IF WE BUILD IT, THEY will come — again. First, you need to know what a “cargo cult” is: a folk religion among some groups of Melanesian Islanders who believed that they could attract cargo-carrying airplanes by engaging in sympathetic…
Tag: “Bob”
Cult of the Hidden Joke.
First Graf: The Dharma Bums
IN MANY WAYS, THIS 1958 book is better than the earlier On the Road. Kerouac’s signature stream-of-consciousness narrative style is more flowy, and the novel’s lionized centerperson (poet Gary Snyder, or “Japhy Ryder” as tDB calls him) a more noble…
Blow ‘Em Out
AS DETAILED IN A PREVIOUS post (c. 2010), every March my sister asks what I would like for my birthday (it’s on the 22d, BTW) and my answer is always the same: “I already have everything I need.” That said,…
The Brotherhood of Blood
SOMETHING ELSE THAT HASN’T SURVIVED into adulthood is the kid-concept of “blood brotherhood.” It works like this: Two boys (did girls ever do this?) make an incision or a pinprick on their thumbs, then rub the wounds together. “Now we…
There is no such thing as ‘too much garlic.'”
— Your author, in a culinarily inspired moment
Ol’ Thinkypants’ Advice For Those Purporting To Know What G?d Wants (Or, Especially, Hates)
“OH, MAAAN — DON’T FALL INTO that trap.”
Well, I ain’t often right, but I’ve never been wrong —
It seldom turns out the way it does in the song.
Once in a while, you get shown the light
In the strangest of places, if you look at it right…”
— Robert Hunter, a”h
Confessions of an Earnest High School Dropout
IT ENDED LIKE THIS: “MRS. J—–,” I said evenly, “you should work for the city sewer department instead of teaching English — because you know more about scat than you do about good writing.” Except I didn’t say “scat.” And…
Fiction: Act of Who?
“THANK YOU FOR CALLING TOTAL Auto, may I help you?” “Yes, my car was swept away in the recent floods, and I would like to file a claim.” “I’m sorry sir, but flood coverage isn’t included in any of our…
Words to Bring Back: “Pink”
– Definition (per SubGenius usage): adj. Happily and/or militantly vapid and mediocre; commercially soulless n. One who or that which exhibits these traits. – Used in a sentence: adj. “I’m surprised to see the otherwise excellently talented Tom Hanks in…
The only difference between a madman and myself is that I am not mad.”
— Salvador Dali
5 Thoughts: Comix with an X
1. CRUMB. GRIFFITH. SHELTON. THESE (AND other “sequential artists“) were the visual architects of my immediate post-adolescent universe; whose spare-but-dense works were strewn reverently on the couches and mattresses of my very late teens and very early 20s; whose fractured…