a blog about ratiocinations out of thin air and elsewhere
WHEN I WAKE IN THE MORNING, the first thing I do is make a mug of Cafe Bustelo coffee. I don’t wake up with my brain/mind functioning at 95 percent as I used to—more like 75 percent. As I sip my coffee, I warm up the ol’ ratiocinator for the day’s writing by perusing Quora and answering a few questions. Mostly I give straight answers to questions about Elvis or the Beatles or rock & roll in general. READ MORE
IT’S QUORA QUESTION TIME AGAIN. This time the question was about the Creator: “Why do people tend to blame God for the bad but never give him credit for the good?” Even though my experience with my fellow human beings who are believers is the exact opposite of that, I couldn’t resist livening up Quora with an answer:
God drops by my house once a month to play Cinch with me and a couple of my neighbors from Pennsylvania. READ MORE
IF I GAVE A DAMN about the personal lives of actors and artists—if I let the things they say and do keep me from their accomplishments—I might not have any books to read, any records to hear, any movies to see. Thankfully, Wholly Grommett in His Finite Wisdom did not create me that way: I don’t give a damn about the personal lives of these people (unless, of course, they’re monsters of some sort). READ MORE
IF YOU ARE GOING TO WRITE FOR PUBLICATION, you need access to at least one English language grammar and usage stylebook. No matter how good a writer you may be, no matter how much experience you may have, you will use that book frequently. (Unless you have a photographic memory). Assuming you are using American English (AmE) instead of British English (BrE), you should probably familiarize yourself with William Strunk and E.B. READ MORE
I WORKED ON THIS PIECE FOR A WEEK! I intended to publish it on August 15, 2019, the first day of the 50th anniversary of Woodstock. But no matter what I wrote or how I wrote it, either I came out sounding far more conceited than I was in 1969 (ah, but I was so much older then) or the whole thing came out sounding like a sappy Hallmark movie. READ MORE
PEOPLE LOVE FARTS! Not, you know, enduring them. But they love hearing them and hearing about them: fart jokes will probably be with us until Sheldon Cooper’s dreams of our brains being moved to non-tissue bodies are realized. If someone turns their nose up at a fart joke, you’re probably wasting your time in any kind of conversation with that person. READ MORE
BERNI JUST BROUGHT ME a sheet of paper titled “Ten Rules for Being Human.” Unfortunately, it had been photocopied so many times that the letters were all a blur, so I couldn’t read it without squinting like Mr. Magoo. (I’d ask, “Who passes crappily-rendered stuff like this around?” but somebody gave to Berni and she gave it to me, right?) READ MORE
ONCE UPON A TIME, we made things with care, with craftsmanship, even a touch of art. The number of items so made that were used in everyday life would be a long list indeed, but here I am only going to address the front covers of old books. Really old books.
When we see and hold books like this today, it’s not unusual to wonder why they went to so much effort to produce something so few people would read. READ MORE
TWENTY ODD YEARS AGO, I was turned on to Glimpses, a novel by Lewis Shiner. I’d never heard of the author but as I don’t keep up with much of anything anymore (it’s the old age thing), that wasn’t surprising. Because of the source of the recommendation, I read the book and thought it might be an Americanized form of “magical realism.” READ MORE