“GOODNESS!” It’s Aunt Doreen the Red Q-Tip queen. She’s a stick with a head shaped like an ear cleaner. Her fluffed up hair is orangey-red. She’s unstable like a table missing a leg. She is the biggest nut in this family-size bag. “What’s happened to you? You've lost sooooo much weight!” Her aqua contact lenses are popping out of her face. Her large protruding neck veins match the color of her eyes. Continue reading →

By Bob Fellman... There seems to be a standardized form on the internet for almost everything but I could not find a form for book reviews. Therefore, just for the fun of it, I have developed my own form which fits the pattern of most book reviews you have probably read. Here is how it goes: While this first-time novelist that I am to write about undoubtedly has high aspirations, so did Ernest Hemingway when he had his first, but widely panned, novel published. Today few people remember that book, The Bell Tolls for an Old Man Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro While the Sun Also Rose in the Afternoon. To his credit, this fiasco of a book taught Hemingway the skill of brevity for which he later became famous by making sure that none of his sentences — let alone book titles — ever exceeded seven words. Continue reading →

By Bob Fellman... Dishwashers have to be one of mankind’s greatest inventions. When I lived off campus in college, my two roommates and I did not have a dishwasher. Every time you needed a plate, you had to reach into the kitchen sink full of weeks-old scummy water and feel for one, taking care to do this quickly so as to not dissolve too much of your flesh off your hand and arm. Then you rinsed the plate off, shook it dry, and used it for your meal (always a sandwich). Then you repeated the process ad infinitum. If this seems disgusting, you should have seen our bathroom sink and tub. Continue reading →

by Diane Sesler... Halloween. Reminds me of candy corn. I don’t like it. It brings back memories of a hairdo gone wrong. I had a wild hair a few Octobers ago and decided to get a new "do". I felt spontaneous and picked a salon at random. This is why I have stories to tell. I don’t always function well in the upstairs area. “Hi!” A too bubbly salon greeter shouts. “I want a cut and color,” I say, with way too much confidence. “Do you have an appointment?” She is too excited. This is the sign I missed. Continue reading →

By Diane Sesler... Enters Nuke the dog. An impressive muscular beast with a walnut size brain. A klutzy live wind-up energizer 9 year old dog who will run full blast into you. Bruises — I have many. My body looks like a war map. This is our 100 pound Doberman who chews on rocks as a hobby. Grown UPS men fall off our porch when I open the door. Problem: He is the leader. I am untrained. Continue reading →

By Jim Hornsby... Calendars are curious things. Even as space-age technology accelerates its relentless drive to push publications into new electronic formats, calendars — stubbornly anchored in the past — return year after year in essentially the same form they have enjoyed since the days of ancient Rome. One might expect that fold-out calendars would be hopelessly obsolete by now, but every January new ones doggedly appear on desktops and kitchen walls everywhere. Continue reading →