Barry Parham's Blog: The Mooncalf Communion, page 23

Finally!

(But I’m still waiting on those flying cars.)

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Isn’t technology wonderful? Except, you know, when it doesn’t work, or it’s trying to kill you?

It really is amazing to think about all the things you can do, or buy, or see, or fly somewhere to see. And all you need is money, or a political office, which is redundant. From an automatic bread slicer, to a driverless car, to your own personal trainer, to a custom ride into Earth orbit with Richard Branson, a man who has buckets of money...

Varmint Grooming 101

Observations from another trip to the drug store

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Today I was at the pharmacy, an exercise that, thanks to my useless health insurance provider, just gets worse and worse every time I go. Thanks to that bunch of morality-challenged undercutting underwriters, going to the pharmacy actually causes me pain, rather than the normal outcome. But enough about me.

While waiting for the latest surprises from my insurance company (dba The Sucking Vortex of Expensive Premiums That Cover Absol...

Alphabet Soup Nazis

(Suppose you threw a book, and nobody came?)

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What’s the last book you read? Or, for those of you in Congress, when was the last decade you read a book? (Oh, and for those of you who are thumb-texting right now: a book is a sorta-square object with like words and stuff.)

According to the internet, here are the top ten most popular books in America, ever, if you don’t count half-naked firemen calendars.

The Bible: to some, a universal story of creation and redemption. To others, a...

Uppity Science

(We’re right. You’re stupid.)

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Last week, I was thumbing through an old copy of Scientific American from late 2016, because I have a penetrating, inquisitive, thirsty mind, and because I had an hour to kill before the next episode of Dancing with America’s Most Wanted Midget Mud-Wrestlers of Bel Air.

And now, having read it, I’ll have to admit I have increased respect for the science community – the SA staff made it nearly nine whole pages before slamming (then candidate) Trump.

Fo...

Thinner

(Be half the man you used to be!)

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If I had to guess, I’d guess that the most common New Year’s resolution among Americans is to lose weight. Either that, or to kill everybody that doesn’t like you. But let’s not drag Hillary into this.

So. If ‘losing weight’ is the most common New Year’s resolution, it stands to reason that ‘losing weight’ is also the most commonly broken resolution. Because Americans are like that – we have the collective attention span of a cocaine addict in a r...

The Pre-Purge of President Trotsky

(It’s not what’s reported, it’s what’s repeated)

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Hey, media! Donald Trump.

heh heh heh heh heh…

That’s all you have to do: just say those two words. To ruin the mainstream media’s day, you just have to say his name. So I’ll do it again – Donald Trump. Hold on, I’ll say it louder…

DONALD TRUMP

heh heh heh…

That’s all it takes. To make the formerly respectable Fourth Estate lose its collective cool, that’s all it takes. Two words. And you know I’d never miss an opportunity to irrita...

Cool Water, Hot Jupiter

(H2O: the final frontier)

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Look! Up in the sky! There’s a whole new planet! But look hard, because it’s fifty light years from here.

And what’s really gotten the science community buzzing is that the new planet has water … a substance already available at every 7-Eleven store on this planet … which makes the new place the most inconvenient convenience store in the Universe.

For decades now, science has been searching for extraterrestrial water – as we all know, because the scientis...

Short is the new Long

(And the small naked bronze man goes to…)

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Don’t look now, America, but they’re here again. That’s right: the Academy Awards – that formerly fabulous night when Hollywood dresses up, parties down, and congratulates itself. And this year, given the once-glamorous event’s sinking ratings over the years, as many as ten people are expected to tune in and watch Meryl Streep insult people.

The Oscars: four hours of watching rich, bitter grown-ups who are famous because they’re famous, wh...

High Noon, Low Fever

(Inauguration 2017: the day of whine and roses)

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Twelve noon. 20 January 2017.

In a peaceful transition of power … except for sullen, pouty, adult Democrats in Congress, who stayed home holding their breath and stomping their feet … Donald John Trump becomes the 45th President of the United States. And, to the surprise (or disappointment) of many, Earth did not stop spinning.

As we’ve learned over the last year or so, Mr. Trump, born on 14 June 1946 in Queens, New York City, is an...

Virtual Surreality

(2016: when men were women and burritos were drug mules)

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Well, my fellow Americans, we did it again. It’s January 2017. We made it…we survived another odd year. How odd? Here’s how odd: each year, the folks that publish the Merriam-Webster dictionary choose a word of the year, after reviewing online searches, pondering media usage and, I’m guessing, sampling several beers. And Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2016?

Surreal.

There were several events during the last year that...