Tag: humor

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Stupifyin’ Jones and the Improbable Ascent of Donald Trump

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Al Capp’s iconic Stupefyin’ Jones from Lil Abner

Writing Fiction in Post-Truth America

The soul of my creativity, such as it is, has been thoroughly stupified, and not in a good way, by the election of Donald Trump to the office of president of the United States. I’m serious. I don’t know why. I haven’t accomplished a damn thing since November 9th. Every day is the same. Walk and feed the dog. Make a delicious espresso beverage. Turn on the computer. Click on the daily news feed. There is Donald Trump’s gigantic orange visage mocking everything I believe in. Fuck me!

Trump’s election is an embarrassment to the nation I love. It’s not enough that he is an idiot, an unsophisticated lout with the diplomatic sensibilities of a skinhead and the verbal skills of a learning-disabled third grader. He is a liar to boot. In fact, he is a liar of monumental proportions in a ‘post truth’ society.

I don’t know how this happened. I’ve been reading everyone else’s idea of how it happened, and I’m convinced they don’t know either. It’s certainly not Trump’s fault. He’s an idiot. It’s not Hillary Clinton’s fault. She’s too smart to be sucked into Trump’s game. I guess you could say that no one called him out on his bullshit, but a lot of people really did, and it didn’t seem to matter. Continue reading

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Book Review – From A to Zoe

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From A to ZoeFrom A to Zoe by Marie-Jo Fortis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this little book. It lacks pretension. It’s self-aware without being self-absorbed—artsy without the fartsy. It’s beautiful with a healthy dose of the real—like Mona Lisa with a gap-tooth grin or The Birth of Venus with a mastectomy scar.

Zoe Zimmerman is a modern girl, a writer trying to slip the bonds of her small-town past in the middle of a seedy Manhattan that just doesn’t give a damn, except sporadically, and then just enough to keep our girl plodding on. I’ve known Zoes in my life. Mostly I try to avoid them. They are, in the parlance of my adopted Southland, hot messes. They are hard to live with, but easy to love. They are too interesting for their own good. Continue reading

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Homelessness Should Not Be a Crime

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Homelessness is not a crimeA Cup of Pending treats homelessness with an air of mirth. This is because I am a funny man with a highly developed sense of humor and too much irreverence to serve most sensitive political issues.

I realize, though, that homelessness is not funny. This is why I have tried to shed some light, however airily, on the problem in my book. I relied on several sources for the information I included. One was an excellent article by Malcolm Gladwell that appeared in the New Yorker in 2006 titled Million Dollar Murray. I recommend it to your attention. Continue reading

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A Cup of Pending

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Miami Skyline, A Cup of Pending Book Cover, Pending Coffee

Click Cover Image to Purchase

Pending coffee is the catalyst for a revenge scheme that goes hilariously awry.

It’s a laugh-stoked romp through Miami Beach, featuring a host of quirky characters. Reality TV that’s not quite real, Prosperous Christians circling the wagons to keep the poor at bay, high-profile charities that do more for their patrons than they do for the needy, the politics of growth and austerity, romance novels that pander to our baser instincts, South Beach sophistication where swaying palm trees shade unseemly goings on—all these and more are fair game in this wickedly funny second novel by Jonah Gibson.

Cliff Trask and his friend, Tommy, an unlikely pair of vagrants with some unusual resources, run afoul of a hedge-fund manager in an upscale coffee shop. Continue reading

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Writing Tips Are for Suckers!

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fountain pen, writingDo Long-suffering Bastards Write Better than Happy Schmucks?

I don’t write or post much about the craft of writing for several reasons:

  1. There are as many ways to write as there are writers, and we all have to develop the process that works for us. What works for me will probably not be useful for you, and vice versa.
  2. So much has already been said about the subject, a great deal of it from really good writers, that I can’t imagine I have very much to add to the subject.
  3. I have an abiding belief that writers, good ones at least, are born rather than made. William Faulkner agrees. (See below.)  Any tips that I might offer would be contrary to this belief, and, to the extent they looked like encouragement, would seduce those not born to the art to pour still more dreck into the growing flood in which I have to compete for attention. I’m just not interested.

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Top Places to Buy Inventory for Your Next Garage Sale

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garage sale items, junk, vintage stuffMoving is Such Sweet Sorrow

No, it’s not. It’s a pain in the ass!

We’re moving. Not right away, but soon enough. We’re sure to be moving into a smaller place, so getting ready to move is all about downsizing and offloading. A garage sale is in our immediate future. That means going through all the stuff we own and making the decision: keep, sell, or discard. It’s not so much that the individual decisions are hard to make. It’s that there are so many of them to be made.

We own a lot of stuff. Before I decided to try writing for a living, I brought home regular paychecks. Weekends, we would go out and spend those checks accumulating stuff to store at home. Some things store better than others, and, when it comes time to sell off your storage problems, some things are more attractive to the people who show up in your driveway to beat you out of a nickel. Continue reading

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Essential Rhythms: Dancing with the Stars

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Om Is Only the Half of It!

Cosmic Clock FaceThere is a rhythm to the affairs of the universe. It has a beat. You can’t really dance to it because it is very, very slow. One beat takes two lifetimes. This is why the closest anyone has gotten to the sound of the universe is ‘om.‘ They could only register one lifetime’s worth before they shuffled off this mortal coil, and one lifetime’s worth is only half a beat. The sound of one complete beat, which takes two lifetimes, sounds more like ‘nom nom,’ which is the sound of the Universe chewing you up. Is it any wonder that most people don’t listen very closely?

All the other rhythms—the ones you can dance to—syncopate to this fundamental rhythm in wondrous, poetic ways. If you get out of step with these non-essential rhythms, you can assume that you are also out of step with the universe. It’s important to hear the beats all around you, and dance to the ones that have meaning in your life. Continue reading

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The Joy of Ritual

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RITUALS

cigarette ashI like a certain amount of ritual. Ritual is comforting. It unites people in purpose, allows them to celebrate their commonality even in the midst of diversity, and mitigates the nasty surprises that punctuate the rest of our lives.

I remember suggesting this to a young woman at a party when I was in college many years ago. She had just handed me a joint, which was traveling around the room from person to person. I saw it coming. I knew what to do with it. Continue reading

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The Perfect Martini – Both of Them

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A philosophical guide to (and recipes for) the most sophisticated, sublime, and American of cocktails

martini-19324_1280There are probably as many perfect martini recipes as there are martini drinkers—an unusual state of affairs when you consider that the drink has only two basic ingredients. It is hard to imagine that something so simple could have such a wide range of outcomes—from nearly divine to truly appalling.

Conceptually, the perfect martini is a fairly static and well-established thing. In execution, however, perfection becomes mercurial, ethereal, elusive . . . impossible even. Continue reading

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Stephen Hawking Shouldn’t Quit His Day Job

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Arguably Smart Isn’t Arguably Correct

Earth against a nebula

Curiosity Killed Schrodinger’s Cat!

I watched the inaugural episode of Discovery Channel’s series, Curiosity. In it, Dr. Steven Hawking, noted theoretical physicist, postulated that the immutable laws of nature prove that there is no God. I do not doubt that Hawking is a brilliant man who has contributed vast new insights in the fields of physics and cosmology, but, after watching this show, I have to conclude that he has left a lot of air in these particular postulations, and most of that air is hot. Continue reading