Love's Necklace

Carol first, who when she liked me back I stopped liking, and

Sandy—the first Sandy—who Jimmy Beeler also liked, who told me in gestures I drove her crazy. Then

Kim, for a very short time then

Julie off and on and

Pam, for about two years. I once loaned her fifty cents which she made me happy by taking a long time to repay.

Nancy, of course, then

Janet. I danced with Janet. Then,

Paula, next, I guess, but she was gay, then

Madeleine. Almost Madeleine.

Kathy, who died.

Joan, who quit McDonald’s the day her sister said to me, “Why don’t you ask my sister out?”

I don’t know why, exactly.

Abby, who laughed a lot when we ordered steak and who was served a margarita though she was only seventeen. Then the second

Sandy, for years and years and years, right through

Sue, and

Peggy—for a minute or two—and

Michelle—who was also gay—until I met

Cathy, whom I married.

And there it ends—though nothing ends. Not really. Not in time. Ghosts and shadows run through time, beads upon beads on a string—

This is my poem for you, for you who knew and you who’ll never know how much I told myself I could not live without you. I wear you out of time, light or heavy, on this chain around my neck.

The Swan Song of the Universe

What if, taking Steven Hawking's elevation of the notion that there are subatomic particles that blip into and out of existence and combining it with the idea that the increasing expansion of the universe will some day reach a point where the atoms of the universe will no longer be able to hold together, and the idea that at the moment when the Big Bang occurred all the bulk and scope of the universe was compressed into an atom-sized space (you see where I'm going), what if every atom of the universe at the end spawned another universe? What a swan song that would be.

On the Literal Truth of Scripture

Have you noticed that the more thoroughly convinced someone is that his scripture is literally true, the inspired and infallible and exclusive word of God, the more tolerant he is of force and hate? The more a person believes God breathed the truth and only the truth into every syllable of his word, the more he advances mere obedience as the path to salvation. The more he fears “subjectivity,” or “misinterpretation,” the more like a dictator he becomes. He’s petrified of mistakes. But mistakes make us human; mistakes make progress. He’s afraid of displeasing God by using his own limited perspective. God gave him his own unique perspective for the purpose of seeing God uniquely. He buries his talent out of fear. He misses in his zealotry for the word the very message of the word: Love. Love is the word. Love your neighbor, love your enemy, love the stranger, love yourself. Understand if you can; empathize if you can. If you can’t, love anyway. Do not be afraid to love. Do not hide the talent of your heart in the bunker of your fear.

The Three Wiseishmen

Alan began championing (despite everything) for gonzo holiday installations, judging Karen’s Little Manger negatively, ordering Paul’s quaint Reindeer smashed; talking up Victor’s Wisemen Xmasing Ypsilanti Zanily.

And Benson, clearly driven, especially felt gleeful helping. "I just keep lighting more nativities, or people quit reacting," said Tom. "Until victorious, we'll xerox young zealots!"


Anfuso, before clamoring Dickensian epithets, fairly gutted himself. "It's just Kwanzaa! Light more natal ornamented pines! "Quite right," scores tweeted, underscoring verities well. "Xerxes, you zenophobe."


“Ancillarily,” bellowed Christmas detractors, “even formerly gaga holidayer in Jersey, Knott, laughed: ‘My neighbors’ old prosaic "Quissmiss" rubbish still triumphs!’ Until vacuousness wanes, Xmas, you’re zero.”

On the Proposition that Color Does Not Exist

Color is created by the eyes in conjunction with the brain. Color is the brain’s way of navigating the world by distinguishing between wavelengths of light, which do exist, of different energies. Colors could be infinitely more or greatly less distinguished. Some people, mostly women, see colors most of us cannot. Some people, mostly men, see fewer colors than most of us can see. They break the world up differently. We can understand the color blind, but not the color enhanced. We can’t really see what they see.

The body is not programmed to make sense of what is of no use to it. Few animals distinguish as humans do between music and noise. Dogs ignore vegetables. Cats sit on the backs of statues of wolves. Zebras cannot see painted zebras.

We have always been surrounded by sounds we could not hear, colors we could not see. Machines extended our awareness of these. But what we do not have senses for we can no more imagine than a continent of the blind could imagine light. But doesn’t it make more sense to believe that stuff we cannot perceive is there? Dark matter, infinitely differentiable, but not by us.

The Myth of "The Good Guy with a Gun"

The more guns a society has, the greater the number of people who get shot. That fact has been well established; the correlation is beyond dispute. And yet there are those who say "If we just had more good guys with guns we could intervene and save more people." And it's true that now and then a "good guy with a gun" is there to save the day (quite often these "good guys" are off duty police officers). And if we increase the number of guns, we'll increase the number of "good guys." And that is because we'll increase the total number of shootings, and therefore the number of opportunities for a good guy to intervene. But the increase is linear. So, to put it in simple terms, if today there are 1000 guns and 100 shootings and one time a good guy saved the day (and this does not happen in reality in anything like 1% of the times), then if we double the guns to 2000, we'll get 200 shootings and 2 times a good guy has saved the day. The number of people saved will go up 100%! But so will the number of people who get shot. Whereas before it was 99, now it's 198 (assuming for simplicity's sake only one person gets shot and one saved). There is never a point where more guns equals more safety.

Click the title of this post for supporting stats.