I am the wet dream of conservative nightmares…

Like our foreign-born President, Barack Obama bin Laden, I am a radical militant of both the Islamic and Socialist varieties. This means that I hate anyone who doesn’t believe in Allah because I’m a devout Muslim, and I hate Muslims because I’m an atheist who doesn’t believe in any god or religion. Presumably, this means I hate myself, which might explain my fondness for suicide bombings…

Read the rest in the Clockwise Cat…

Read the rest in the Clockwise Cat…

It has become a rather stale mantra among progressives that the ideology of the Republican Party in the Obama Era is reducible to a single word: “No.” However, if you take the time to peruse the party’s website, you will find that the GOP’s brand of intransigent denialism is far too complex to be captured by a mere monosyllabic utterance. In fact, on a page entitled “What We Believe,” you will learn that Republicans embrace no fewer than seven tenets of historical revisionism and socio-economic fantasy that would give even the most skilled psychiatrist a run for his money…

Read the rest in the Clockwise Cat…

Read the rest in Gloom Cupboard…

You can suck on my anger
until you choke on my fear
You can spit or you can swallow
I don’t really care…

Read the rest in Word Slaw…

I was a bland and humorless child.   The causes of this condition are legion.  Start with the combed-over, slicked-down hair,  parted just above my left ear and extending in a single horrifying mass all the way to my right ear.  Throw in debilitating shyness, paralyzing social anxiety, and a genetic inability to catch, hit, throw, or run while holding a ball of any kind, and you have the makings of one sorry specimen of American boyhood—me.  And it was all down hill as I made my way into an awkward adolescence and dysfunctional young adulthood: glasses with lenses as thick as bricks, volcanic pustules of cystic acne, and a nearly terminal case of protracted virginity…

Read the rest in The Cynic Online Magazine…

For many people, this might be a complicated question, if not offensive.  Who can say with certainty what twists a normal human mind, full of potential and promise, into a mangled mass of neurons such as mine.  Genetic defects, perhaps; a brain born incapable of producing that optimum mix of neurotransmitters essential to a happy and fulfilled life.  Or a half-buried childhood trauma that wordlessly drives one into a self-destructive cocoon of chemical isolation.  Or, conceivably, being smarter than most of one’s peers and capable of recognizing the tortured hypocrisies that fill the world we inhabit…

Read the rest in the Clockwise Cat…

Because I grew up in a bland, East Coast suburb far removed from my Midwestern roots, I rarely met any of my extended family members.  Of course, since the invention of the automobile and the airplane, geographical distance only goes so far in explaining the dearth of family connections experienced by people such as myself.  A certain degree of emotional distance is also to blame.  In my case, this was due in large part to the fact that the families of my mother and father were unlikely to view one another with any sense of familiarity, let alone friendliness.

Although neither side of my family was over-populated by over-achievers, at least my mother’s side included professional musicians and artists who lived in real cities like New York.  My father’s family was more likely to include professional railroad and carnival workers in Wichita.  It was differences like these that bespoke a gaping chasm in world view within my extended family unit…

Read the rest in Short Humour‘sPeople of Few Words, Volume 2…

I was a bland and humorless child.  The causes of this condition are legion.  Start with the combed-over, slicked-down hair, parted just above my left ear and extending in a single horrifying mass all the way to my right ear.  Throw in debilitating shyness, paralyzing social anxiety, and a genetic inability to catch, hit, throw, or run while holding a ball of any kind, and you have the makings of one sorry specimen of American boyhood—me.  And it was all down hill as I made my way into an awkward adolescence and dysfunctional young adulthood: glasses with lenses as thick as bricks, volcanic pustules of cystic acne, and a nearly terminal case of protracted virginity…

Read the rest at The Short Humour Site…

Because I grew up in a bland, East Coast suburb far removed from my Midwestern roots, I rarely met any of my extended family members.  Of course, since the invention of the automobile and the airplane, geographical distance only goes so far in explaining the dearth of family connections experienced by people such as myself.  A certain degree of emotional distance is also to blame.  In my case, this was due in large part to the fact that the families of my mother and father were unlikely to view one another with any sense of familiarity, let alone friendliness.

Although neither side of my family was over-populated by over-achievers, at least my mother’s side included professional musicians and artists who lived in real cities like New York.  My father’s family was more likely to include professional railroad and carnival workers in Wichita.  It was differences like these that bespoke a gaping chasm in world view within my extended family unit…

Read the rest at The Short Humour Site…