Words in a Row

The sprawl­ing, epic saga of four (or five, sort of) influ­en­tial authors, all of whom have, alas, joined the choir invis­i­ble, but who also, may all our flagons of ale in Val­hal­la ever be full, can­not sue me.

I know how to prove that men and women are fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent: Put a man and a woman into sep­a­rate rooms alone with a new appliance—say, a bread machine—and watch what hap­pens. The woman will make some bread. On the oth­er hand—bear in mind that this is a brand new appli­ance, right out of the […]

We’re still work­ing on Best Half’s new digs for her salon; I stopped by ear­ly this morn­ing on my way home from tak­ing Mom to the eye doc­tor to pick up some tools I need­ed and dis­cov­ered a pos­sum curled up sleep­ing on the side­walk in front of the door.   I thought “Aw, how […]

Today I’m binge-watch­ing Bob Ross. No, real­ly.

I like frogs. Not real frogs, in a ter­rar­i­um as pets. They aren’t exact­ly cud­dly. I do like frogs’ legs, though. They aren’t cud­dly either; just deli­cious. It’s just some­thing I like col­lect­ing. Frog stuff: Frogs on T‑shirts; Far Side car­toons that fea­ture frogs; ceram­ic frogs. Some folks col­lect Match­box cars; some folks col­lect com­ic […]

Before Rohyp­nol, Jethro Tull T‑shirts were, alas, the only way a lot of guys could get laid.

You’ve heard this say­ing: “If you don’t like the weath­er in (wher­ev­er you are), just wait five min­utes and it’ll change!” This, my friends, is Fake News. I’ve lived in, or spent enough time in, enough states to get an idea what the weath­er is like: Ore­gon, Wash­ing­ton (State and DC), Col­orado, Texas, Ari­zona, Flori­da […]

Call me Pope Ernie. Or His Holi­ness Ernest the Oneth, if you’re a Shi­ite Catholic.

I love the smell of The Sur­faris first thing in the morn­ing!

Are you angry? Hun­gry? Hangry? Emo­tions are con­fus­ing, so here’s a chart. If you’ve ever watched peo­ple argue online, you know the argu­men­t’s over the instant some­one posts a chart. You can’t argue with charts!

John Den­ver did­n’t die, kid. He just went home.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Ten years since she left us: Here’s to one of the great­est dogs of all time.

Inter­est­ing fac­toids about Led Zep­pelin. Smell at your own risk.

This post is about a song by The Right­eous Broth­ers. I don’t know if they real­ly were right­eous, but I do know they weren’t broth­ers.

Death has an iPhone 5s and a pair of Beats head­phones?

Our dogs got into a fight Mon­day. They say not to break up a dog fight, but I’m not gonna sit and watch them fight­ing in the liv­ing room. Sasha had pro­voked a num­ber of fights with Pep­per, and Pep­per would grab Sasha by the scruff of her neck and just pin her down while […]

In these abom­inably wretched vile trag­ic despi­ca­ble times, these times can be abject­ly shock­ing.

It’s been at least 35 years since I thought of this song. If you were in high school in the late ’70s, you’ll prob­a­bly shriek in hor­ror and out­rage just from see­ing the title and artist: “Chil­dren of the Sun” by Bil­ly Thor­pe. If, like me, you bought the album, you no doubt remem­ber Thor­pe […]

Writ­ing any­thing auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal is kind of like the sec­ond verse in that Neil Dia­mond song “I Am I Said”: Did you ever read about a frog Who dreamed of bein’ a king And then became one? Well except for the names And a few oth­er changes Like leav­ing out irrel­e­vant stuff and com­press­ing the time­line […]

And now, chil­dren, hear and remem­ber the tale of me, Bil­ly Paul, Mrs. Jones, my friend Rob, and my dog Meat­ball: Long, long ago, in a lit­tle state named Kansas, which no one wants to admit com­ing from except the clas­sic rock band Kansas and pos­si­bly Bob Dole, two young men and a dog were […]

You know what’s wrong with kids these days? I’ll tell ya what’s wrong with kids these days! When I was a kid, every­one I knew was famil­iar with the aria “Votre toast je peux vous le ren­dre” from the opera Car­men, aka “The Tore­ador Song” (skip ahead to 1:12): [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk26y9rL5UE[/embedyt] No, we weren’t opera […]

No Nazis were harmed in the pro­duc­tion of this film, unfor­tu­nate­ly.

I won­der if the boy’s name was Woody.

So this just hap­pened: I’ve got a bit of a stuffy nose today, which is good, because The S.O. has been suf­fer­ing with adult croup all week and that means I prob­a­bly haven’t caught it. So I said, “Hey; where’s the Mucinex?” Mean­ing, of course, the brand name of the pop­u­lar decon­ges­tant. Except that’s not […]

I didn’t look like a kid with big hands; I looked like a kid wear­ing a pair of those giant foam hands they use to play Slap­jack on the Tonight Show with Jim­my Fal­lon.