"When I do not want to say things in real life I often say them here." — Mimi Smartypants
What a prude I’ve become, at least when it comes to pushing the rules on Facebook. A friend signed me up for a “Golden Days of Illustration” group. Nice at first with lovely color plates and vintage ads but pretty soon infiltrated by bare-breasted mermaids and fairies, then 1950s-era men’s magazine pinups. Underground comix sex panels won’t be […]
You’ve played battleship, right? Aircraft carriers are today’s battleships, and we’re all in the game, trying to guess where they are. Earlier this month—the 5th of April, a day before we struck Syria—I questioned reports saying an American aircraft carrier was on its way to strike North Korea. People were getting worked up: some were saying the […]
It’s just me and the dogs. Donna left this morning on a two-week trip to see friends and family in San Jose, Sacramento, Oroville, and Pittsburg. No, not that Pittsburg, the one in California. You didn’t know there was a Pittsburg in California? There is, and it’s the town Donna was born in. I expect to do […]
This article started making the rounds yesterday. One paragraph catches my eye: If you want to understand intra-GOP warfare, the decision-making process of our president, the implosion of the Republican healthcare plan, and the rest of the politics of the Trump era, you don’t need to know about Russian espionage tactics, the state of the white working class, […]
Last month my friend Ed rode to Bike Week in Daytona, Florida. He goes every year, and since it’s a long ride there and back, things can and do happen. This year’s thing was a medical emergency: a detached retina. Ed started seeing floaters in one eye after arriving at Daytona. The floaters gradually congealed into a circular […]
Dude laid a tip on me after my tram tour at the air museum. He walked up, said “Thank you for your service,” and stuck his hand out. I shook back and felt a coin pressing against my palm. I glanced down to see what looked like a gold Rand and immediately thought to myself […]
President Truman ordered the integration of the military in 1948. It didn’t happen overnight, but by 1953 and the end of the Korean War it was reality. My dad was Air Force and I grew up going to integrated DoD schools in Germany. My one exposure to official segregation came when we rotated back Stateside […]
“I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. But, whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable […]