a blog about this, that, and a few other things
GATHERED HERE are stories and articles that may be so, and may not. Some my be fact-based but embellished, others are just jokes that I rewrote to make them sound genuinely anecdotal.
Originally, I was just going to regurgitate old jokes that I liked, but there are now so many sources for so many jokes on the internet that we don’t need one from me! So you get these tall-tales-with-a-punchline instead.
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IMAGINE A DARKENED ROOM. Perhaps it’s your apartment which, with the lights on, is unimpressive. But it’s nighttime and all the lights are out. In the darkness, it’s . . . different. There is a single candle burning, giving off an illumination that softens everything. Little can be seen but a lot can be felt. [Read more] “the sexiest slow dancing in the dark album ever made?”
I’M CALLING LOCAL VENUES to rent a hall so that I can put on the first-ever Donald Trump NFT Collectors Convention. It doesn’t have to be a yuge hall because, unlike with comic books or records, I don’t need room for dealer’s tables because NFTs don’t take up any room because they’re not really real. [Read more] “the first-ever donald trump nft trading card collectors convention”
SEARCHING FOR IMAGES ON THE INTERNET for one project often leads to some very unexpected discoveries. In this case, I was looking for some sharp photos of a couple of rather rare Elvis Presley records from the ’50s when I came across True Strange magazine. There I saw what looked like a hint of prescience. [Read more] “fantastic prescience of the 21st century in a ’50s men’s magazine?”
NOAM CHOMSKY HAD AN INTERVIEW scheduled with Anand Giridharadas for The.Ink website. While each interview promises the potential of unique answers and even the possibility of new thoughts, depending on the interviewer, Chomsky prepared some notes to make certain he mentioned certain points. So, Noam called me and said, “Neal, here is what I am preparing to say in my interview with Anand Giridharadas: ‘The left position is you rarely support anyone. [Read more] “that’s what I’ve been telling people for fifty years!”
IT’S QUORA QUESTION TIME AGAIN. This time the question was about the Creator: “Why do people tend to blame God for the bad but never give him credit for the good?” Even though my experience with my fellow human beings who are believers is the exact opposite of that, I couldn’t resist livening up Quora with an answer:
God drops by my house once a month to play Cinch with me and a couple of my neighbors from Pennsylvania. [Read more] “blaming God for the bad but not crediting Him for the good”
I WORKED ON THIS PIECE FOR A WEEK! I intended to publish it on August 15, 2019, the first day of the 50th anniversary of Woodstock. But no matter what I wrote or how I wrote it, either I came out sounding far more conceited than I was in 1969 (ah, but I was so much older then) or the whole thing came out sounding like a sappy Hallmark movie. [Read more] “the newsstand’s “house hippie” heads for woodstock”
I’M NOT FEELING WELL. It could be some late-Summer thing or an advance taste of what the upcoming flu season has in store for us. But it’s a low-grade headache and fever, sore and swollen throat (that makes me squeak when I try to talk, so I don’t) (which some consider a blessing), and Grate Grommett in Heaven do my muscles ache! [Read more] “trump and forbes and the one that got away”
MANY PEOPLE with a pronounced right-leaning political persuasion have had the experience of meeting me and, perish forbid, engaging me in animated discourse. Many come away thinking me a librull arsehole. So, does that make me a left behind?
I found the lovely photo of the teddy bear in the woods at the top of this page on the Reigning Life site accompanying the article “Who Gets Left Behind” by Jordan Hardgrave. [Read more] “two men standing in a field, then there was one (on being a left behind)”
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a blog about this, that, and a few other things
Mystically liberal Virgo enjoys long walks alone in the city at night in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig who strives to live by the maxim, “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a college dropout (twice!). Occupationally, I have been a bartender, jewelry engraver, bouncer, landscape artist, and FEMA crew chief following the Great Flood of ’72 (and that was a job that I should never, ever have left).
I am also the final author of the original O’Sullivan Woodside price guides for record collectors and the original author of the Goldmine price guides for record collectors. As such, I was often referred to as the Price Guide Guru, and—as everyone should know—it behooves one to heed the words of a guru. (Unless, of course, you’re the Beatles.)
