On boots and bars and motorbikes...

Of all the pictures that could possibly be taken of a dude all dandied up for a wedding (a wedding he actually had to stand up for at the church, no less), I suppose it's only fitting that the only shots of him from said event involved some sort of mayhem... Considering I had a limited window in which to get everything done, I tagged the windows and strapped on some cans--not much else--and neither proved as simple as they may seem. That particular model of vehicle was notably lacking any ready spots to lash anything to--no hitch, no bumper, not even any brackets underneath. This I know from crawling underneath said vehicle and pawing around like a blind man. I finally found some roughly 3/4 holes in the wheel of spare tire that was mounted down there. And since they made me feel up the underside of the car for a good five minutes (and because it better hid said noisemakers), I made sure to tie said rattle cans at the farthest point forward down there. Not once feeling the s

Yesterday you met our good buddy Doug, who had a bit of a potty mouth, a bit of a problem with his neighbor, and a bit of a tussle in the yard. With a cop. A real cop, it turned out, not just one of those Rent-A-Cop wannabes like at the mall. Doug just assumed, you know, especially when the fellow showed up in one those annoying little carts and looked every bit of twelve. It was an assumption that ended with Doug chewing his own lawn, ruining his best Hawaiian shirt, and getting a free ride to the pokey. It couldn't possibly get any wor--   Wait a minute! Isn't that how all this started in the first place? “I always told you that temper of yours was gonna get you in trouble one of these days,” Maggie says, steering the Suburban like it was her first time behind the wheel. “I guess now you’ll listen.” After spending the night in a holding cell with two drunks and a drug dealer, one of them a puker, Doug didn’t have the energy to respond. “I had to sell your boat

Once again, as a courtesy to friends and family not particularly fond of my blue language from time to time, I must once again beg your forgiveness and rate this with R. For the rest of you, though (let's hum a few bars and give that first bunch a chance to log out: Hmmm, hmm HMMMM hmmm hmm ) . . . Alright. Is that all of them? Here we go then. One bad day can always get worse… It could have happened to anyone, anyplace, at any time. It happened to be a Tuesday for Doug, not long after he handed a raft of shit to his neighbor, Bob, that should've come with paddles. “What the hell do you mean, you called the law?” “I mean I called the police to report your dang dog,” Bob says. “That beast kept me up all hours barking last night. No one should have to put up with that kind of racket.” “He was barking at your damn car, which you drove through my fucking fence, you moron.” “Oh, we’re back to that are we?” “Hell yeah, I’m back to that,” Doug says, taking a c

That always seemed like one helluva long time to me, especially when you read about somebody like Noah, riding around with not just one but two rattlesnakes, cobras, skunks, scorpions, mosquitos, black widow spiders and those jackass hyenas, laughing at you every time you've got to clean a litter box. Which is almost constant, what with the horses, elephants and hippopotami all sharing the same box to keep them from wandering aimlessly past the lions, tigers and bears, who seem to be getting right irate with the all-granola diet he was feeding them... Damn unicorns did that the first week. Now he had to come up with good explanation for big boss, come accounting time... Forty days. That's what I have left. To finish the book, that is. Suddenly, it doesn't seem so long. I realize that may not align with previous timelines written on here, but call it kindness extended to me by my advisor in this process (who I would ask that keep in your prayers, for those of who do.

You met my dog, Hico, in my last installment. We were talking about how you could pick up on all sorts of things from a dog's bark, if you learned how to listen. And as promised, allow me to introduce said possum. (Don't get too attached to him.) And here's where we left off: There’s the choppy, the-puppies-are-missing bark, usually in concert with some other hound (or hounds), clear across town. You can almost make out each dot and dash of their canine Morse code, passing on their messages in a sort of doggy dictation. Then there’s the throatier, stouter “BA-ruff!” she slings at most passersby. It’s the this-is-my-yard-so-you-best-keep-walking bark. Works like a charm, most days, especially when you toss in that tremendous leap of hers. Few and far between are those who loiter on my block. Finally, you’ve got the break-out-straight-jacket, aliens-have-landed, ninjas-are-on-the-roof bark. It’s about five parts wolf pack, three parts Rottweiler and two parts get-your-ass

Like most everything I write, even most outlandish of fictions, there's a good chance there's some hint of truth hidden somewhere. Some would say that probably makes me a rather liar, and I wouldn't tell them they're wrong. Every once in a while, though, you really gotta facts because you couldn't make up shit that good if you tried. That's the definitely the case with this next piece. . . And be patient: We'll get to the possums. Trust me... Meet Hico, a Boxer/Shepard mix that'll make you rethink your religious convictions once she gets to snarling and leaping every bit of five feet straight up, well above the four-foot fence that surrounds the yard. She's never gotten out, but I truly have no idea why that is. She's more than capable. Hard to believe that  she fit in the palm on my hand, the day I brought her home... *** I’m sure my notions on animals in general make me outright barbaric by most standards today,

I doubt it'll do much. Why waste your time? It's better left to the coming darkness. That's what voices resonating in my head tell me. You ever heard them? I do all the time... Sure, those prizes sure look good--$1,000 here, $3,000 there, and always, there's the ever-elusive and perfunctory word so cherished by the wannabe world of aspirants--Publication. With a capital P. So I try today, as I have for the last few days now, entering a few words in the contests those writer magazines all the time advertise. Of course, that ever-elusive "Publication" I so long for? Most of it's in crap even I've never heard of, much less any of my biker buddies. Won't even know if they run it, to be perfectly honest, not without them telling me they did, anyway. Not like I'll ever run across a couple browsing a newsstand someplace, that's for sure. Still, despite it all, something in me wants it still, desires it so. Publication. Capital P or otherwi

You gotta love you some online classes, every once in a while. I banged this out over the weekend for one of mine, destined for a professor who specifically asked that we creative types showcase some our talents. Well, he asked for it: [In response to suffering through Between the Acts by English author and early feminist Virginia Woolf, a book written within a single day's timespan of a family and their home, just days before the outbreak of World War II.]  F irst off, I gotta apologize for my ramble. I’ve always been on the long-winded side to begin with, but this writing business with my thesis project is definitely bringing it to an all-new level of annoying, I’m sure. I’m trying to get down every detail possible right now in creation mode, sort it all out later. It’s hard to shut that switch off once you let it loose, so sorry if this gets even longer and windier than my usual. To those of you already familiar with my work, welcome back. The those of you not: I'm

Everything had been daisies until about a month ago, when the kids turned up with all their ingrate little brats to celebrate his ninety-fourth. Mind you, Paul hadn’t seen any of his five children since they laid poor Annie to rest nine months earlier, yet here they all were without so much as a phone call. Before he spotted the first of them snaking down his drive, he was ready to grab a pole and spend the day snagging bass and catfish out of the creek. With a half-cup of coffee still to go, he figured he'd at least stay and see they wanted. After all, maybe one of them had died or something. He soon realized he should've snuck out the back while the getting was good. Not that he didn’t love his family. He did. He devoted most of his life to them, a fact he wished they'd remember every once in a while. Like those dark days after his wife died, or the previous eight years, when Paul slowly watched Annie shrivel to nothing after she caught the cancer. But Thanksgivin

Paul knew Janice was pissed as soon as he rounded the corner. She crossed her arms over her fleshy breasts as her ample hips shifted her entire weight from one leg to the other, just so she’d have a better angle to glare at him from behind the reinforced glass, Paul figured. Her widow’s peak, accentuated by the tight bun she wore, gave her long nose a sharp, beaklike quality. Her glacial blue eyes glared at him like a half-starved falcon, and he, a frolicking field mouse, about to be devoured. They never wavered, those eyes of hers, not even when the skinny man beside her—a bail bondsman, most likely—spoke a few words and handed her a stack of papers every bit as thick as the Encyclopedia Britannica volume Paul kept in handy reach of his easy chair, back when Janice and the rest of the bunch were just kids.  It never failed: Nearly every afternoon back then, there’d be some loud THUMP! resonate through the wood floors of his house, followed by some muffled voices and half-heart

“Writing is hard for every last one of us — straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.” Cheryl Strayed, author of the 2012 bestseller Wild , later made into a 2014 film starring Reece Witherspoon, wrote these words in her “Dear Sugar” advice column, published on the literary website The Rumpus (2010-12). This particular passage appeared in a piece she titled “The Art of Motherfuckitude,” to advise a frustrated young writer who had trouble finding her muse. On title alone, I just had to read that. And while I’m certain my younger days have come and gone, I do hear Strayed’s writing message loud and clear: Get to work! Quit whining, dammit! Dig! Her focus on work resonates with me, stemming from many hard days put in at the farm growing up, I suppose. Work was important to those I cared about most. So I worked hard, and admired those who did l

Off to the opening day of spring classes at my job. Finally. Thanks, Inga. Rather than bore you all with more ramblings, I thought I'd share a few lines from another story. I used this one for a reading I gave a couple years back. It's likely become a novel at some point. True crime thriller. It's on the darker side, but hopefully, you'll want to read more. Enjoy... - 1 - Misti comes to just long enough to realize something is horribly wrong. Her head throbs and she’s never known such thirst. She tries to look around, but something covers her eyes and face, making it hard to breathe. She feels her breath blow back against her face, the air hot and still tinged with the wine she’d had hours before. She tries to wipe away the covering, but her hands are bound. So she lies there, twisted and aching, all her weight somehow pressing down on her shoulder and hip. Moving is impossible. Her way-too-tight jeans seem to slice into her midriff, her legs folded uncomf