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The Graveyard of Dead Gods
H. L. Mencken’s meditation on the “graveyard of dead gods” is characteristically provocative. Written in 1922 as “Memorial Service” and later included in A Mencken Chrestomathy, the piece begins with what appears to be a simple historical curiosity: Where are the gods who were once worshipped by the great civilizations of the past? Where are…
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The Holiday Nobody Understands
Labor Day is one of America’s great mysteries. It arrives every year on the first Monday of September, carrying with it the promise of a three-day weekend, backyard barbecues, mattress sales, and the vague feeling that summer is over even though the thermometer (and the calendar, for that matter) strongly disagrees. Officially, Labor Day is…
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Don’t dismiss Trump, understand him
I had this idea for a post examining Trump, Trumpism, and the whole MAGA movement through the lens of another unlikely figure and phenomenon, Aimee Semple McPherson in 1920s Los Angeles. My premise was simple: she was and Donald Trump is a charlatan duping otherwise sane people for personal gain. At this point, the post…
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A Little Dog Beneath an Ancient Sun
I don’t know how it happened. When Dennis, the little Corgi mutt who’d been by my side since I ended up in a wheelchair, died, I wanted a Beagle. I was actively looking for one (and had found one on a shelter website not too far away) the morning I came across Gordon’s picture and…
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In memory of Tim Curry
When I tell people I worked in the entertainment industry, I think they assume I rubbed elbows with a lot of famous people. I did. But not the way you, or they, might think. I was a computer programmer for most of my career. The “talent” – which was the way we referred to people…
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Pablo
It’s hard to put into words what it was like living in the shadow cast by AIDS in the 90s. One of my exes (I have several – in my heyday, I was what you might call a serial monogamist) gave HIV the name Pablo, because we could not comprehend nor relate to an unseen…
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I am sickened by this
There is nothing particularly controversial about naming an American aircraft carrier after a president. Provided, of course, that the president is no longer in office, has been dead for several years, and is therefore unable to object to the wording of the plaque. The difficulty arises when the president is still in office, is involved…
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The Man on Page 602
I’m planning on doing a post today about the Sears Catalog. You need to be a certain age to know what that is. If you were born after 1970, you might be asking “what is the Sears Catalog?” Some of you might even ask “what is Sears?” If that’s you, ask your parents. For the…
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The Most Famous Address in London
A “practical joke” is called practical because it is a joke carried out in the real world rather than merely told. The word practical here means something like “put into practice” or “involving action.” A practical joke therefore involves manipulating a situation so that another person experiences something unexpected, usually for comic effect. “What do…
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Goodbye Jackie
For almost a week now, I have been struggling to write about Jackie, a bald eagle that lived in a nest with a live webcam trained on it 24/7 high above Big Bear Lake, California, in the mountains just north of me. You see, she died last Monday, and I have been profoundly sad. There…
Your mileage may vary.