Recipe for an Ayn Rand Novel
While digging deep in the back of a kitchen cupboard I found the recipe for an Ayn Rand novel: In a large mixing bowl add a dash of pseudo-plot, preferably with the seeds removed as to cut down on the spicy aftertaste, to a cup of utopian daydream. Pour into a large skillet. At a [...]
Return to the Bayshore Mall
Two weeks after I wrote “Death Stalks The Bayshore Mall,” Wal-Mart opened, and the North Coast Journal sent me back to see if anything had changed… “AFTER WAL-MART“
Death Stalks The Bayshore Mall
This afternoon Eureka California’s Bayshore Mall is bathed in a hue of desperation and ennui that no amount of sunlight pouring through skylights can brighten. More than half the storefronts are vacant. Shoppers are scarce. Roof tiles are dangling. Employees are daydreaming. Sales are dwindling. With many corporate stores going bankrupt or leaving the mall [...]
What More to Debate?
As the 2012 GOP Primary debates come to an end, one thing is certain: The Republican Party has gone mad, frothing from every orifice, Old-Yeller-in-the-corncrib-gnashing-at-the-hand-that-feeds, mad. For the casual observer this campaign season is just like all the rest. It’s the customary chest thumping of primates asserting they’re dominance. A few debates in I was about to [...]
Lifetree Cafe: The Rise of Atheism
Earth tones of tan and green, dark wood tables, the fragrant welcoming of coffee and cupcakes, such familiarities would lead any unsuspecting being to jam a knuckle in their eye to wipe away the crusty residue of sleep and prod any recollection of deliberately entering a Starbucks. But where is the barista with the flat-ironed [...]
Canonizing the Corpse
Pope John Paul the second was shot on Wednesday, May 13, 1981, in St. Peter’s Square at Vatican City. He was swiftly taken to AgostinoGemelli University Polyclinic for medical attention. Upon arrival the skilled physicians initiated five hours of emergency intestinal surgery, which required transfusions and a temporary colostomy. Once stabilized, he decreed that he [...]
Why Pay More!
Is it the way they end “why pay more” with an exclamation point instead of a question mark? Is it the multiplicity of the Spork? I’m not sure. I’m not sure why I’m willing to drive for at least twenty minutes — each direction — past a dozen or so family owned Mexican restaurants, past [...]
Meth Mouth: The Art of Jesse Wiedel
Jesse Wiedel paints Americana. That’s not to say his subjects are your run of the mill placated Protestants ornamented in shrouds of patriotic exceptionalism like the works of Norman Rockwell or Charles Wysocki. Nor are Wiedel’s creations Warholistic imitations screaming for attention like spoiled hipsters measuring their self-worth on the spectrum of irony. On his [...]
Deity and the Feast (Town Church pt 1)
Several months ago I received a text from a friend informing me that, if interested, I should contact an up and coming pastor named Nate Downey because he’s trying to find someone of contrasting belief systems, perhaps someone without belief, to converse with. At the time Nate was leading a particularly hectic life attempting to [...]
