Looking at life through a funhouse mirror
There are ghostly cat paw prints on the floor. You have to look at just the right angle to see them on the hardwood, but when the sun comes in through the sliding glass kitchen doors, like it’s doing today, they are as obvious as dinosaur tracks on the marble tile. There are dust bunnies, …
The other day, I did a walk-up curbside pick-up at the library to collect two books I borrowed for my English 1002 course. Although there was only one copy of each in the library, they were easy to reserve and, I hope and expect they will be easy to renew if required. They are Slaughterhouse …
January is pretty much always the same. Dead Christmas trees get kicked to the curb. The tenth batch of turkey soup arrives with only a fraction of the enthusiasm that greeted the first. And we’ll spend countless hours we’ll never get back sitting on the phone with customer service trying to figure out what’s gone …
Back when such things were considered amusing because nothing more amusing had yet to be invented, my grandfather was fond of reciting limericks as part of the Presbyterian after-dinner frivolity, as we drank tea as viscous as crude oil from the depths of the north Atlantic. Tea fully capable of walking on its hind legs …
It’s been twenty-five years since Alanis Morissette released Jagged Little Pill. For each and every one of the years between then and now, she has had to suffer the scorn of English 101 students everywhere, because they are experts in recognizing and using irony as a device that can be verbal, dramatic, or situational, but …
It appears I am the last person on the face of the earth to know what the ‘Comic Sans’ font is. And it’s already twenty-five years old, as of this week. In my own defense, I am not unfamiliar with type fonts and can spot a serif or lack of serif at twenty paces, but …
Weather: good, thank goodness. For the moment. Summer, don’t fail me now! Reason weather needed to be good: Lumber’s Island Labour day weekend party. Six Mile Lake island and island wanna be’s converged from far and wide. Nobody lost an eye, that I know of, even though we almost killed Lois with the nuts in …
I can never find a pen when I need one. And when I do locate the stash of pens in the back of the junk drawer none of them works (although technically they still all work as advertisements for the companies that paid for them). Back when pens were a business accessory, everyone had a …
Let me first say, in my own defense, I actually do lots of reading on the internet. I probably read the same kinds of things that you do (or maybe I don’t read quite as much of the random content links on Facebook – someone must be clicking on them or there wouldn’t be so …
I first encountered a Norton Anthology in first year University. It was the poetry edition, rather than the English Literature version but I think both were edited by M.H. Abrams. Mr. Abrams died this week at the ripe old age of 102. This makes him a shining example of ‘that which doesn’t kill us makes …