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Poe's Raven (edited for time)

Back in the day, writers used to be paid by the word, that's why our classics are so looong. And, in addition to that, what else was there to do? You could spend six hours enjoying an opera, and not feel it's gone on five hours too long, much like the fans at a baseball game. You can't tell me Edgar Allan Poe's classic poem The Raven doesn't ramble far longer than it should. I don't know what seems longer, reading The Raven or suffering through one of my mother-in-law's visits. At any rate, that's why I rewrote it for today's audience. An audience whose time and attention span is limited.   The Raven Once upon a midnight dreary, My eyes bloodshot, my vision bleary, Something knock-knock-knocked at my chamber door.    Feeling, I, a wee bit drunky, Hadn't bathed, smelling funky, So whomever was there I decided to ignore.    Yet there it waited, a stately raven, An ebony bird in search of haven, Thus it continued knocking, and then knocked some more...
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The Tell-Tale Trump

"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity." Edgar Allan Poe       The Tell-Tale Trump     by Stephen King as told to Jim Duchene You're right, you're right. I'm nervous, very nervous, but crazy? I only wish I were. You see, I've always found Donald Trump entertaining, in a monkey playing the accordion kind of way, but I never thought he'd be president. Then he stole the election, the only known instance of that ever happening. I could live with that. I bore him no ill will. It’s only four years, after all. How much damage can he do? But his tweets! They drove me nuts! No, not nuts. Not nuts. I'm not nuts. I swear I'm not. Soon, you might say, I became obsessed with Trump and his hellish tweets. Obsessed isn't the same as insane, is it? Of course not. Every time I picked up my smart phone I'd scurry to Twitter to read the latest verbal monstrosities from not-my-President Trump. Idiotic ramblings. Lies. Misinformation. There wa...
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Baby, It's Cold Outside

I was probably a pretty rambunctious kid, because I remember my father always being after me for one thing or another. When I was a Senior in high school, and prone to staying out later than I should on a Friday or Saturday night, he would always make it a point to get me up early the next day. "Why do I need to get up early?" I'd ask him. "Because everything has a price," he'd tell me. I'm sure he was trying to teach me something, but it was something I didn't want to learn. After a few early mornings of me getting up to do nothing but learn a lesson, the only lesson I did learn was if I got out of bed so he could see me, and then, when he went inside, immediately laid down on the floor of the far side of my bed, the side facing away from my bedroom door, so that he  couldn't  see me, then I could happily spend the rest of the morning in dreamland.  Happily, that is, until he discovered what I was doing. My snoring gave me away. As a kid, I was ...
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Pardon My French, But Revisité

The crazy granny proudly pulled a tart cake from her greasy navel and declared it well-baked.      "Everything in my kitchen is low-fat except me." –anonymous      song recommendation: Mashed Potato Time by Dee Dee Sharp       Pardon My French, But Revisité      My older and much less attractive brother was telling me about a book he’s reading called No Green Bananas . Or something like that. To tell the truth, he talks so much I tend to tune him out. The point of the book is that life is short, so why buy green bananas when there is no guarantee you’ll be alive to eat them when they finally ripen? My first quibble with the book is how do you get 50,000 words out of what I just summarized in one sentence? I’ve run across similar books. I would name them, except that would take research and I'm not up for that kind of effort since, according to Green Bananas , there’s a good chance I’ll be dead before I...
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