The Thing From Bloggy Swamp

"Music is real--the rest is scenery." Fats Waller

Con Chapman

Con Chapman
Location
Boston, Massachusetts, US of A
Birthday
September 28
Bio
. . . is a frequent contributor to The Boston Herald, Cronk News, Fictionique and Punchnel's.

MY RECENT POSTS

(With apologies to Joe and Rose Lee Maphis even though they don’t need ‘em ‘cause they’re already dead.)

Pink tights, tu-tus and schmal-tzy music
Is the only kind of life you’ll ever understand.
Pink tights, tu-tus and schmal-tzy music
You’ll never make a wife to a/… Read full post »

MAY 17, 2013 9:34AM

The Maximum Security Book Group

          An alternative sentencing program in Massachusetts allows felons to choose between going to jail or joining a book club. 

                    … Read full post »

Is Rumer, the Anglo-Pakistani chanteuse with a retro-pop heart, the new Karen Carpenter?Read full post »

MAY 16, 2013 8:20AM

Big Kitty & Baby Cat

I grew up with a cat whose name was Big Kitty,
   the ruler with terror of our provincial city.
Part Tugboat Annie, part Calamity Jane,
   her main purpose in life was the infliction of pain.

She lived with us and her spinster daughter,
   a kitten no one took, much… Read full post »

MAY 15, 2013 9:13PM

I Love Croutons

I love croutons, I really really do.
I like them in soup, and I like them in stew.

I like it when they strike my palate
after having been sprinkled upon a salad.

But croutons, I’m told, have bad carbohydrates
Which, when ingested, tend to migrate

to stomachs and… Read full post »

COLUMBUS, Ohio. Verrill Barnes is a busy tattoo artist in this bustling Midwestern city, and his calendar is booked solid for the next six weeks. “I’m making money hand over fist,” he says soberly, “but I’m making time this afternoon to give something back.”

%IMARead full post »

Supermodel Gisele Bundchen had “to hold really still whilst makeup was applied to her armpits.”

The Boston Herald

It was 6:30 a.m., and my CD player-alarm clock sounded the opening notes of… Read full post »

MAY 14, 2013 7:56AM

Jack Garner, Parsley Farmer

Jack Garner gazed out over the farm that had been in his family for three generations and gave out a sigh of exasperation. He looked down the rows of curly leaf parsley, often used as a garnish, and thought back to the lessons he had learned bouncing on his father’s

Read full post »

BROOKLINE, Mass.  This overwhelmingly liberal community is situated just west of Boston’s Kenmore Square, a proximity that sometimes makes for uncomfortable encounters between drunken sports fans and nightclub habitues to the east and more pacific diners from Brookline’s many vegeta

Read full post »
MAY 9, 2013 6:52PM

Cuteness vs. Astuteness

If I had to choose between a face full of cuteness
and what Veblen called the physiognomy of astuteness
I’d opt in a minute for the upraised eyebrow
arching hairwards as high as the eye goes.

A woman endowed with a skeptical look
is an enigmatic and inscrutable thing
while the… Read full post »

MAY 8, 2013 6:54PM

Your Bug Advisor

There are between six and ten million species of insects, but only one for humans.  Hardly seems like a fair fight, which is why you need Your Bug Advisor on your side!

Dear Bug Advisor:

I have carpenter bees–I don’t mean me personally, I mean my house.&n

Read full post »

Despite the advances that the self-esteem movement has made, most people know in their hearts that what counts is not how they feel about themselves, but what they actually accomplish in the real world.  Or as two-time Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Parcells succinctly put it, “You ar

Read full post »

SOMERVILLE, Mass.  Eli Tucker is a twenty-eight year old man with above-average looks and a good job, but his self-esteem barely registers on the Kinsdorph-Eisenstat Personality Index.  “Eli bears the scars of an abusive relationship,” says Tom Selfkirk, executive director… Read full post »

BECKET, Mass. This sleepy western Massachusetts town is home to St. Judith College, the only institution of higher learning in the world named after the patron saint of cats, but that’s not the explanation for the high number of cat lovers here this weekend. “I have learned so much… Read full post »

MAY 5, 2013 11:55AM

Sense About Scents!

Scientists tell us that scent is the strongest link to memory: who can forget French writer Marcel Proust and his little madeleines? Of course you can’t forget it if you never read Proust, which you probably haven’t, in which case just think for a moment how your brother-in-law Gene smel… Read full post »

MAY 4, 2013 11:57AM

The Last Game

Don’t come ’round here looking for the fresh, clean, family-friendly content this site is known for this afternoon. I’m taking off at 3:30 to watch my kid pitch what may be the final start of his high school career. He will take the mound today with a 3-0 record… Read full post »

(a poem whose title alone is longer than a haiku)

On Boston Common, one fine Sabbath
A horrid sound heard I;
It caused all but the stony deaf
To turn their heads to spy
From whence it came, and why.

And only I could answer that… Read full post »

  

SEDALIA, Mo.  It’s the final round of the third-grade spelling bee at Sacred Heart Elementary School in this small Midwestern town, and you could cut the tension in the school’s gymnasium with a wooden ice cream spoon.

       &n… Read full post »

Editor’s Pick
MAY 1, 2013 12:25PM

Great Gatsby Roulette

It was May of my senior year in college.  Everybody was coasting, knowing either what they were going to be doing the next year, or that they’d be doing nothing.  Except for one guy, Tom.

Tom had been accepted at medical school–Harvard, no less–so his future

Read full post »
          After Che Guevara beat him in a round of golf, Fidel Castro, a notoriously sore loser, converted a Cuban golf course into an art school and ordered a sports reporter fired.            &n… Read full post »