that time I’ve never seen you actually eat pizza.

Major Artery: Hmmm. Wow. <10 second pause, strokes his chin> I guess that’s true – kinda like with you and bobble heads.

Colonel Wisdom: <10 second pause, strokes his chin>

Major Artery: <gazing wistfully out the porthole, strokes his chin> It looks so cool out there. When are we going to go outside for a walk on the lunar surface?

Colonel Wisdom: That sounds great Major. If we we’re on the moon you jack ass. <10 second pause, strokes his penis by mistake>

With that statement Col. Wisdom unthinkingly steps up on the ledge he’d been resting his foot on, which of course breaks off, causing him to rocket down the smooth enameled walls of the spherical bathyscaphe where, after a few pendulous swings up and down the interior surface, he comes to rest at the bottom sprawled out like an overturned turtle. Meanwhile Major Artery prepares for his space walk by donning scuba gear and stating, “I’m just gonna step out and get some fresh air.”

Author’s note: Do we continue the story?