Category: Commentary

Despite the years of therapy, Doris still felt tremendous guilt when clandestinely eating chocolate.

I was walking to the local shops the other day – a journey of two minutes – to buy bread or fresh chicken for a curry, or possibly I needed batteries for my front bike-light, I don’t remember. I’d just rounded the corner by the post office when I was overcome by a pervading paralysis. It’s happened to me before and on many occasions. It starts in the heart with a jolt – the kind of sinking feeling you get when you realise you’ve locked your keys in the house or forgotten to feed your neighbour’s cat for the third day running – and spreads to the stomach; then comes the dizzying swirl of blood in the head and the accompanying prickly flush to the skin. It’s very debilitating. I’m sure that passers-by can see my cringing posture: my limbs tensed and my face contorted into some comic semi-rictus. Sometimes I might be standing at the bus stop waiting for a number 3 or 4 to take me to town; I could be loading the dryer with freshly laundered underwear, or I could be doling out alms to the local homeless. No matter what I might be doing at the time, I’m feeling guilty.

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Tissues asked for by the afflicted may be found in boxes of this sort.

Winter has finally arrived here in the United Kingdom. As a smoker of hand-rolled cigarettes, the main hazard this most dismal of British seasons presents to me is the increased likelyhood of the rolling paper fusing itself to the lower lip. There is no way of knowing that this has happened until it is far too late. That is to say, one only becomes aware of adhesion when the cigarette has been removed from the mouth along with a sizeable square of skin and a minor, yet still alarming, amount of blood.

Don’t be mistaken in thinking that the cigarette has actually been frozen to the lip – the winters in Britain rarely get so cold as to freeze bodily fluids. No, it’s the paucity of lubricating saliva associated with this time of year that causes paper to bond with labial skin.
The only methods I know to avoid such an injury are: i) to keep the lips moist while smoking, which can promote chapping and render the cigarette damp and unsmokeable; or ii) to refrain from smoking while outdoors – not an option to a true nicotine devotee on his way home from the pub.

So if you see bloodied cigarette stubs in the gutter, or notice bohemian types with bleeding lips, you’ll know the cause. All we ask is sympathy and maybe a tissue to staunch the flow.

Logo created for upcoming weekend with Hank Vegas.

All that I am saying is she got married ’cause it is convenient.

I wish the Chicago Bears would get an offensive line.

I wish that ABC would pony up some dough to get people who could spell to do captions for Monday Night Football so I could listen to Guy Clark during the game and still read what Madden had to say.

I wish that Madden would say something in the first place.

I wish that Madden would keep on stating the obvious, because that’s what I love most about him and expect out of him, and if he ever did anything more than that, I would be rather confused.

I wish airfare to Burlington wasn’t so expensive this time of the year.

Lap dances should cost 5 dollars so you could then leave a 5 dollar tip.

The war on Iraq will happen… again.

The war on Iraq is overrated.

Whiskey makes my words more flowery, not gin, it makes me mean.

Whiskey gets in my heart, gin in my head.

Hank Vegas (link to MP3) is cool.

I love New York.

And Chicago.

I don’t love the Yankees or Mets.

I do love the Cubs.

When baseball season ends, I get depressed, and write posts like this one.