The cicadas are here. They were crawling up out of the ground after seventeen patient years, drying their wings on the new beehives the Russians have installed. Mattski brought one over on his forefinger, and it was as spectacular a specimen as the ones from 1996: dark husky body and harmless, though menacing, bright red […]

Image of the bookish-appearing General Ignacio Zargoza. Courtesy of the Museo Nacional De Historia, INAH) There is no gunfire this morning at Refuge Farm- at least not yet- to commemorate the 1862 Battle of Puebla, and the unlikely victory of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin over the professional soldiers of the Emperor of France, Napoleon Trois. […]

(Admiral Rex’s women are going. China girl made the cut. The Salukis are toast. Forward! All photos Socotra). I knew the harem girls were going to have to go. That was a given, and the really cool etching of the Hungarian Princess being seduced by the Gypsy girl in the back room, or the Charlotte […]

(Kris Kross, a rap duo famed for wearing their clothes backwards, is in the news this morning. Photo Acey Harper, Getty Images.) I sat down at the computer, bleary, to discover that half of Kris Kross is dead. Chris Kelly, who is on the right, above, was known either as Mac Daddy or Daddy Mac, […]

(The vanguard of the Workers is depicted in this cartoon as carrying on the legacy of those slain in the Haymarket Affair, which was a Chicago labor demonstration that turned violent in the face of a police crackdown on Tuesday May 4, 1886. Anarchists turned the peaceful demonstration supporting the eight-hour work-day into a bomb […]

(Mac in 1945. Photo courtesy the Admiral) Sorry. No time to follow up on the story this morning. I am pinned to the computer waiting on an input from my able Subcontracting officer, based on some work that went on past midnight last night. My input was going to be about young Major Sweeney, the […]

When I think about it, I freak a bit. Better not to think. I have gotten pretty good at that over the years, a product of a compartmentalized career dealing with…well, stuff. Unfortunately, this morning I woke to the clock radio gently playing a Rimsky-Korsakov symphony and got about the business of confronting Monday. I […]

(I miss George. His stuff seems a little dated these days, but some of it is intensely relevant. See an important correction to an earlier rant below, following this contemplate of clutter.) George Carlin, or at least his shade, is with me as the gray light comes up at Refuge Farm. His ghost is a […]

Proposals can get you in big trouble. I have made a few personal ones- none of them worked out. Better said, they all worked out to one degree or another, but the outcomes had nothing to do with the initial going-in expectations. The business ones are different- I know how that process works, and while […]

Two-thirty, I thought. That is too damn early for anything interesting. I could not get back down. My brain started churning through what the eager-beaver Realtor was talking about, and getting the unit spruced up for sale. “Thin things out,” he said. “Replace the vanities in the bathrooms. Otherwise, you are pretty much good to […]