As we get closer to Halloween I find myself thinking of the darker side of the human heart. But instead of making a list of horror films and actors (which I have done before), I would like to salute the Evil Bad Guys* of Film and TV, for they are the ones who make stuff worth watching. (I use the word “Guys” in the unisex form–for I do not care for “Gals.”)
Continue reading “Week 399: A Tribute to Dark and Stormy Knights and Another Week That Is”
Something got in the way should apply only to happiness. I’d rather be a happy peasant than a genuinely depressed monarch. So in that regard it doesn’t matter if you are working the door or have it held open for you.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Revolving Doors by Sharon Frame Gay”
Positive Thinking
We will celebrate our eighth anniversary next month. Anniversaries and birthdays usually make me queasy because I view each as another item to be checked off a Great To Do List whose final task is “Die.” But I will allow that there is maybe, perhaps, seemingly and possibly an element in my personality that could be improved by wise advice, Vitamin Jesus or even a sunnier attitude brought about by better chemistry.
Continue reading “Week 398: Positive Thinking; The Week In Rocktober and Sing, Little One, Sing Like the Wind”
I never plan these. I never know what I’m going to write. I will look up a reference if for some reason one comes to me but I don’t start out with a plan.
Sometimes there are some things that happen on the site or in the news that I make a mental note to saying something. (Today is an example as I knew that there was something!!)
Continue reading “Week 397 – Winging It, Truss’s Truss And I Didn’t Have Time To Look At Religion.”
-Prologue-
Ineffable Is As Ineffable Does
With a peaked roof topped by a small brass eagle, the “Caretaker’s Cottage” in New Town Cemetery is a seven-by-nine rectangle that stands long side up. A few years back the City of Charleston had money left over in the Parks Department budget; two thousand dollars was allotted for the creation of ten incomprehensibly cheap signs to mark various “historical sites” throughout town. It was one of those mystifying expenditures that governments make to discourage the expectation of competence. One of the signs stands in front of the rectangle. It says: “Former Caretaker’s Cottage.”
Outside being the ancestral home to untold generations of Grey Squirrels, the building is a tool shed added decades after the cemetery was founded in 1902. New Town did have a live-in caretaker once, but he dwelled in a long since razed house that stood at the foot of the hill in which the cemetery is seated. But the extremely typical Charleston city employee tasked with the sign job had to put something on the one set aside for the cemetery–so she pulled a fiction from where the sun never rises and literally engaged a sign maker (her fiance–who reaped a thousand percent profit). In fact, nine of the ten signs placed throughout Charleston are similarly procured fictions–with the other being only true about Hartsville, Tennessee–the boyfriend sign maker’s hometown.
Continue reading “The Caretaker’s Cottage by Leila Allison”
Right now it is Tuesday, 31 May 2022, 1:51 A.M. PDT in the Puget Sound region in the U.S.A. Due to some slow typing, errors and the run of time itself it is now 1:54, but all the other conditions are the same. Several months will pass before this is read on a Sunday morning. And, as always, people such as I, will operate on the assumption that the world will still be here and everyone we know is still in it in the relatively near future.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns -Retinitis Pigmentosa by Tobias Haglund”
I like fall, but I avoid saying “I like autumn.” I went to school with a girl with that name and hated her. I wouldn’t want the little god whose job it is to check up on the likes and dislikes of people like me to get confused. So, to be clear, I like autumn, but not the Autumn I knew in seventh grade.
But there are things about fall I can do without; for instance, grownups who wear “onesies,” and those who get as excited as a three-year-old seeing Santa for the first time when the subject is “pumpkin spice.” Usually these people are one and the same. I will hear no defense for normal adults who wear onesies with little fire trucks and/or race cars, Bunnies, Unicorns, Cows, Green Aliens and Sea “Horseys” on them and must tell me about it. What you do at home is your own business, but unless you want me to wonder if you wear a “dype-dype” and rubber panties to bed, don’t bring it up, especially if I am eating.
Continue reading “Week 396: Stumbling Leaves; Another Week That Is; Autumnal Vexations”
I entered my building’s courtyard at dawn on a clear, cold November morning. I brought a bowl of tuna and a cat trap. I placed the bowl at a specific spot under one of the two box hedges that lined the walk and laid the trap nearby. Every morning I brought food to the same place; it was the trap’s only appearance.
I’d come for the benefit of a feline warlord in winter named Lemmy. I’d been feeding Lemmy on the sly ever since I first met him in the courtyard at least three years ago. Obviously feral, I appreciated the defiance in his attitude that wouldn’t allow him to beg. Oh, he certainly gobbled down what I gave him and shamelessly came back for more–but not once had he ever sought pity.
Continue reading “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It by Leila Allison”
Every day I have submissions to read, stuff to write and books to catch up on. When I get tired I often catch myself skimming along the top of a piece, usually due to the false perception of overload. For I imagine that I am being driven, but that’s not true. I keep telling myself that the world is an increasingly hectic place, with too little time for careful reading. I believe the first person to say that was probably confronted by two wall paintings to review for the Hunter-Gatherer Digest.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Wingsy by Tom Sheehan”
Here we are at Week 395 and let’s be honest there has only been one event that has been covered.
I wonder if the world has ended and no-one has told us. They have been too busy reporting on a long line of … (Insert your own phrasing here)
Only those Brits (I’m a Scottish person and for so many reasons would not include myself with them!) could put the queue in queen. (Please don’t capitalise that word Diane, it will make me cry!!)
Continue reading “Week 395 – The Great Wall Of China Isn’t The Only One, ‘I’m Still Standing’ Isn’t Appropriate And Thomas Dolby Isn’t Anonymous!”
literally stories 