This By the Book interview with John Waters in Sunday’s New York Times was all kinds of awesome, from his citing Ignatius J. Reilly as his favorite fictional hero to his cranky anticipation of the English translation of the next installment in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “My Struggle.” But his book recommendation for President Trump was […]
Category Archives: Assorted Bob
Getting back in step by going to the dogs
There are a lot of great reasons to own a dog. But one of the best is that it keeps me active. Want proof? This is from the pedometer on my iPhone. Notice how my step counts drop precipitously after Ozzy’s death in November. Then in April they start to climb again. Walking Sunshine three […]
Did you ever get the feeling that someone’s giving you the bird?
My favorite books and music from 2016
Some of these works were new last year. Some were just new to me. Considering I spent almost half the year plodding through Gravity’s Rainbow, my reading list wasn’t too bad. Hoping to ramp that up this year. Most of my new music is coming from listening to my favorite radio stations via the Internet: […]
New Year’s Rainbow
(with apologies to Thomas Pynchon, Monty Python and the Kenosha Kid) May there be no masturbators in your stacks No Trumps in your tulips No communists in your kitchen, eating your wife’s jam May the pig hero Plechazunga Drive off the Norse invaders in your life. May Slothrop’s holy hardon Keep you safe from alt-right […]
There’s gold at the end of Gravity’s Rainbow … I think
It wasn’t pretty, but after six months of following Slothrop through the debris of post World War II Europe, I’ve finally arrived at the end of Gravity’s Rainbow. Our attempted reading group crashed and burned as members, including me, were pulled away by their respective realities. There was a solid 8 weeks or so where I was […]
Back for seconds at Pho Peace Ranch
We enjoyed last week’s pho and music so much we went back to Fur Peace Ranch for seconds today. John and Jorma were awesome (nice versions of All Along the Watchtower, I Shall Be Released, Sugaree and other great tunes, but This Land Is Your Land really resonated with me as 2016 lurches to a […]
Winter solstice sunset from Radar Hill, Athens, OH
The opioid scourge, brought to you by big pharma
I’ve read several great pieces on the opioid epidemic recently. It’s good to see this getting the coverage it deserves, but I can’t help but wonder how it would differ if the victims were minorities instead of poor whites. Somehow I suspect we’d be (wrongly) blaming it on their lack of work ethic, etc. Regardless, this story in […]
Because he’s a businessman …
“But that’s just what you folks need,” Bloody Chiclitz interjects. “Get some business people in there to run it right, instead of having the government run everything. Your left hand doesn’t know what your right hand’s doing! You know that?” — Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow