It was a few days after Las Vegas so our frayed nerves were still raw as we tried to get back to ‘normal’ while we were enjoying the first stint of laid-back camping on the California Coast. Los Osos, the name of a quaint water-edge town what meant the bears, but of course the last [...]
Tagged from the road, Johnny Dick, prose, prose poetry, thought shardsPORTLAND, OR…PLANTING ROOTS IN A MOSSY NEW STOMPING GROUND By now most of you, whoever you are, must be thinking that I’m dead, burnt to a crisp in a car crash on a deserted highway or at least a quadriplegic from a cliff diving accident or something, but no, I’m at least still half alive [...]
Tagged John DickJune 26, 2008 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a sweeping ban on handguns in the nation’s capital violated the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Antonin Scalia noted that the handgun is Americans’ preferred weapon of self-defense in part because “it can be pointed at a burglar [...]
Tagged joesmith(A MISPLACED FLASHBACK FROM WINTRY UGLINESS IN MILWAUKEE) “I am guilty, Lord, but I am also a lover – and I am one of your best people, as you know; and yea tho I have walked in many strange shadows and acted crazy from time to time and even drooled on many High Priests, I [...]
Tagged essays, John DickWalgreen’s is my god. I will have no gods above thee. Down the street from where I live is a Walgreen’s, a store that is part pharmacy, part convenience store, and entirely without shame for the contradictions within. Where else can one fill prescriptions for pain killers, anti-depressants, and erectile dysfunction while also acquiring two [...]
Tagged Arthur Schultz, essaysWitnessed an informal poll with black middle school boys about whether or not they can control their erections. Let me back track. I teach at a small school that serves students who have been reassigned from Milwaukee Public Schools because of bad behavior. These behaviors range from use of drugs or alcohol, sex in school, [...]
Tagged Jenny Benjamin-SmithIs it wrong to wish I lived in a different era? One where I didn’t feel shame and embarrassment over what we have become and are increasingly becoming. I feel no optimism for the future I was told to expect, It isn’t that I wish for something we never were, rather my desire is for [...]
Tagged Arthur Schultz, essaysWESTWARD HO…THE COLD BACKHANDED SLAP OF REAL WINTER…THIN-SKINNED MIDWESTERNERS WOULDN’T SURVIVE OUT HERE…THE CRYOGENICALLY FROZEN PRESIDENT AND THE SAD STATE OF THE UNION From the frozen Canadian metropolis of Calgary, Alberta, the time has finally come for an initial assessment of this launch across, around, and out of the great American landscape. Finally breaking out [...]
Tagged John DickIt is not a way of life that a wise man proposes, but a way around life. * You say nothing could be further from the truth. I say nothing could be further than truth. * Sophistry is what reason becomes when it is employed for the purpose of reconciling us to life. * So [...]
Tagged aphorisms, Christopher SprangerUniversity of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Special Collections Librarian Max Yela writes: [The Colonel's Portentous Cat Unsays] is perhaps the most recent and remarkable of invisible books. It follows a long tradition of dream books and stories, from biblical citations of dream-state narratives, to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and Shakespeare’s Mid-Summer Night’s Dream, to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Eyes of [...]
Tagged Rick KrauseI have come to see the glass as half full, but it’s a dribble glass.
Tagged Uncle HomunculusIt has always seemed to me that life is just killing time between meals. This has recently been confirmed.
Tagged Uncle HomunculusSelecting a mate is too important to be left to faceless internet services. For only $10,000, one may obtain the personal touches offered by this exclusive “traditional matchmaking” service. Spurred on by this exclusive, intimate approach, we have launched eVanity Hook-R-Up, our own matchmaking service for discerning singles with burning loins and impressive means. Here [...]
I have, on occasion, felt a real sense of community. Fortunately, those occasions have been infrequent and brief.
Tagged Uncle HomunculusI know the alphabet. Of course I know the damn alphabet. Nevertheless, I was recently surprised by M’s close proximity to K.
Tagged thought shards, Uncle HomunculusI am the court jester, the maxim molester, sardonic magician deriding tradition. My scepter is a cattle prod. I know my job. I unmask gods.
Tagged Uncle HomunculusBrutal Truths, Bitter Wisdom, Gallows Humor The world was made for people who aren’t cursed with self-awareness. — Bull Durham, screenplay by Ron Shelton – You are free and that is why you are lost. – In man’s struggle against the world, bet on the world. — Franz Kafka You fall out of your mother’s [...]
Tagged aphorismsThe gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. If one believes Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent [...]
Tagged Albert Camus, thought fodderPith, the moral fiber of a plant, conflict or commitment…, the brutal act of severing the spinal cord of farm animals, slashing the lifeline of vegetation, beast or mankind. Vulnerability tucked away deep into the fleshy core of a breathing vehicle, shielded by the façade of protection, whether it’s leafy green, unprocessed leather or thin [...]
Tagged John Dickby klipschutz “Looking for affiliations is a game, like looking for ‘influences’ in literature; when the game is over, the problem is still there. In literature it’s a question of genius; in history, of power.” -The Morning of the Magicians, Louis Pauwels/Jacques Bergier . His earliest work earned him nearly instant cult status, which gradually [...]
