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I worked with a woman whose family would pack a lunch and go to the local insane asylum Sunday afternoons after church. It was entertainment for them.Viewing a Lynchian project is like visiting that asylum.David LynchLynch died of emphysema and a heart attack in January, after being forced to evacuate his compound during a California forest fire. He left behind a rich and disturbin…

As you may be aware by now, there are snakes in most Happyville toilets.Mayor Dwort, out standingWe do not know how the snakes got into your toilets. It may be a seasonal thing. Like allergies. These toilet snakes may return to their lairs upon breeding in your bathroom. Or they may not. They may linger. Rest assured, Happyville’s Public Works has provided us guidelines for dealing…

As head of the United States Department of Attention, I’ve advised the President to eat a monkey at center ice during a New York Rangers game in Madison Square Garden.best served on iceBut the President is hesitating. Sometimes he can be such a big baby.“What about those PETA people?” he asked.“No,” I said. “That’s going too far. Just stick to monkeys for now.”What can…

The story of Tesla is ludicrous, says author and auto industry journalist Edward Niedermeyer.LUDICROUSIn his 2019 book LUDICROUS: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors, you can boil the story down to three things:Elon Musk is distracted.Elon Musk is a hype machine who is an expert salesman and promiser.Tesla gets innovation and concept right, but can’t be bothered with bu…

The life of a classical music musician is in some ways wilder than the life of a rock star.The anxiety is heightened by the fact that rock musicians can thrive on a lot of musical and personal mistakes. Mistakes can get classical musicians canned.Which is why the late cellist Janos Starker lived long enough, despite his taste for drink and smoke, to write a memoir of his nearly 90 yea…

I can’t write about my second civil service job for security reasons. I can, though, thank you for paying me for a few years.Carl Kolchak’s typewriterWhat I can do is point to locked restrooms in Owego, New York, as a symbol of how the “deep state” of mind-numbingly stupid government operates.If at any time taxpayers demand fiscal responsibility and leaner government, bureaucrats re…

I graduated with honors in Government from St. Lawrence University in 1979. My head filled with theory, I entered government service that September, and met Practice.Practice won. Theory was squashed dead.Idealism died as a Contract Specialist at the United States Department of Energy.With no training whatsoever, I was expected to okay contracts and send out federal funds to ha…

Waterfront Mill by Niles Spencer, 1940

The three most powerful nations are in the early stages of transitioning the world into a new geopolitical arrangement.President Trump clearly wants to go down in history as the initiator of this new order. It will destroy the outdated, antiquated, gasping remnants of the 1945 world order.Please notice that this is a revolutionary, progressive movement. Normally we think of Democrats…

I wanted the golf franchise, but that was already taken. It took a lot of arm twisting, but I got the bowling one.Picture this: every square inch of Greenland paved with black asphalt, with a Bowl-O’-Rama every 2 miles in every direction. Blanket coverage. Only Walmart and KFC will come close.my work has begunYou’ve heard of Eco-Tourism? Well, this is sort of the opposite of…

Arshile Gorky was a vital link between Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.The Liver is the Cock’s Comb by Arshile Gorky, 1944Arshile Gorky, 1930’s

conductor Otto KlempererI remember how surprised I was as a kid to find out that Werner Klemperer – Col. Klink on TV’s Hogan’s Heroes – had a father who was more famous than he was.Werner Klemperer and Bob Crane, Hogan’s Heroes(Notice the massive baton Klink is wielding. Some things run in families.)I tried to resist the urge to mention actor Werner, but it was useless. Hogan’s…

GHOST OF A GENIUS by Paul Klee, pre-1939

Did a 15 year old boy on a family farm invent TV, or did a nasty old big corporation?Okay, so Philo Farnsworth was older than 15 when he came up with the first functioning electrical television broadcasting system, but he started when 15.Earlier, actually. He shared it with his high school science teacher at 15. According to the patents, he’s the one who did it.Philo T. Farns…

A less forbidding Egon Schiele painting:Four Trees by Egon Schiele, early 20th CenturyHis wife died during the Spanish Flu epidemic, while six months pregnant. He died of the flu three months later. It would be nice to have another 60 or 70 years worth of work from him.The man himself:Egon Schiele

Tree in the Autumn-Wind, Egon Schiele, early 20th century?, via Wikimedia Commons

One of the major seed companies has left okra out of its print catalog. In the table of contents, it says to go online if you want okra.Will Big Okra sue the seed company?abused okraWill the United Okra Breeders Association of North Carolina sue to get its lifeblood back into print and on equal footing with those glamour queens, the tomatoes and melons?Will the Okra Front barr…

We live in a mass, administered society. The cultural industries produce assemblyline entertainment that is triage for wage slaves. Half of your brothers and sisters have below average IQ’s. School is a medium-security prison run by, as my father said many times, “the stupid kids.”a blank canvasIt’s time to get rough with this reality.A blank canvas or an empty page is for you…

Our internal and external environments affect how we think. They can be inspirational. They can create epiphanies. If we’re lucky, they can create our life paths.Vesuvius ejaculatingIn “NAPLES 1925: Adorno, Benjamin, and the Summer That Made Critical Theory” (Yale/Margellos World Republic of Letters, 2024), author Martin Mittelmeier, with wonderful help from translator Shelley Frisch…

Here is abstract expressionist Adolph Gottlieb’s most iconic painting:Cadmium Red Above Black, Adolph Gottlieb, 1959, via WikipediaThis is what his work looked like in 1936, when he worked for the Federal Art Project, which subsidized fine artists during the Great Depression. It’s called “Sun Deck”:Sun Deck, Adolph Gottlieb, 1936Quite a freeing of the spirit over 20 years!Cad…

I know it seems hard to believe, but there was a time when classical music was as available and as free as country or pop.That time was in the early days of radio. In the 1920’s until 1950, broadcast networks such as CBS or NBC provided classical music, as did local stations. And there were a bunch of reasons why they did.When radio was a novelty, there was a civilized war, but…

by James Ensor, 1888The Haunted Furniture by James Ensor, 1888