The Puzzled Penis: this irreverent review of Philip Roth's prurient Portnoy's Complaint contains several clever euphemisms, the correct pronunciation of Zooey, and a box of Kleenex(TM) with vaguely anatomical features. This article was rejected by Good Housekeeping and Reader's Digest on what I consider to be highly dubious grounds.
The Old Man and the Sea: a book review of the novella that preceded Hem's Nobel Prize in Literature (1954), along with a photographic tour of the writer's Key West Home and musical accompaniment by my favorite artist, Dan Bern. Find the hidden photograph of the naked Russian girls and win an autographed copy of Bryan's Blood People II (see infra).
From Hell's Heart I Stab at Thee: from the creators of Star Trek: Wrath of Khan comes an iconoclastic new look at Herman Melville's wildly discursive novel Moby-Dick and a bit about anguish, madness, and the tyranny of time. Naturally, the words "seaman" and "sperm" also appear frequently herein.
When I Have Fears I May Cease to Be: take a trip to an Asheville cemetery with a Wolfe aficionado to stand at the grave of beloved American writer Thomas Wolfe; read from his great works and taste the honeyed warmth of Scotch on your tongue as an exquisite October night falls in the mountains of North Carolina. Dedicated to rose-lipt maidens and lightfoot lads.
Bryan's Blood People: an endearing short story about the struggles of a suburban South American family facing disease and mortality. Awarded First Prize for Realism in a Short Story by the Literalism in Fiction Council, Summer 2007.
Beware the False Prophet: an exploration of mass hallucination in the religious context, along with several elegant lithographs of Yahweh communing with startled humans and various plants of antiquity. Also reveals for the first time what the abbreviation I.N.R.I. means (in case you ever wondered).
The Age of Reason Lost: continuing with our theme of religious appreciation, this charmingly esoteric piece of delicate philosophical writing probes with great subtlety the mysteries of life, the universe, and everything. Spoiler alert: this article answers the ultimate question.
The Scarlet Letter: examines in excruciating detail the "partial-birth abortion" debate and concludes that Congress is a collection of pandering, scientifically illiterate troglodytes. I predicted in this piece that the Supreme Court would declare the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act [sic] of 2003 unconstitutional, but I was dead wrong.
This View of Life: a tribute to one of my favorite scientists, Stephen Jay Gould (R.I.P.), and some inebriate musings about The Tap Room in Hickory, North Carolina where my inebriate friends go for pub chips and Brown Mountain Light.
The Perils of Vegetarianism: truly, a diet without meat is worth aspiring to, but believe me that shit is difficult. In part three of our series on special dietary concerns, we explore the life of the fast-food vegetarian and discover what it is like to have no meaningful options.
Blue Ridge Mountain Blues: a biographical piece about bluegrass legend Doc Watson and old-time music from the mountains of North Carolina, where few people can read and even fewer people can spell.
Bessie Crim and Walter and Charles: this is a short story written by my father in 1994 that should have been published somewhere but wound up folded into an old book and forgotten for 13 years. Sadly, he no longer writes; the world has lost a great storyteller.
And finally: The Golden Paradox. Truly your faithful author's magnum opus, this article contains a detailed history of the urinal from slop jar to present and explores the vesicle-shrinking complexity of the physics of urine splatter, all in the delicate context of science's battle for preeminence as the chief discipline of ultimate knowledge and understanding. Dedicated to my dear friends in R & D at American Standard.
