Two years ago, on the first day of 2010 and the rest of my life, I pinched my nose and cannonballed off the high dive into my first OS dustup.  It was a leap of glorious ignorance, clad in the ragged Speedo/… Read full post »

I was… Read full post »

And it would have to be magic.  Pixie dust or some really fine coke and rose colored glasses for the lady so she'd see someone other than a Col. Sanders lookalike with the struggling charm of Elmer Fudd's feckless cousin Fester.  With that taken care of, guaranteed no fail… Read full post »

Deadly in the grocery aisles

Where they wait

To strike

After toying with unbeknownst prey,

Luring with surrogates their hidden carnivorous power

Quiet, allowing implicit swagger in the dress,

Forward cap tilt reveals enough brown hair gleam,

Sleek cheek… Read full post »

Maybe Santa's gotten too old to do it all himself anymore.  In a way, that's disappointing.  He always brought the gifts - all of them, even the ones from relatives - and the tree and he decorated the tree, all by himself while my sister and I and our parents… Read full post »

Clarification: Might be Gingrich's recipe.

 

This from Margaret Gunning's blog: 

It's that time again, and I'm wondering WHY it is that no one seems to like fruitcake.

Fruitcake is festive. Fruitcake is friendly.

Fruitcake has such fine and wholesome ingred

… Read full post »

[Taking a break from doing my own writing for the second time this week.  This is a happier story than the last one, about the men trapped on the USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor. It is another WWII septuagenarian tale, but of a different kind of heroism.  The 1963… Read full post »

[I first heard this terrible story in the early days of the Internet, probably pre-Google, from a newspaper colleague.  She covered the Navy at the time and had heard it from one of her sources.  I wanted to research it and write it up… Read full post »

I've just been handed this bulletin:  GOP National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has admitted that three new candidates are being groomed to step into the race for the party's presidential nomination in the event more untoward occurrences nudge the two leading contenders from the race.

Prie… Read full post »

Possibly a stretch to say Rufus's end resembled tragedy in the classic sense.  The pigmy rooster didn't take any noticeable pride in his special ability, no pride beyond the usual arrogance of the ordinary rooster. 

His demise should not be blamed on the amazing rapport he'd develop… Read full post »

Yet the very authenticity of her… Read full post »

It was my moment. The phrase flashed on and off in my head like the blue neon Pabst in the window down at Morey's. A tombstone then floated into view and there it was again, engraved beneath my name: "Hobbled to glory."

Clearly this was it.  All my days'… Read full post »

Not much to say about this other than to suggest you turn your speakers up and make sure you have room to shake and dance.

Watch this and then try to dispute music can bring us all together, if only we give it a chance.

My feet are still jumping.

 … Read full post »

My thanks to fellow OSer Peter Winkler for posting a link in his comment on Ed Gorman's blog about the advent of Amazon's expansion into publishing more than just ebooks.  Peter's link is to a piece by Ruth Franklin in The New Republic with the rather startling title, Why… Read full post »

Might have stumbled upon a way to rid the feed of the vermin.  A simple call to SPAMFIGHTER.  Why didn't I think of this before?

SPAMFIGHTER answered my call immediately.  Glad to help, said he.  Here's what he did:  Went straight to the feed, called… Read full post »

Margaret Gunning posted this and other gifs involving cats on her wonderful blog House of Dreams.   I'd put them all up here, but that would use up too much of my skimpy bandwidth allotment.  I copied this one because we have roosters and we have a cat - Jax… Read full post »