A pal of mine just complained on Facebook that autocorrect keeps censoring a certain curseword and changing it to “duck.”
I told him that autocorrect HAD to censor it — because its meaning is fowl.
DAMN, I’M GOOD.
Monthly Archives: April 2019
Illustration of Canto 7 of Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno,” by Gustave Dore, 1892
The artist died in 1883. The date above refers to the illustration’s publication by Cassell and Company in its 1892 edition of Dante’s Inferno.
The caption reads, “Now seest thou, Son!/ The souls of those, whose anger overcame. — Canto VII, Lines 118-119.”
“I guess we often get the deep blues, both of us …”
“I guess we often get the deep blues, both of us, and wonder what it all means — the people, the buildings, the day by day things, the waste of time, of ourselves.”
— Charles Bukowski
French poster for “Vanilla Sky” (2001)
Paramount Pictures.
A few quick words on “The Walking Dead” Season 9 (2019)
I won’t go on at length here about how “The Walking Dead” has so vastly improved. I’ve already bored a couple of friends of mine to tears by practically evangelizing to them about how they should start watching the show again after having given up on it.
But now that Season 9 has concluded, I at least need to mention here that I loved it — enough to rate it a 9 out out of 10. There were some narrative problems, some of which were avoidable and some of which weren’t. (It’s always hard to smoothly script around the departures of major characters. This instance must have been especially tough.) But Season 9 is so radically improved in terms of its pacing, plotting and characterization that it might as well be an entirely different TV show. Not only does it move along at a nice, brisk pace, it also paints a fairly broad post-apocalyptic epic on a broad canvas. And it’s scary again, too — owing largely to the arrival of “The Whisperers,” who are among the best villains the show has ever offered. (Only the residents of Terminus come close to being creepier.)
If you’ve given up on the show, I understand that. The overall story has stagnated for years, most notably when it was mired in the static, over-long and depressing story arc in which our heroes were subjugated by Negan. But I recommend you sit down with Season 9 and at least give it a chance. You’ll be happy you did.
My latest get-rich-quick scheme.
I’m selling miracle pills to Donald Trump supporters. (If you take one per day, they’re 100 percent guaranteed to prevent any cancers caused by windmill noise.)
I figure I can satisfy false advertising laws by stating right in the ad that these are placebos. Nobody in my target demographic will know what that word means.
I can even say that they are derived from “snake oil.” None of them are going to get that either.
The new issue of Down in the Dirt magazine is now available at Amazon.
The March-April 2019 issue of Down in the Dirt magazine is now available at Amazon.com. (I shared with you guys on Wednesday that I was lucky to see my poem “hens staring upward” included in the volume.) The print edition is a 108-page paperback, and you can order it for $10.99 at this link:
Down in the Dirt magazine, March-April 2019 Issue
(As I mentioned here at the blog on Wednesday, you can also view a free online version of the March-April 2019 issue right here at the Scars Publications website.)
Here’s a big thanks to Editor Janet Kuypers for allowing me to share my voice with Down in the Dirt’s wonderfully talented community of writers and artists!
“The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost
“The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
“The Torture of Prometheus,”Gioacchino Assereto, 17th Century
Between 1620 and 1648. Oil on canvas.
If you haven’t seen this, then you don’t know Jack about London.
Sonoma State University in California placed all of Jack London’s work online in one handy reference. You can find The Call of the Wild and White Fang here, along with the short story White Silence.
Click here: Jack London’s Writings
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 