I can’t believe, I’ll never believe what a good good dog I have. Why? Because he isn’t—he’s a late night barking, leg humping, crotch sniffing, jumping up, slobbering, farting, carpet scratching canine wasteland. I have to keep him because my sister gave him to me. He was a little puppy in a thing like an…

My feet felt like they had been run over by a mail truck. I never should’ve done it. I was a teenage bus-idiot-boy. My friend Teddy had to go to Florida for a week while his family “settled up” his dead grandma. She was 87 and had died from No. 6 blue hair dye poisoning…

The Willow Harp Mall. Who the hell named this place? Willow Harp? What. Where’s the harp. Ok, there’s giant 30 foot high plastic resin harp outside the mall entrance. It has speakers inside it that play “Over the Rainbow” over and over, non-stop, day and night. But that’s not all. There are flashing lights in…

I was the Head—the Head of Heads at the bank. The hierarchy was strict. Money laundering was not to be taken lightly. As Head of Heads, I was the ahead of the other Heads. In a way, it was a mistake to call them Heads—they were actually Junior Assistant Heads, and they did what I…

The oak tree in our back yard was huge, but it wasn’t that big. My father told me that Abraham Lincoln planted it after he was sentenced to six months community service for chopping down a cherry tree in Norma Park, Clifton, New Jersey. He planted oak trees throughout North Jersey. They called him “Acorn Abe.” When…

A big crow descended, eerily flying, going hurriedly into Joey’s Mangetout nursery. We went inside the greenhouse to find the Crow, but it had flown out the other end. His visit was short, but he had dropped off a newborn kitten, eyes still closed, on the soft dirt spaded around one of the bean plants.…

After forty years, I finally got an award. I deserved it so much that I wanted to curse the awards committee for overlooking me all these years, and maybe hit one of them over the head with the little plaque—the size of a Hershey Bar. I expected to stick around for another 20 years, so…

Sunrise. Sunset. Mid-afternoon, 3:00 a.m. We look at the clock and we look at our watch, and everything is encompassed by time, and there is early, and there is late, and there is right on time—timeless, timely. The variations on time indicate it’s ubiquity. It passes. What does it mean? It means we are finite…

I fell down again. I didn’t exactly plummet, but I fell. I had contracted “Fall-Down Syndrome” on a safari to Tampa, Florida. We had been contracted by the Peace and Freedom Party to observe gun shops to better understand their patrons. Tampa is a prime site. Nearly everybody owns at least one gun. Some own…

MOO Mom Oleo Obstinate My mother was cheap. My sister and I would make mooing sounds when she brought home the fake butter. She would tell us that butter was sooo expensive. She saved twenty-five cents while depriving us of one of nature’s greatest flavors. My dad worked in a diner washing dishes and every…