Newsletter
-
By Riverboat in Flotsam and Jetsam
As of today, the Chair of St. Peter is vacant. Pope Benedict XVI, pleading his health would not serve the Church Militant, stepped down, close on the heels of Gregory XII in 1415 to end the Western Schism. Incidentally, that ...
-
What you've got means such a lot to me
By Riverboat in Flotsam and Jetsam
The world mourns the passing of sitar master Ravi Shankar who shuffled off his mortal coil on December 11. Godspeed him on his journey. That said, I think the sitar is the worst pox on Western music, and I blame ...
-
By Riverboat in Flotsam and Jetsam
I just read – ingested, more like – "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," Tom Wolfe’s study of the psychedelic era of the 60s. Imagine test pilots from "The Right Stuff" on acid and you have a pretty good idea of ...
-
Wanted: A few good den mothers
By Riverboat in Flotsam and Jetsam
Read for yourself. You can't make this stuff up. Well, you could, but it wouldn't be as hilarious. Embarrassed by a prostitution scandal, the Secret Service will assign chaperones on some trips to enforce new rules of conduct that make ...
-
By Riverboat in Flotsam and Jetsam
They’re at it again. Someone accidentally put the Koran on the bookshelf next to Diary of Anne Frank. Worse? Accidentally burned one? Oh, that’s different. Now I totally understand their reaction when they killed dozens of people, including U.S. military ...
-
By Riverboat in Flotsam and Jetsam
I recently finished reading Robinson Crusoe. It’s considered a classic. Or, as Mark Twain would say, it’s a book that people praise and don’t read. In this case, it’s been read AND praised, but the praise has been misplaced. To ...
-
By Riverboat in Flotsam and Jetsam
The world of entertainment recently lost two great contributors in the space of a year: Janis Orenstein and Alice Playten. Their untimely departures at a relatively young age should not go unremarked. Chances are you have heard Janis Orenstein if ...
-
By Riverboat in Flotsam and Jetsam
One morning on my way to work a month ago, the obnoxious DJ on our rock station was laughing about the Houston Cougars being invited into the Eastern Conference. I called and left a voice message with a short quiz: ...
-
Green Movement, Bowel Movement, All Around the Town
By Riverboat in Flotsam and Jetsam
Leave it to the Japanese to turn an engineering idea into an assembly line idea. A toilet maker in the Land of the Rising Sun – or should that be the Land of the Rising Moon? - launched the Toilet ...
-
Diary of a Grown Man With His Foot in His Mouf
By Riverboat in Flotsam and Jetsam
What do you do when you say something stupid? REALLY stupid? Do you backtrack and try to make amends, or keep on going as if you said something profound? All of us have at one time or another committed some ...