A Surly Serbian Marie Kondo Broke My Shit
To provide indisputable proof that life is chaos and there is no justice in the world, Matthew’s four boxes filled with nothing more than more empty boxes made it unscathed.
The Minutes of Our Last Meeting | National Emergency Task Force
We’re being SUED and then we’ll be SUED again until it goes to the supreme COURT and we win when Kavanaugh’s vote butt CHUGS it in people’s faces.
Minding My Own Business
I watch birds fly and I wonder what that would be like. I see bees working together to get pollen and I wonder what that would be like. (By the way, I feel bad when I trap a fly in my car, because, you know, he’s never gonna find his way home.) I feel like I’d like to be a wolf or a bear. And, I also look at other groups of people, and I wonder what that would be like. That wondering about what it would be like to be them, often gives way to a jealousy about not being them.
![I Believe... [“Fragile” is an Invitation for Abuse]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/579fa3912994ca0eff850271/1550232487009-278IOE8Q4IVISHX1I42K/63D3D89E-A10F-476D-AACA-F8F058399C12.JPG)
I Believe... [“Fragile” is an Invitation for Abuse]
...that the height of delusional expectation is demonstrated most clearly when you write “Fragile” on a box being moved 2,000 miles cross-country. It’s like the box is a fat kid with a perpetually snotty nose in tight yellow Adidas shorts and a stutter — the bullies get in line to toss him under a couch.
Letting Go of the Things We Love
Gun to head, I’d have told you I was a leg man over a boobs guy and meant it. So much so, that in my early-twenties, after talking about it for years, I finally stole a mannequin leg from a mall department store. Okay, I didn’t steal it, my friend, Chris Gallant stole it. We were walking out of Dillards (maybe it was Robinsons-May), and I was saying, again, how badly I wanted to steal one of those legs. Chris, tired of the same old talk and no action, grabbed a leg decked out in DKNY thigh-high pantyhose just before exiting through the automatic doors. We barely picked up our pace as we headed to the car.
“Here’s your fucking leg,” he said.
How I Wish He Loved Me
How I wish he loved me. Overheard conversations. His indifference, his levity. Always a player, play-ah, bitches, beech-as. I know I'm stupid. Don't mind being stupid for him. He knows I'm stupid for him. Takes me for granted. I want to be taken for granted.
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.
Noble X — Episode 20: Contemplating Surrender
They give him ibuprofen and try to get him to drink water. Paul lies in the kitchen on the cold linoleum floor, writhing in pain while John and Colin sit at the table, now both riding Paul’s emotional rollercoaster.
American Shithole #47 | Red Fish, Blue Fish, Fuck Fish, You Fish?
But first, before they throw themselves like chum to sharks, every democrat must apologize.
Right. I can see why they’re all lining up to get it out of the way early. The hypocrisy of singling out moments of stupidity every well-meaning democrat must now say they are “sorry” for, while this criminally incompetent president sits atop a mountain of bullshit, deceit, cruelty and treachery, is likely hard for them to stomach.
It’s like comparing parking tickets to pedophilia.
Take the gloves off, Democratic Party, and start swinging like you’re fighting for your country’s life — because you are. Stop fucking Gillibrand-ing each other; stay fucking unified.
Remember the Al Franken!
Tangibility of Happiness
He always notices. No one else does. Those buttery eyes, like velvet embraces when they glance upon you. How is it possible for eyes to hold the universe? He can’t be human. He’s a man who moves with wings upon his shoulders, his feet just above the dirty ground, never soiled by the earth. And he always notices you.
The Minutes of Our Last Meeting | Machine Gun America
The family that shoots together, shoots together.
Detritus Exasperated Love
![Farewell to Chicago [1989–2019]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/579fa3912994ca0eff850271/1548431993683-42WFP2CAJL21Y54UC948/IMG_0930.JPG)
Farewell to Chicago [1989–2019]
![I Believe... [We’re All Just Lazier Than Ted Bundy]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/579fa3912994ca0eff850271/1549564559223-FWBS8N173B3OUI0V9DSI/63D3D89E-A10F-476D-AACA-F8F058399C12.JPG)
I Believe... [We’re All Just Lazier Than Ted Bundy]
...that our collective fascination with serial killers is fucking morbid and shows us all to be the monsters who think — a lot — about murdering people but lack the gumption.
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.”
The Archeology of a Rolling Stone
I’m not nostalgic for the place but I feel that tug of melancholy leaving behind the memories. Yet the best part about memories is that, at least until I get that delicious dementia, they come with me.
Progressive Unity in the Face of MAGA
"OK. To start off, I want to open up the discussion with a simple question. Was a vote for Donald Trump a racist act? If he ran his campaign on racist rhetoric was the act of voting for him a sign that you are a racist as well?"
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of February 3, 2019
Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is an opportunity. Knowledge is cunning.
The White People I Hate
I’m a white guy. My wife is white, by today’s standards anyway. By that, I mean she’s Sicilian. She doesn’t speak Italian but her parents did. She is of Sicilian descent, shall we say. And there was a time not too long ago in American history where Italians, specifically Sicilians (you know, the brownish ones), we’re not truly considered white. Maybe the measure back then was, “Would they sell him the KKK robe?” And the answer in my wife’s parents’ case would be “No. Don’t sell those Sicilians this nice, fresh, white KKK robe.” See what I mean. Societal constructs, blah blah blah, etc.
American Shithole #46 | The Beautiful Things: PBS
Look, I’m a statist. I’m hardwired for cooperation. I like societies. I like the things societies provide. I don’t think it would be better if society collapsed and I had to shit in the woods every day.
When I think of PBS, I think of the very best our society has to offer.
PBS: Because nobody really likes to shit in the woods.
...that intense and deep aren’t the same thing even if you’ve convinced yourself they are. Intense is momentary and fleeting; deep is the result of time and energy.