It has been just about a year since publication of the XIXth (well, why not?) in this series of brainburps which are not pithy enough for full columny, but sufficiently profound to escape condemnation to the bottom of my literary bird cage.
Readers who find any of them inspiring, or who simply have nothing better to, do are invited to expand on them and/or inflict them on their own defenseless kith and kin and/or launch them into the black hole of Spamworld.
Feb 19 2012 | Posted in
Personal Column |
Read More »
As we stumble into the muck and mire of another presidential campaign, the rules of the contest seem more than ever to resemble the cow-pie tossing competitions still staged in rural America.
In those poopular (is there a better word?) events, the idea is to de-emphasize the composition of the dung being flung, ignore its malodorousness (yep, there IS jest sech a word, Podner), and throw as much of it as you can as far as you can.
Feb 6 2012 | Posted in
Personal Column |
Read More »
Americans exposed to the political rhetoric which now pervades the airwaves, print media and cocktail party chitchat might be tempted to suggest that the inmates have taken over the asylum of public affairs.
To adopt this position, sez I, would be an unconscionable slur on patients in our mental health institutions, whose behaviors are deserving of sympathy, rather than scorn.
Jan 16 2012 | Posted in
Personal Column |
Read More »
I just cannot watch enough of the movie “It’s a wonderful life”. Jimmy Stewart, born in Indiana Pennsylvania, played his part so real with full emotions that he actually makes my heart ache each time I watch it. The movie was released in 1946. This was a period of American history when family values were in general revered and life was of the outmost importance.
Jan 16 2012 | Posted in
Personal Column |
Read More »
By Joe Klock, Sr. In 1936, American humorist Robert Benchley published a collection of 105 whimsical essays, the first of which had to do with a highly improbable asset misplacement – or what the author regarded as improbable at the time of his writing. Had he been alive recently, he would have agreed with [...]
Dec 21 2011 | Posted in
Personal Column |
Read More »
When I first learned about the term “useful idiots” I was about ten years old and that was many years ago. I asked my father: what does the term “useful idiots” mean? He went on to explain that it was a term Lenin, the head of the communist party in Russia, used to describe those individuals who blindly supported communism, but they would be the first to fall victims of the communists.
Dec 14 2011 | Posted in
Personal Column |
Read More »
f you suspect that the title of this opusette was, like miniskirts, rag magazine covers and stop signs, deliberately calculated to attract attention, you are spot-on – and equally on target if you sense that it is misleading.
Sorry to disappoint readers to whom an essay on premarital hanky-panky would be of interest, but it is cited above only as an analogy.
The subject du jour is that customer service is rapidly becoming an oxymoron – a contradictory term on the level of pretty ugly, guest host, old news, good grief and legally drunk.
Nov 15 2011 | Posted in
Personal Column |
Read More »
Okay, so maybe OWS (Occupy Wall Street) deserves recognition as a legitimate movement, but so does “Number Two,” and neither function furthers the cause of understanding between the have-more and the have-less segments of American society.
Nov 11 2011 | Posted in
Personal Column |
Read More »
If ox + ox = oxen, why do we have boxes, foxes and xeroxes instead of boxen, foxen and Xeroxen; and why NOT paradoxen, too? Just a querical point to ponder, unrelated to the more somber opusette following.
It’s strange that so many people see life as a shuttle between tedium and disillusionment – or, as Thoreau put it, “lead lives of quiet desperation,” but shy away from discussions of death – especially their own.
Oct 20 2011 | Posted in
Personal Column |
Read More »
For the past century anthensum, the masthead logo of the New York Times has proclaimed that “all the news that’s fit to print” is contained therein.
Were one to accept this as a statement of fact, that same one is likely to believe in the virginity of those attending the Vassar senior prom or the veracity of political speech anywhere from the national stage to the race for Dog Catcher in Rotten Crotch, Wyoming.
Oct 13 2011 | Posted in
Personal Column |
Read More »
