Caving
From Events If I can’t see you, you can’t see me. Right?
Archive of entries posted on July 2013
Friday fish
In 1966 a Papal decree said Catholics should voluntarily go without meat on Fridays, rather than be required to do so as had previously been the case. By that time, though, our family had gotten the whole “fish on Friday” drill ingrained into our lives, so I still avoid cooking beef, pork or chicken. From …
On the cover of the Rolling Stone
There are times I think many of this country’s citizens need to grow up, and this outcry toward Rolling Stone for putting a photo of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on its cover which doesn’t make the kid look like a wild-eyed maniac is one of those times. Lots of my countrymen don’t understand …
How dare you?!?
I was trying to unlock the front door with bags of groceries in each hand and my thumb got caught in my keychain. Even though I was dripping oozing blood I bravely opened the door and put the frozen stuff into the freezer before I ministered to the poor wounded digit. The culprit: From Imported …
Befuddled pooch
When the monster emerged from the pool From Events the dog hid among the bushes From Events uncertain of her role. From Events
Oh come on, ABC, think of the children
Barbara Walters’ program “The View” has just hired former Playmate of the Year and failed TV comedian Jenny McCarthy to replace the departing Elizabeth Hasselbeck. This is a terrible choice, not so much because McCarthy can’t jabber with Barbara, Joy, Whoopi and Sherri convincingly, but because of the very public and very wrong public advocacy …
Watch your back, South Carolina!
North Carolina is coming up on the outside in the race to be the crazier of the Carolinas. Headline: North Carolina Lawmakers Ram Through Plan That Would Increase Taxes On Poor People “Those with average incomes of nearly $1 million would receive a total tax cut of nearly $10,000,” the North Carolina Justice Center estimated, …
Don’t go there, Mr. Author . . . oh wait; it WORKS
Ordinarily I don’t like the Deus ex Machina plot device, but I just ran across one which actually reversed the usual form. David Weber’s The Excalibur Alternative spends 270 pages telling the story of English archers on their way to the Battle of Crécy in 1346 who are suddenly abducted by aliens to fight as …
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Zimmerman gets off
It’s extraordinarily difficult for me to reconcile the known facts with the verdict given. Here’s a big white guy with a gun who objects to a skinny black kid with a bag of candy walking in the white guy’s neighborhood. He calls a police 911 dispatcher to tell the cops about the kid, and he’s …
When pulp became paperback
This novel by “Luke Short,” the pen name of Frederick Glidden, was originally published in the pulp magazine Western Story in six consecutive issues from March 4 to April 8 of 1939 (see here). What I find interesting is how closely Dell followed the style of the magazine covers in 1964. Well, that and the …