Porcho Myarda

This could be the Year of Cancellation. We might want to completely forget this annum of 20/20 vision, where we learn all kinds of ugly things, but for many people, this is the Year That Could Have Been. Senior sports seasons. Olympics. Proms. Graduations. Trips abroad. Vacations. Weddings. All these and more have been altered, […]

Unmasked

Most superheroes have escaped my radar, although my mother may still have in her possession an “essay” I wrote around age 6 that declares my affinity for the campy TV show Batman “because they fight all the time.” But most superhero TV shows went unwatched by me. I didn’t buy their comic books; and other […]

What’s in a Name?

All right, I’ve put this off long enough: it is time, and timely, to talk about . . . Elon Musk. I did this once before, when he was talking up tunnels under metropolitan areas, the purpose being to increase driving surface, although why a guy who owns rockets wouldn’t push for flying cars I […]

A Part of Apartness

This morning I found a typo while reading, which by itself is hardly unusual (believe it or not, some can even been found within the confines of this blog), but this one stuck out for the diametric opposition offered by a single space. I believe I was on the intellectual hunt for the reason why […]

Ugly American

There are so many aspects of the killing of George Floyd and its increasingly violent aftermath that it’s difficult to know where, and whether, to begin. Here I sit, a child of extreme white privilege, in an area populated by a large percentage of people just like me, and I’m not sure it’s a good […]

Just Typical

We got our property valuation notice awhile back, and I got around to looking at it the other day. This is our first paper from the assessor’s office with a complete house on our lot. I don’t know if last year’s notice factored a house-in-progress, but if it was just for the land we seem […]

Jam-Packed

Yesterday was jam-packed for me: two Zoom meetings, a chiropractic appointment, blood donation, a tiny bit of work — and money arrived from the feds, riding in on horseback to save Pat’s Screen Printing. The chiropractic appointment, delayed from last Thursday thanks to Oz’s propensity to seek out and explore strange new creatures like skunks, […]

Singy Eaty Time

In an episode of SpongeBob, Squidward, his play freshly rejected by an actual producer, requests staging it during dinner at the Krusty Krab restaurant where he and SpongeBob work. SpongeBob ponders what to call this and, rejecting Squidward’s suggestion of “dinner theatre,” settles on “Singy Eaty Time” — despite a lack of music in the […]

Lip Service

Today is Memorial Day, traditionally a day of entitlement. It’s the day we use to mark the beginning of summer, and fill it with time off from work, and with beaches and barbecue. I believe that was the intent even at the beginning, in the aftermath of the Civil War. What? This is a day […]

Gunnison Sphinx

Ha! You — or maybe it was me — didn’t think I would remember, but I did. It wasn’t any writing that jarred my memory loose; it was reading the local newspaper and happening across the article on how Western Not State hopes to pay for Corona — an article that came out before the […]