A New Poem! A New Poem!

Streetlight Press has brought another one of my works out for public consumption. Search for "Pedigree bash" on the page.

Come Get into the Tub

With the Hot Tub Astronaut. Two poems of mine are in it.

The Future Is Nice

I got a thing, you got a thing, everybody's got a thing...but not everybody's got a thing in Quail Bell. Enjoy a piece of hybrid absurdity that mixes the real and the unreal, the ethereal of the promise and the mundane of the product.

Owl's Brew Radler is Rad

I'm more of a coffee man than a tea man, but I'm more of a beer man than a coffee man, so when you mix beer and tea together, I'll give it a try. Frankly I've never had the combination before. Yes, I've had vodka and tea, and unidentified malt beverage and tea, but never true, brewed beer and tea. Thanks to the Owl's Brew company, I get to expand my taste horizons this way.

Up for review are two products from this fine business: That's My Jam and The Blondie. They both combine beer and tea to create different flavors, finely balancing bubbly and bitter, sweet and tangy. You might think the use of the Penny Farthing is an homage to the Prisoner. You may be right. But there's solid history behind it, because these kinds of beer, tea, and lemonade drinks were developed for thirsty bicyclists on the go. On the back of the can it reads "Do us a solid and fill in the blank: I drink @theowlsbrew when I____________." Well I guess based on my experience I can say that I drink the Owl's Brew when I watch David Lynch's Mullholland Drive. Owl's Brew Radler didn't exactly clear anything up but that's not a knock against it. Perhaps I should've drank Mezcal instead.

That's My Jam is better on first taste and if you're looking for just one can to drink at a time, I would recommend it over The Blondie. It's a sweet, fruity concoction, perfect for the warm spring days I'm sure we'll be having any day now. It combines Darjeeling and fruit peel, a little heavier than a pure cider.

The Blondie is the drink for those long Sunday afternoons trying to get through an inane conversation at a party. That's My Jam is too sweet to go down six times in a row. The Blondie though, is for any long-haul drinking you might have (but please drink responsibly etc.) It tastes more like a traditional shandy, less like a cider. It combines black tea and citrus juices. Which ones? It's a mystery! Perhaps the red finger lime, or even more exotic, an etrog. Hey, a drinker can dream, right?

The relatively lower alcohol content and the mix of flavors in these beers also means they can be used for cocktail purposes. The Owl's Brew also sells cocktail mixes, but these radlers work just fine. I tried them both with vodka, that universal solvent for unlocking the good and bad time out of everything. I found that the Blondie works better than the Jam. the Blondie covers the vodka and smooths it out.  The Jam gets frothy upon contact and it's pretty sweet after a while. Now sweet might, in fact, "be your jam." it certainly is my girlfriend's. She liked That's My Jam over The Blondie. Then again maybe its because she's The Brunette.

Both of these drinks are fine and if you're a tea enthusiast, I would recommend them both. The only thing I didn't like was the plastic used to hold the six packs together. To be fair, I got these drinks straight from the source. In the store it might be different. The plastic is hard to describe. It's orange and thick, almost like tiny Frisbees settling over each can. My girlfriend had trouble pulling the cans out because of it. The plastic is hard and it's loud when you try to snap a drink loose. If you're trying to hide your drinking from someone, I wouldn't recommend these beers. Or you can just wait until they leave and untangle the cans all at once.

To Lisbon via Adelaide

Adelaide, a publication based out of New York and Lisbon, Portugal, has published five of my poems. Read them here, perhaps while listening to the song "Adelaide" by John Cale.

What are Our Consolations? The Oracles of Fried Food

A poem of mine is up at the newly reconstituted Tak-Tak. In unrelated news, I'm trying to do my taxes and I came across this little tidbit:

Parent of a Kidnapped Child

If your child is presumed by law enforcement authorities to have
been kidnapped by someone who is not a family member, you
may be able to take the child into account in determining your eligibility
for the head of household or qualifying widow(er) filing
status, the dependency exemption, the child tax credit, and the
earned income credit (EIC). But you have to file Form 1040A or
1040 to claim these benefits. For details, see Pub. 501 (Pub. 596
for the EIC).

They really do think of everything at the IRS! I wonder if this came about because of J. Paul Getty?

"The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights."

All Hail Ben Nardolilli's Groovy Blog!

At least that's what they're saying at the Midnight Lane Gallery. Three of my poems are hung there for viewing, thanks to Johnny Longfellow.

Also two poems were published on this site based in Berlin, The Wild World. Poetry truly is international! It knows no borders except those at the end of a page or the end of a breath!

Break the Adult Shell

With a poem here

Quirky. Eclectic. Pixel-based.

A poem of mine is up at Damfino. It's short, so it shouldn't be too much of an inconvenience to read.

Trying to Hypernormalize a New Word: Sclerotica

Chris Applegate's Brilliant Work

I coined a new word at work the other day. I didn't use it in a sentence with anyone else, however I came up with it all by myself. The word?  "Sclerotica." Here's a definition:

Sclerotica (noun): materials that reveal and revel in the hardened paralysis of the system. "Adam Curtis is a purveryor of sclerotica."

The Key to the City? Three Poems.

City Key has been gracious and generous enough to publish 3 poems of mine, including Hudson Valley News, written while taking the train north to a friends' wedding in Massachusetts. 

The Route of the Next Women's March on DC

Hopefully, we won't have to have another march like the one yesterday ever again. Nevertheless I think we need to be prepared for next time. While there was a planned route, it quickly broke down. It was for the best of reasons though, namely that so many people showed up! Inspiring as that may be, I doubt we'll have the freedom to organize ourselves and spread out peacefully under the noses of the authorities in the future.

Now I have no intention of mansplaining here, this is just an idea for the route of the next possible march to take. I think we should start at L'Enfant Plaza and from there head north. Just as a baby was born there once, so shall the next march be born there as well:

This will take the march through the Mall and next to all the important museums. Tourists won't be able to avoid us. After politicians, I think they're the next most important group to reach out to. Then at H Street we will branch off into two groups. Going any farther north will be trouble because there won't be enough space and amenities to support the protest:

One group will head east and curl around Union Station and end near the Capitol grounds to make our case heard to the legislative and judicial branches:

However, that will still leave the executive branch to reach out to, and reach out we will! How? By walking over to 17th Street, then going down past the White House to occupy the space between it and the Washington Monument:

So the next Women's March on DC will look something like this:

Wikipedia's diagram is insufficiently pink

Comparing Inaugurations Trump Vs. Obama

This image has been making the rounds lately in one form or another:

...in order to compare attendance at Obama's 2009 inauguration compared to Trump's in 2017. I just want to say this is a very misleading image. All that white you see was actually filled with people. They were just wearing hoods.

Yamamoto-ing the Alt-Right, or Theses on the future of the Alt-Right Under the Trump Administration

1) The Alt-Right threw themselves behind a narcissist who doesn't give a shit about their ideas or ideology

2) At the same time it's presence has begun to mobilize the sleeping giantess of the opposition.

3) It leaves them exposed with nowhere to go and no one to protect them now that they've come out of the woodwork.

4) They're going to be nostalgic for the days of "PC Culture" and SJWs, when would-be radicals spent their time arguing about pop culture online. They never realized that things they hate so much were just fly traps for the Left. Now they've gotten them off the internet and into the streets* and the Alt-Right is going to realize just how small they are in reality. Couldn't happen to a nicer group of people.

* I think that when historians look at this period, they will see things starting to change with BLM, but accelerating under Trump. Trump is, after all, an Accelerationist's wet dream.

Life Anew Is a Kind of Shibboleth

Care of http://www.thebricktestament.com/

Two poems are up and ready to be read at Kairos. Okay, they've been up and ready to be read for a while. Life Anew and A Kind of Shibboleth