Beyond the Grave, the N.R.A.’s $56 Million Donor Lives On. (NYT)

(dedicated to @dannyhakim)

then there's this dead guy that keeps giving me money. I mean, whenever the doorbell rings around midnight I know it's this gruesome corpse, risen from the grave, that hands me hundred dollar bills. I've tried to tell him he doesn't need to do it -- I'm doing okay on my Social Security and all -- but it just looks at me with that brown decaying rictus on its face and won't go away until I take the money out of its cold dead hand.  you can bet I spray those bills with Lysol for a full minute.  who knows where they've been.
it all started years ago when I won a contest in Fangoria magazine -- I don't remember the exact details, but there was some provision for my prize money to be delivered by an animated cadaver. I think I'm still supposed to cut off a chicken's head at some point, but I won't do it.  if that disqualifies me from getting any more rancid hundred dollar bills, then so be it. 

Postcard to the President

Rupert Murdoch's son drops $20 million investment on Utah virtual reality company The Void. (Deseret News)

play money is a lot of fun. a barrel of laughs. I mostly use Monopoly money, getting a chuckle out of cashiers when I flash it around. sometimes I pull out a 20 baht bill I got in Thailand, or a 20 peso note from Zion's Bank -- I once filled up a ceramic cookie jar with 10 and 20 peso notes for the grand kids to fish out at Christmas.  occasionally, if I think I can get away with it, I just design my own currency on green card stock, to see if I can get away with it.  I almost did at a Maverick store early one morning.
I couldn't sleep so I got up at 3 in the morning and walked over to the Maverick on Center Street for a bottle of chocolate milk.  the overnight clerk looked so otherworldly and tired that I handed her one of my cardboard greenbacks, which she started to make change for. then she caught on and her weary frown turned into a grimace of hate. people without a sense of humor are the bane of my existence.

Arby’s Has an Answer to Plant-Based Meat: A Meat-Based Carrot. (NYT)

(dedicated to @yaffebellany)



you don't know what you're eating anymore. carrots made out of meat; meat made out of carrots; apples made out of rice; rice made out of wheat; and sugar made out of aphids.  it's so confusing that I've given up eating and planted myself in the backyard, where I absorb nutrients from the soil and am practicisng photosynthesis.
I've shed all my clothes and welcome bees to come pollinate me. they tell me that even their honey is being manhandled by the big food corporations -- they turn it into probiotic, anti-oxidant wafers sold in kiosks at shopping malls.  and I was visited the other day by a mole nipping at my toes who says that cricket flour is being adulterated with cellulose -- he's seen it with his very own eyes.
eating has become such a burden and puzzle that it's time we got the mad scientists to mutate some genes and turn us into trees. Men can be oaks and women can be willow trees. that will take care of the morning commute. and we'll have dew for breakfast.  put THAT in your pipe and smoke it, Julia Child. 

Don’t Scoff at TikTok Influencers. They’re Taking Over the World. (NYT)

(dedicated to @kevinroose)


I, too, have plans for taking over the world.  it starts with training an army of goldfinches to do my bidding by feeding them premium black thistle seed.  once they are dependent on me I will send them winging around the countryside, each one with a little placard around its neck reading "WHO IS EUGENE FIELD?"
this, in turn, will create such an uproar that when I step into the stoplight (dyslexics unite!) I will immediately gain millions of followers who will march on beer halls in Milwaukee while selling my personal brand of sneakers, Toe Benders.
once I am a power to be reckoned with I plan to gather all major influencers on a mountain top in South America, where I can have them photobombed and disposed of -- while I take over their endorsement deals.
from my new power base it is only a matter of time before I rule the attention economy like Franco ruled Spain.  and from there, who knows? I might reintroduce rosemaling . . . 

Did you know that your personal information is available online to anyone with $10? (NYT)

I wanted information on a certain fellow who I thought was telling people my poetry was no darn good. I had nothing concrete on him, just a hunch, from the way he looked at me, that he didn't appreciate my wry sense of humor and referential expertise, and was the kind of guy who would then tell the whole wide world what he thought of my stuff. so I decided to get the goods on him, kinda like a political election where you get the goods on your opponent to blackmail him to drop out of the race. I wanted this bozo to clam up about me, if he couldn't say anything positive. we poets have thin skins.
I paid a guy who knew a guy who had an in with a company that collected data and wasn't too careful about how they got it. I gave him ten dollars, and in return I got a beautiful leather bound dossier that showed that this guy had once been ticketed for public exfoliation, and was banned from Blockbuster Video Stores back in 1999 (reason not given.) His real name, on his birth certificate, is Howard Wainwright Huggins -- but we all know him as Benny Sinclair.  
Now the shoe was on the other foot. I started to casually mention that I had a lifetime membership with Blockbuster Video, and didn't everybody have one nowadays even though the chain was kaput? I also noised it about that I never felt the need to change my name, although it's completely unpronounceable to a good thirty percent of the population. that did the trick. old Howard Wainwright Huggins has left town and was last seen selling t-shirts in Oregon. Eugene, Oregon. Wearing a patched overcoat and sandals. he seems to have shrunk and won't look anyone in the eye.
maybe I was too hard on him.  

I know you are, but what am I?

so the kids were acting owly today -- taunting each other and being so picky with each other that at last I lowered the boom.
"Be quiet, can't you?" I said, too loudly.
this caused them to lower their heads and scuff their feet on the floor as they wandered off in different directions. but a half hour later they were at it again. this time in the backyard. what kind of sick magnetism draws kids together when clearly they hate each other's guts? I decided to be positive and proactive with them, as their mother would be if she were around. so I poured sugar into a plastic bowl and took it out to them.
"Here" I said kindly, "go pull some rhubarb stalks, clean 'em off with the hose, and dip 'em in sugar. they taste wonderful. I used to do that as a kid. Oh, and don't eat the leaves -- they'll make you sick." 
it worked for about an hour; they sat companionably together in the shade of the apricot tree munching on reddish green rhubarb stalks. and then they went back to calling each other names like 'dopey eyes' and 'flush bucket.'  They kept saying "I know you are but what am I?" when the hitting started I sent them all to their rooms and threatened them with kale soup for dinner.
"It's very healthy" I told them them in a low and silken sinister voice.

Where Deseret News readers were during the Apollo 11 moon landing

we were at home scrubbing the tortoise when it happened. suddenly the moon didn't seem so distant, so exotic, anymore. even the tortoise looked less solemn, now that man had bounced around a different gravity. the kids asked us what was happening, and we told them that one day they would sit on top of a flaming molten capsule, a controlled explosion sending them to distant twinkles where they might find anything, anything at all. this, unfortunately, upset their delicate imaginations and they began to cry. we had to make mac and cheese to calm them down and get them to accept the fact that they wouldn't be living on Earth much longer. nobody would. we would all have to leave, to answer the intergalactic call that broods within mankind like a mutant gene, ready to pop up and hurtle us into the void. what was the Tower of Babel if not a crude attempt at space exploration? and Jacob's ladder certainly is a forerunner of those Star Trek transporters. read your scriptures -- we're going places, man, despite the gravity of the times. 

As it happens, there are no open highways in the Cévennes

(dedicated to David McAninch)

as it happens, all roads lead to Nome. little roads; big roads; fat roads; thin roads; and roads scholars, too. in Nome the countryside predominates; the urban landscape is minimal, not to say flatulent. even the lichen are trying to move out into the suburbs, or get a place in the country where the shooting is good.
as it happens, I used to travel far from the open highways when I was a brine merchant. there were delicious vistas consisting of cream puff mountains, vermilion grass fires, sunsets at noon when the cows came home, and a smattering of lickerish wombats up in the trees near the summer home of Robert Louise Stevenson.
as it happens, my Citroen came down with the mumps one time so I had to hire a rickshaw with a sun roof. they don't come cheap, so I was under the gun to sell a lot of brine that month. luckily I came across a tribe of mummers who were being paid off in cucumbers -- they were glad enough to purchase all the brine I had. I gave them a little discount. why not? there's more to life than money and open highways. a guy can do a favor once in a while, can't he? 
as it happens, the mummers fell on me while I was asleep and stripped me of my funds, my rickshaw, and my clothes. so I lay there bleeding and half dead until the police led me away to a misty tarn where wildflowers were sewn into my scalp. it hurt, but you should see the baby voles each spring.

Trump Tells Freshman Congresswomen to ‘Go Back’ to the Countries They Came From

I'm going back to those spring-fed streets
where blue igloos and red fingernails mean something.
a place that welcomes back sidewalk weary vagabonds,
with plastic bags and iced latex.
a host of reasons impel me to leave this place;
such as the dull air and the faux cobblestones.
that shoes come in boxes is an affront to my conscience.
and the people I have to deal with are no better than hepcats.
back home the quail have quilled already, and the hills are
alive with the sound of mimeographs.
they know how to treat a person back there.
and the skies are not twittered all day.