Finally! A watch that always tells the correct time.

Be it ever so humble there’s no place like Now. In fact, it’s the only place there is. Time wise you can’t be any other place else. Forget Greenwich Mean Time or Daylight Savings Time or even Hammer Time. There is only one time you can actually be at and that time is Now. Of course there’s a future known as “Soon” and a past known as “Then”, but you can only refer to those times. You can’t actually be there because of the inescapability of Now. Now is everywhere, forever yoking us to its immediacy. It never stops. Now is both obsolete and reborn every instant. It repopulates as soon as it’s able to like fruit flies or Mormons. Read the rest of this entry »

• Calls event “Hecka Rad, Way Better than Gaming and Profoundly Filthy in a Good Way”
• Vows to repeat act to the exclusion of all else
• College likely to be a six year plan now
• Tells parents,”Mom, Dad – I’m all about bullet points now” 

Parents to Kyle: “Get over it already, kid.”

Steubenville, OH

Hyperventilation marked the first sexual congress between Kyle Mahorn (age unimportant) and Sara Chambers (age also unimportant). This premeditated coitus went off as planned last Sunday morning when Kyle’s parents were praying at St. John the Baptist Church. “I’m just beside myself,” an excited Kyle gushed after gushing. “I’m like completely a convert to ‘strange’ now. I mean I’d heard all about it and I’d spent a lot of time practicing alone, but I never thought it’d be like this. All the time you hear about the fraying of society and the loss of community and all this disintegration stuff, but this…this is like interstellar superglue and will bind a society together faster than martial law or Costco coupons ever could. Boy Howdy, this thing looms large in my future and will naturally cause me to straighten up and fly right…well straighten up anyway. Man, I’ve got to tell everybody how good this is, although I’m probably just preaching to the choir.”

When asked why his passion with Ms. Chambers was so transformative, Kyle got that far away look in his groin and explained; “I’d always looked at sex as sort of a solo act because that’s the way I’d been doing it for the past (number of years unimportant), but when I was with sweet, sweet Sara, I found the more I thought about her, the more my universe compressed into an infinite singularity until va va voom – the Big Bang. I’ve since developed an intense affection for her and plan to repeat the experience to the exclusion of all else. In fact it’s not even a plan. It’s just something I’m going to do.”

“It’s funny how perspectives can change. Until now I’ve always been vitally interested in playing World of Warcraft, but since I’ve made love to sweet, sweet Sara, somehow whether the the Druids of Le Grange can storm the armory and retake ancestral Beulah Land just doesn’t seem so important now. No, this act, and it’s no act, is a real game changer. Sara possesses telekinetic powers. She just looks at my pants and they begin to move. In the middle of our lovemaking it struck me how much unnecessary complaining people do when they should be down on their hands and knees doing exactly what I was doing. This is a free gift to mankind. You can even pay for it if you want to. The point is this should be the headline everyday, everywhere:  Sex allows transcendence of space-time. Confirms Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity.”

“And Sara, sweet, sweet Sara. Like I say, I’m attached to her in ways I can’t explain. I want to have her children, buy her a house, protect her from evil and if marriage charts are any indication, divorce her in 12 years and repeat the process with someone else. It’s that good!”

Kyle continued, “Anyway this is my calling. It’s all I want to do and although I may not be God’s gift to women, they sure are to me.”

Sociologist estimate this freakish hallucination occurs in American males somewhere around 5000 times a day, more so on weekends.

Dubious representation of first Thanksgiving. Note absence of NFL game.

Why did the Pilgrims journey from England to Plymouth Rock? And more to the point, how did Americans get from Plymouth Rock to ribbed cranberry sauce thwocked onto a plate straight from the can? These are questions I hope to address one day in a thoughtful essay on the topic. Meanwhile, I hope you’ve brought an appetite for extravagant history as I serve up the rich saga of the Pilgrim’s progress featuring healthy dollops of mashed truths and stuffed with agonizing analogies. Note: For those readers on a on a sodium restricted diet I’ve written this version with the salty language removed. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »