Category: Editor Picks

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Week 476: Xtra, Xtra Read All About It; Five, Make That Six Good Reads; Inked Jocularity

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Kindle is one of the greatest inventions since the pop-top beer can. Anyone who has had to pack and move hundreds of books from one place to another should be grateful for it. I look at my tablet, amazed that I have thousands upon thousands of pages stored in it; enough volumes to make my place look like that of a hoarder. I now own maybe three hundred paper books–down from the high of about fifteen hundred I had on hand in the 90’s.

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Editor Picks, General Fiction, Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 472: Where Have You Gone Darby Crash? Punk Bed Fiasco and Not All That Irritates Makes a Pearl

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Whether it Be Curbing or Kerbing, Nothing Vomits Sweeter Than Stolen Beer

Society has been going to hell since the invention of the Good Old Days. Funny thing there–because it’s true and yet there are new Good Old Days rolling out of the Good Old Days Factory constantly. A Paradox, until you remember that New People are being produced at even a greater frequency.

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Editor Picks, Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 468: Personal Preference; A Week of Preferred Works and the Fictional Pet Department

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Tastes

I find that I have a narrow spectrum when it comes to reading material. Along with fiction I like non-fiction written by good writers– biographies by David McCollough are a fine example. I never read “celebrity autobiography” and consider the purchase of such a capital offense. The good thing about books is that you can get a feel for them by reading the first couple of pages (forget the blurbs on the cover). Hardly can ask to watch the first five minutes of a film before deciding to buy a ticket or not.

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Week 466: Greatness Schmerateness; Five New Stories and Dueling Old Lists

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When I was in high school A Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin was considered the greatest rock song (greatest as in “progressive”–whose heyday was from the mid-sixties through the mid-seventies). Anyway, that’s what the guys on the FM radio said. At the start of this month (fifty years later, on the station that’s always playing where I work) Seattle’s “Home of Classic Rock,” KZOK, again voted it number one (narrowly edging out Bohemian Rhapsody, which finished second for the fifth year in a row). For the record, the Queen song is truly an innovative thing–it blew minds when it came around in 1976; and to be honest, I have always disliked Stairway. Fairly or otherwise I associate it with the slacker in an army coat who stank of weed and sat behind me in Social Studies class. He always fell asleep and I had to whack him on the head with exam papers when it was time to pass them back. A minor annoyance in my life, yet I have yet to forget it.

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Week 464: Happily Never After and Antisocial People Have Feelings Too

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Happily Never After

I cannot help but knock feel good fiction. It reminds me of Heaven, which no one has ever described to my satisfaction. From what I have seen, Heaven looks like an eternal installment of Songs of Praise (I thought the USA had a monopoly in the department of hokey religious programming, but the UK has once again exposed my ignorance).

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Week 462: Rule 17; Necessary Words; A to Z of Needless Words

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Well here we are, the holidays behind us, in a brand spanking New Year, which, in my eyes, already looks as fresh as a recently widowed elderly French rent boy cruising the cafes in search of a breathing benefactor. But to those of you who insist on at least benign, if not kind or P.C. expressions–well, happy new year to you and many more I am sure.

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Editor Picks, General Fiction, Humour, Short Fiction

Week 460: Terminating The Tree With Extreme Prejudice and Welcome to the Holiday Rerun Fest

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Fang and Rags circa 1972

Well here we are, Christmas. Today I choose to remember it well. My family used to include a Dachshund-Chihuahua mix named “Fang” who joined the team when I was in sixth grade (named after Phyllis Diller’s fictional husband). Fang was a fairly peaceful little guy but he hated Christmas trees. Every year he would attack the damn thing late at night at least once. His partner in crime “Rags,” a tiny Rat Terrier, would encourage Fang with little barks, but feign innocence when the light came on.

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Editor Picks, General Fiction, Latest News, Short Fiction

458: Personality Issues; Beautiful Losers and Winners

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Personality

Hypocrisy and altruism stop at roughly the same point in a person. Although finally copping to your own rottenness and experiencing exhaustion at the highest level of do-goodishness you are capable of are not the same thing, both terminate close enough to the center of a person to form a picture.

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Week 456: Black and Blue Christmas

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It was Thanksgiving in the United States this week. It used to be a major holiday until the monstrosity called Black Friday relegated Thanksgiving to the holiday second division.

Growing up, I recall the day after Thanksgiving being a busy shopping day, but it certainly was not more important than the holiday nor did anyone camp out in front of Kmart awaiting the doors to open at hell o’clock the next morning. The only downside of the holiday was spending time with relatives that you did your best to avoid all the other days of the year–but our friend alcohol usually solved that, one way or another.

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Week 454: The Sensitive Side of Evil and One, No, Make That Three Special Announcements

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Sensitive Side

I believe that there should never be violence of any kind directed at a child. But that presents a problem. There’s neither intelligent discourse nor diplomatic give and take with a two-year-old individual who considers it perfectly reasonable to shit her pants rather than heading to the bathroom while something she wants to watch is on TV. You cannot spank this person (not that you’d want to) nor can you take any disciplinary action that someone out there somewhere won’t find objectionable.

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