Ink

John Hicks

I like this pen.  It’s pretty nice, for a giveaway pen.  The tube is green and transparent.  It has a rubber writing grip near the retractable point.

There are many reasons I’m writing with a pen this week.  Family emergency.  I’ve been killing a lot of time in places where I don’t usually write.

TomT

Displaced Aggression League Report — Week 7

This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Take off the turban, remove the crown. It will not be as it was: The lowly will be exalted and the exalted will be brought low.  A ruin! A ruin! I will make it a ruin! — Ezekiel 21:26

Like a slow-orbiting comet or the McRib sandwich, truly epic upsets don’t come around very often; and when they do, it’s an occasion worth noting with appropriate solemnity.

Jimmy Gabacho

Part I

Before I get too far along in this entry, I need to do some explaining. I have been away, traveling during the summer, but I’ve never fit the mold of a jet setter, nor do I ever hope to be one. There is always a one person on the plane that looks lost or out of place. With one look, people say to themselves, who let this guy in? That would be me. My wife is an executive in the music industry and, as a result, I accompany her to her meetings. Hell, someone has to carry the luggage, so it might as well be me.

TomT

I never really thought of myself as bigoted or xenophobic, but it dawned on me recently that I’m prejudiced against Australians.  I’m not going to try to soften this by claiming that some of my best friends are Australian, because they’re not.  In fact, I can’t remember ever actually meeting an Australian, although I did briefly work for a woman with a Boston accent so thick that some Chicagoans thought she was from Australia.  Hate is too strong of a word.   It’s not really even that I dislike Australians as much as I’m scared of them. They’re not like us; something just feels off.

Bob Hudson

This morning, while waiting on a call from the daytime radiologist, who would give me his take on the cat scan my wife got last night – the night shift radiologist must be second string – and tell us if it was a “spot on her lung,” or some kind of photographic anomaly – we tried to buy a heart attack.  They want to sell us cancer.  Several thoughts revolved through my head.

One thought was, “Great!  What a perfect excuse to go from occasional over-indulger to full time drunk.  What unbelievable quantities of slack I’d be cut.”

Tom Long

The music industry has been dying. So what? People will still make music. And what we’ve been spoon-fed by commercial radio and the celebrity hype machine won’t be missed.

There is an inverted relationship between the number of units a band sells and how much I enjoy them. It is more the rule than the exception. I don’t say this as an elitist music snob, but as someone who truly loves seeing a band up close instead of a Jumbotron.

John Hicks

Someone has given me a subscription to Esquire magazine.

Thanks, whoever you are!

Minka Kelly is the Sexiest Woman Alive, according to the cover of the November issue.  Before my copy arrived in the mailbox, I did not know this.  I didn’t even know who Minka Kelly was until Esquire connected the dots for me.

B2L2