Over the past few years I have totaled two cars, battled the IRS, lost my mother to Alzheimer’s, discovered that I have Parkinson’s Disease, gotten divorced and moved into a small (but pleasant) apartment.  A little over a month ago I lost my job and all of my health benefits. … Read full post »

 I always crush my cheeseburgers before I eat them.  I lean down hard on them with my palms like I’m doing chest compressions and squash them flat. Besides making the tall stack easier to eat, this squeezes the air out and brings the constituent cheeseburger elements within clo/… Read full post »

There is no charge for what I am about to disclose.  This is completely free.  It is my gift to you for the summer, to do with as you please.  Admittedly, I’m sure that I’m not the first person to stumble upon this, there is, after all, nothing new in the… Read full post »

My first real job after graduating from college was as a graveyard shift lab assistant at the huge Chevron Research Facility in Richmond, California.  My job entailed walking like a ghost through the empty facility from midnight until dawn, taking samples, moderating temperatures and gene… Read full post »

It is a typical Tuesday morning.  A classroom of behaviorally challenged* kids are enjoying the relative calm of the mid-morning snack.  (*Behaviorally challenged is a polite way of saying that these kids are completely incapable of sharing, empathizing or caring about anything or anyone ot/… Read full post »

I am outraged that some pathetic, worthless, infected hangnail of society with multiple assault weapons can enter an elementary school and shoot small, innocent children and their teachers so many times that they are unrecognizable.

I am outraged that the weapons and ammo were easily acquired from t… Read full post »

I'd at least appreciate a chance to say good-bye.  It took me three rounds of error messages and "you-can't-get-here-from-theres" just to reach this site this morning.  Once I got here it ate my message.  I'll give it one more try.

I've been just about as patient with OS as anyone but… Read full post »

About 3.67* years ago, I sat down and wrote my first blog on OS.  At the time, I knew little about blogging and thought that bloggers had to choose a narrow vein of writing according to their specialty: politics, sports, tuning motorcycles, making bundt cakes… whatever.  So I decided/… Read full post »

A trip of any consequence begins and ends by being squeezed through a very tight sphincter.  All of the requisite possessions and provisions must first be stuffed and squeezed into too-small bags.  Those bags must then be hauled, dragged and schlepped through airports and terminals,/… Read full post »

(I am currently traveling in the west with my daughter.  This is the first in a series of installments of our adventures.  Sorry, no pictures till we return...)

“Whoaa!”  I utter as I press on the brakes and the little rental car slows on the narrow mountain/… Read full post »

(Posted from somewhere in central Idaho...)

“This is on me.  Welcome to Chicago.”

And with this the man known as Chicago Guy whips out his credit card and steps up to the cash register at the sandwich counter in the downtown farmer’s market.  I quickly stuff my wallet ba/… Read full post »

I’ve never been much of one to become overly concerned with what the names of things are.  As a science teacher, I am constantly presented with little glimpses and pieces of nature and asked: “what IS this?”   And by asking, they expect something ecosystematically gen… Read full post »

Last week the internet reached out and told me that the world’s oldest zoo-born hippopotamus had passed away in Europe.  At the time of its death it was sixty-one years old. 

I sit here reflecting upon the fact that I am now older than every single zoo-born… Read full post »

That was me.  I was the one sitting between Thelma and Louise in the front seat of the dusty blue Thunderbird convertible as we rocketed off the top of the red sandstone cliff and out into freedom.  It was at that precise moment that we gave ourselves up to gravity,/… Read full post »

(I’ve noticed a number of responses recently to an Open Call on the general question of “Why Am I Single?”.  I think I’m late to the party, but this is my response.)

My first wife was my high school sweetheart, a girl who lived at the other end of my/… Read full post »

There are few things as beautiful and as reassuring as the solid sound and feel of stepping into an incoming tennis ball, catching it on the rise and driving it back on a straight line about an inch above the net.  You don’t hit the ball with your racquet; you… Read full post »

I am up before dawn.  The sun will soon rise behind me.  Dark and cold, the sky is murky blue-gray.  The tips of distant mountain peaks are all that seem warmed, reflecting the faint alpine-glow of first light.  Far below them the meadow in which I sit is damp, dark, still. … Read full post »

This story requires a photograph.  A photograph would make it easier to convince you that what I saw was real. But unfortunately it would be a photograph that is virtually impossible to take.  Not completely impossible – a tripod and a long exposure would probably capture somet… Read full post »

I was listening to Fat Rush Limbaugh yesterday as I drove around town running errands.  I play a game with Limbaugh; I try to see how long I can listen before I turn him off in disgust.

Yesterday he was going on and on and on about Obama… this time about… Read full post »

(She goes by many names but “Candace” is her real name and how she is best known.  She is a regular contributor here and elsewhere.  You probably know her but if you’re new here you may not.  But that’s not the point.  Her brother died recent/… Read full post »

I work at a school for special needs children, and, as a male, I am generally surrounded and out-numbered by women to a point of suffocation.  As an essentially harmless old man, I tend to become invisible and therefore have become something of an authority on how women act when… Read full post »

This particular meander began for me a number of years ago when Eric Clapton disassembled his screaming rock and roll classic Layla and lovingly rebuilt it and rearranged it into the hypnotic, folky, acoustic Layla that most people are familiar with today.  That rearrangement was an amazi/… Read full post »

^{(For reasons that only OS understands, it won't allow me to upload photos this morning.  To see graphic, nude photos of the dead baby doll please visit jeff-howe.net.      Also new this morning: a repost of "Unorthodox Church of the Holy Moly (stories) and/}… Read full post »

What exactly does a heat-packing, god-fearing, constitution-defending American have to do to vote around here?  That’s the question that many were asking here in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County last week after the City Fathers and Mothers of tiny Marctic Township moved to have the to… Read full post »

Fortunately, realization came to me slowly rather than suddenly.  There was no revealing moment of great suspense: no shocked faces, no crying loved ones, no wine glasses dropping suddenly to the floor.  Instead it came to me in small increments of understanding: a problem, the possibility,… Read full post »