open sesame

Open Sesame 08/22/15

Submitted by hecate on Sat, 08/22/2015 - 5:03am

So I'm reading a local newspaper, and I come upon a letter from an earnest young person, and said letter does begin its beguine in this way:

This food safety issue is perhaps the single most important challenge of our generation.

And I immediately think two things:

Open Sesame 08/15/15

Submitted by hecate on Sat, 08/15/2015 - 3:49am

(I am at present both lazy and busy, and so am going to default this week to a reprint, an artifact of the early age of the intertubes. It was created on a boxy little ur-Mac, powered by hamsters. The "hook" for hanging the thing here today is that tomorrow marks the death-day of Elvis Presley, and the piece, originally titled "Do The Right Thing," is about Presley, mostly. Sort of. At the time I was freelancing for a publication that liked to assign me to events that were Strange. This event was strange all right, but it was also boring and pathetic. After, later, while I was wondering how in the world to transform it into something worth reading, I was assailed by terminal tooth death. Christ that was pain. If there is pain worse than that, I don't want to know about it. I threw everything I had at it, including liquid morphine left over from the final days of my ex-wife's grandfather. The shit barely made a dent. I would just have to ride it out. While meanwhile writing something so I could get money to buy the plywood coffin they would bury me in when this tooth killed me. Then, somehow, the pain and the morphine and the cloves and the ice and the whiskey and the aspirin permitted me to first envision and then inscribe the event in its Platonic form; the way it really was; the thing itself. So, it all worked out. As it generally does. Until you really do die.)

Open Sesame 08/08/15

Submitted by hecate on Sat, 08/08/2015 - 6:45am

Once upon a time my daughter was transformed into a hurricane.

Rude and abusive things were then said about her.

Such as: "despite becoming a monster [a monster?!], she will not pose any danger to land."

Of course not. She’s always been a good girl.

Open Sesame 08/01/15

Submitted by hecate on Sat, 08/01/2015 - 5:28am

So how was everybody's blue moon?

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cBIVabiuR0]

Shulamith Firestone was the sort of person who arrives but once in a blue moon. A rebel and a rowdy, an articulate and effective revolutionary, a frustrated-cum-far-seeing visionary, a bold and brash and truly gifted writer.