For Those Who Pray: God Doesn’t Care and Neither Do You
In heaven, the man meets God and asks him, “God, why didn’t you save me from the storm? I prayed and prayed that you would.”
God replies, “You fucking idiot. There were the news warnings, the car, the boat, the helicopter. You had every opportunity to be saved. What more did you want?”
The Minutes of Our Last Meeting - White House Valentine's Day Emergency Meeting
"I’ve been so busy lately. I got up to page five on that memo from the democrats. I vetoed it because it was so boring. Someone needs to tell the democrats to use more graphs. I like wheels."
The Evolution of a Holiday: From Executing a Priest to Being Terrified of Sex
Obviously, no one sends a greeting card to honor the martyrdom of some dude who was interrogated (and likely tortured - it was Rome and he was a Christian priest) and killed (probably in some really grotesque and humiliating fashion - again, Rome). I'm not sure it would do to have children in elementary schools cutting out construction paper implements of torture or crayon drawings of a cat being stoned to death.
Don't Give Me a Hard Time About Condoms and Other Pickup One-Night Stand Caveats
There are certain things you shouldn't do without asking first or negotiating beforehand. And you shouldn't get all pissy if you're denied. These include, but are not limited to, the following:
- pissing on my face
- ass to vagina or ass to mouth
- verbal abuse (Though the usual dirty talk is okay and even preferred)
- anything that breaks or significantly marks the skin (Although, I get a kick out of having to cover hickeys with concealer before I go to work the next day. Makes me feel like a teenager.)
I Believe… [Age is Just a Number That Means You're Old]
…that when you say "Age is just a number" my feet and lower back wanna sock you repeatedly in the junk until you acknowledge that age is decay and decay is the ever approaching sound of mortality. Maybe lose the "just." "Age is a number" is more true and less damning of the fact I'm wearing bifocals.
Let's Not Have a Military Parade, Let's Have a Military Blowout
If Trump wants to wave his military around like a child showing you the thumb nail-size booger he just dug out of his nose, Trump should do what America has always done: Have an airshow.
You go to all the landlocked airfields across this Great Nation and you bring in the tanks and the jeeps and the bombers and the fighters and you load them up with blanks and pyrotechnics and you press play. The swooping and booming and bursting will thrill We the People and show the world that we’ve got the hardware and funnel cake stands.
Life After Hate
It starts as acceptance for someone who has felt alone and has never felt part of something greater than themselves. Someone who’s never felt a part of their family, their school community, society at large, well this is a person at their most vulnerable. And there are a great many individuals out there that feel this way right now as you are reading this. Acceptance into a group, no matter how hateful or backwards their ideologies may seem, is still being accepted. And if it’s for the first time, the euphoria is as powerful as any drug and ten times more addictive.
If You Have No Home for Hate, You Have No Home for Love Either
Try to expel hate, and it will wander, scavenging for scraps, surviving by any means necessary, wounds festering, world-weariness feeding a determination that has become destiny, identity, a crutch to lean upon while staggering on, surrounded by chaos.
Notes from the Post-It Wall — Week of February 4, 2018
• There is no guarantee or promise that your children or parents will love you. There is no such thing as unconditional love. If you love your asshole dad or child, the condition is that they are your dad or kid and there’s a natural bond. But a bond doesn’t determine love.
Why "Three Billboards…" is a Far Better Film Than You Thought it Was
Written by Martin McDonagh (a playwright and screenwriter known for dark satires like The Cripple of Inishmaan, The Pillowman, and films like In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths) Three Billboards… eschews the easy answers of a Good vs. Evil narrative and presents a comic tale of complicated humans doing complicated things for complicated reasons. Of course, it's "problematic."
American Shithole #3 — Partisans of Liberty
In honor of the late, great Ursula K. LeGuin, I present a bit of science fiction in lieu of the daily political grind, or perhaps this would qualify as high fantasy.
Crashing a Gig in a Small Supper Club
By now the piano player hates the trumpeter. The stage has become a hostile environment. Soon it will be time to wake up the bass player. I just want to get off the stage. It's my turn again. We are just about to wrap up my song and people start screaming.
The Minutes of Our Last Meeting - The PepsiCo Lady-Friendly Foods Initiative
Burritos can be very messy. No lady wants to get refried beans on her delicate blouse. We are pitching to Taco Bell...The Femito. It’s a burrito with a straw.
To Communicate Across the Divide, You Need to Learn the Language
While in Fiji, I ate dog. And it was delicious.
A Lovely So Real: An Ode to Smoke
The thing for those civilians out there to get wrapped around their brain stems is that it isn’t about the nicotine. It’s about the smoke. The feel of it, incandescently winding it’s way into your mouth and down your pipes. Exhaling it into slow curls into the night air.
I Believe… [If You Appropriate, Pay the Toll]
…that cultural appropriation is best addressed by making sure those cultures appropriated are handsomely paid for it. Even then, it's iffy but economic redress is concrete rather than an apology.
How to Jump Out of a Plane and Survive
What does it take — aside from some cash — to commit to jumping out of a plane flying at 13,000 feet?
A Half Century Plus Two: Lessons of my 52nd Year on the Planet
The sheer number of lessons learned from 52 is kind of ridiculous. Some years yield a few solid rules of thumb as I hitchhike down the road of life, others hand me a stream of unending guideposts to keep in check like a consistent smack in the back of the head. It leaves a five-inch section of my skull numb and bleeding and a headache in my left eye from my brain being bounced around.
While I feel a bit like a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot with the head sprung up, I’m still standing and thus the categorization of lessons learned and heeded for the future begins.
Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of January 28, 2018
• I know a guy who sported a man bun for several years including years long after it was (miraculously) considered cool. He recently cut his hair and holy shit! He was bald under all of that long filthy hair. There’s nothing wrong with being bald but there is something really funny about growing your own toupee.
The End of the World Is Fictional… For Now
Post-apocalyptic fiction is one of my not-so-guilty pleasures. I recently read Year One by Nora Roberts. The story really jives with my dystopian-loving heart. Most of us have sat in our safe little societies and daydreamt about what our world would be like if it all came unglued. It’s a casual study of humanity under the ultimate duress. What would we really do if the world were ending?
Jake and Caroline’s first date was at The Whistler. They talked about Ronnie, how much they loved The Diplomat, and debated the better ride-share service, Uber or Lyft. She was Uber, he was Lyft. They got wasted on Sazeracs and had sex at her apartment. It was incredible for both of them. Caroline stopped taking sex advice from Ronnie.