If the soul is darkened By a fear it cannot name If the mind is baffled When the rules don’t fit the game Who will answer? Never, EVER, play the other guy’s game. That sensible lesson resounds thru millennia from Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” down to Damon Runyon’s streets of New York. Alas and alack, that’s exactly what brought us to World War Three -- which … [Read more...]
Last Chance Joe meets Sherlock Holmes
Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes Made of ticky-tacky, little boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same” -- Pete Seeger Just whose idea was it that all those apartments and high rises sprouting like weeds in this backwater boomtown should evoke the latest in minimum security prison chic? Gloomy places beget gloomy people. The ambient … [Read more...]
Upsy daisy Nevada crazy
A Carson City judge just nuked the state teachers union’s petition to place the Oakland A’s Gomorrah South corporate welfare stadium to a vote of taxpayers who will get stuck with the tab. Letting people vote? In Nevada? Outrageous. At the same time, a new union of sorts for renters was announced. One outta two ain’t bad. Said renters’ rights outfit is about half a … [Read more...]
A brief history of the end of the world
“Thou shalt not kill.” -- God I don’t remember Moses (or was it Charlton Heston?) including any list of exceptions to that order. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention. Alas and alack, World War Three has already begun. Of 195 countries on this little blue marble, 110 are currently shooting, according to the Geneva Academy. That’s well over half, 56 percent. The world’s … [Read more...]
Letter to the Lord of War
“I have no mother now. I have no father. I cannot bring another brother to the world.” — Antigone You got him at last, Mars, Lord of War. My bro cheated your curses for 56 years but you finally took him last week, you devil’s spawn of rabid dogs. In his final days, you mocked him with your dandy little sport in Ukraine. Then, you shamed him with the beginnings of what … [Read more...]
Wasting workers where everybody knows your name
If your sister or daughter were killed on the job because the boss didn’t care about safety, you’d do something, right? For years, I’ve been waiting for Hollywood to right an old wrong, so let’s reopen the wound and leAt it bleed anew. America has reached one helluva low ebb if the most bearable story in Monday’s New York Times involved the deaths of 146 workers. The … [Read more...]
The most dangerous animal in the world
Winter 1963 It felt like the world would freeze With John F. Kennedy And the Beatles “The most dangerous animal in world” was probably the title of one of the greatest speeches I ever heard, a work of ironic perfection: It was never given. I witnessed that jungle-worthy admonition as a 16 yeard-old kid seven decades ago. They came as part of a ridiculous … [Read more...]
Washoe will decide presidency in 2024
You are more important than you ever thought you could ever be, dear fellow denizens of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream. I’ve been practicing (and malpracticing, in the auguste opinions of defeated opposition) Nevada follytix for over half a century. I proceed from a healthy respect for history, an unfashionable pursuit as we abandon English and revert to … [Read more...]