Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of February 10, 2019
Valentine’s Day isn’t a dumb holiday. It’s a day of self-help. Valentine’s Day gives you the opportunity to manage your anxiety, pride, and feelings of loneliness. And according to Brian Sweeney, it’s the best day to eat ass and gargle nut.
Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas: Advice from a Former Las Vegan to the Valley’s Newest
At the time of this writing, my friend and former Chicago-based poet, model, and musician, Dana Jerman is residing in her new home in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her husband, co-editor of Literate Ape, longtime storyteller mainstay, and man with a complicated relationship with his feet, Don Hall is just three days out from loading up the last vestiges of their Chicago life — forty years between the two of them — into his Prius to make the drive west and begin a new adventure in a part of America Joseph Smith once referred to as a “great place to do anal with child brides and legally take money from the Jews.”
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of February 3, 2019
Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is an opportunity. Knowledge is cunning.
Woke Super Bowl Commercials
Volkswagen – “Schindler’s Car”
Popular VW models transform into one another through the decades bringing us to today.
[V.O. – MAN]
A lot has changed in eighty years.
The way we live. The way we drive. The way we don’t kill Jews.
The all new 2019 Volkswagen Jetta. It’s not a Jew killer.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of January 27, 2019
It’s too soon to write Howard Schultz off as yet another oligarch or self-serving rich pud like Ross Perot with a self-righteous taste for the presidency. Just as I think it’s too soon to think that AOC is the Second Coming of Christ. Give them time. Maybe things’ll play out different than we assume. Maybe.
A Life Lesson from the Frozen Mailman
Perhaps he turned down my offer to warm up, thaw his beard, and revive his nose because he knew, as too many of us never learn or learn too late, that once you stop something you set out to achieve, it’s nearly impossible to start again.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of January 20, 2019
Having privilege is not inherently a bad thing. It does not define who you are. What you do with that privilege does. Do you use it to help people or hurt people? Bobby Kennedy is not Donald Trump and Donald Trump is no Bobby Kennedy. (Baby brother Teddy was no Bobby either when he used his privilege to let a dead girl get waterlogged in his sunken car.)
Buying Whores for Chuck Berry and a Threat from Jerry Lee Lewis
“You work for the radio station?” he asked again.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Lewis. I’m Dr. Dave Maxwell. What can I help you with?” Little Richard walked past us, and he, too, looked frail and worn down. The Killer glared at him as he passed. The Innovator didn’t seem to notice. Jerry Lee turned his gaze back at me, his eyes smaller now, his face taut with rage.
“Can you do me a favor, boy?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t let that niggah touch my pianah.” He and his two men went on their way.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of January 13, 2019
Knowledge isn’t power. Knowledge is an opportunity.
Is Marketing the Root of All Evil?
Gillette doesn’t feel like a sales pitch. It feels genuine. It is a marketing success. But also, “Buy our razors because Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s ain’t woke like we are.” There’s just no escaping it, for-profit companies need our money, and they’ll do anything to get it. In this case, Gillette did it right.
An Impeached Trump is a More Powerful Trump
We’re not just facing Trump’s wrath or the democratic trouble it will incite. We have to be mindful of the die-hard Trump supporters.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of January 6, 2019
You don’t need balloons or cupcakes to be excited about learning your baby’s sex. And yes, it’s a sex. It’s never gender. Gender is a social construct, and for even the most pro-life pro-lifers out there, an unborn child/fetus/uterine turd cannot, by the laws of science, be socialized. Talk to it, play music for it, fine. You can’t make it like pink or blue in the womb. If you need to be surprised about your baby’s sex, listen to what your OB or midwife tells you during pregnancy, or at the time of birth. Getting all geared up over the sex of a child is exactly why we have sexism. So, please, for the sake of our future, knock it the fuck off.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | First Week of 2019
David, if you’re going to do the Daily Mini New York Times Crossword Puzzle, it’ll help if you know the difference between “fury” and “furry.” You idiot.
2018: In Like a Savage Lion, Out Like a Rabid Lamb
Christmas Day 2018, Hammond, Illinois — My wife is a sleep. My son is asleep. My in-laws, I assume, are asleep. Santa, I hope with all my heart, is ripped on the good scotch and burning off the last of his Christmas Spirit on a horned and lubed up Mrs. Claus. And me, I’m awake with thoughts of family and the geriatric year 2018. It was a year many people have complained about. And for many, it wasn’t easy. Immigrants, would-be immigrants; refugees, would-be refugees… They had a rough go. Families of Parkland, Florida. The storms, the fires… There were some large scale FUBAR situations for sure. And these are situations we all need to reconcile with someday soon — a must before we meet our maker. But on the smaller scale of individuality, things were different. In hindsight — which is all we have left at this point, really — 2018 wasn’t so bad.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of December 23, 2018
The big gifts from my wife this Christmas was a Simple Human trashcan for the kitchen, and the Verilux HappyLight Lucent. See, boys and girls, it’s easy to buy presents for a neat freak with a chronic case of the mulligrubs.
I’m still in the infant stage of its use but so far, this HappyLight thing seems to be doing the trick. I do feel better. Plus, I think it’s making my penis bigger.
Best of Literate Ape 2018 | Don Hall Dies & Other High Points
2018 was a good year for The Ape. As Hall and I bait the internet for search results, we’re offering up our year-in-review, Best of The Ape. He has his opinions and I have mine. And if they differ, well, that’s what sometimes makes us a great team.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of December 16, 2018
Actual advice I shouldn’t have given to a woman who is 34 weeks pregnant: “Just remember to take care of yourself, too. You’re still your own person. Your baby doesn’t need you to give him everything. He’ll be fine without you. Treat yourself.”
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of December 9, 2018
If Lady Gaga can sing Baby, It’s Cold Outside with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tony Bennett, it can’t be that bad. Unless she likes being raped or whatever.
Lena Dunham is the Female Version of Brett Kavanaugh
Lena Dunham is the female version of Brett Kavanaugh. Dunham is saturated in privilege and showers herself in entitlement. She has tried to disguise it as feminism but it’s not. It’s rich, white, East Coast Society privileged entitlement. Simple as that. And white women feminist have turned a blind eye to her bullshit for too long.
George H.W. Bush and a Young Boy’s Foray into Politics
I was confused. Had I done something wrong? What the hell was a democrat and why didn’t they like republicans? And what was a republican, anyway? I looked at one of the pamphlets. Maybe I’d discover something awful about this George Bush guy. But nothing terrible was there: flew a plane in World War II, was our Vice President, did something with something called the CIA, was a congressman — whatever that was. I was nervous to deliver any more pamphlets. For the rest of my route, if it looked like someone was home, I avoided the house completely.
You can’t pour from an empty cup, right? Well, you also can’t create, connect, or inspire when you’re running on fumes.