Barry Parham's Blog: The Mooncalf Communion, page 9

Headwinds

(I think I think, therefore I think I am)

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Oops. It’s that time again. The old year is almost over, a new year looms, and I’ve fallen behind on my headkeeping. I’m late, again, for deep-cleaning my skull.

I need to take out the garbage … in my head.

Is cleaning out my head culturally significant? Does it matter to society at large? Well, who am I to say. But a few years ago, I never got around to it, and look who got elected President.

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s just something...

Ho Cubed

(Tricky advice: don’t procrastinate yet)
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Friends, here’s a quick warning: you and Santa are running out of time.

Check your calendar. if you’re still trying to work up the courage to go Christmas shopping, it’s time to gird up. Time to hunker down. Or, as the ancient Greeks used to say, you need to look slippy. Your shopping window is shrinking faster than Boeing’s stock. (“Boeing” is an ancient Greek word loosely translated as “mostly balsa.”)

Today is December 21st. It also...

Friends, Episode 2019…

(…the one with no friends)
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Well, it’s done. It finally happened.

Last week in Washington, DC, and for only the third time in US history, Congress agreed on something.

I’m lying, of course. The two opposing “aisles” have never agreed on anything, except agreeing to take eighteen weeks of paid vacation for Thanksgiving.

What really happened last week – really, for only the third time ever — was that the House of Misrepresentatives voted to impeach a sitting President, this time for...

Soma Simply Required

(You are having a most instructions!)
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Well, once again, it’s the Christmas season in at least a few remaining parts of America, and I have a question. It’ll only take a second, and then you can get back to hall-decking, or harking, or wassailing, or whatever it is you do at your house to drown out Burl Ives.

Here’s the question. Like everybody else, I’m sure you’re busy buying thoughtful, love-infused gifts, as long as they’re on sale. But as you wend your way through the retail...

Headlines From The Year 2030

(Still senseless after all these years)
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This week, let’s peer ahead. Here are some possible breaking news stories, a decade from now, assuming we haven’t yet managed to out-partisan each other to death.

Walmart jumpstarts the Christmas shopping season with a new “Black February” post-Thanksgiving sale. At a store in Texas, eighteen are trampled.A man in Colorado is charged with slaying a FoxNews reporter for saying, yet again, that something “went viral.” Local authorities were...

Olive Oyl, Feminazi

(One small step for m-word, one giant leap for, um, penguinkind)
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I don’t know what’s in the drinking water in Nebraska’s capital, but somebody might want to run out there and test a vial. Based on headlines coming out of the heartland, it appears that some of Lincoln’s local leadership are – to borrow an old lyric – slippin’ into darkness.

See, a school district in Lincoln has instructed its teachers to refer to their boys and girls, not as “boys and girls,” but as … ready?

Purple penguins.

These days, it seems, being labeled “boy...

Breakfast, Allegedly

(This is why you never sit in a booth)
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As a humor columnist, some of my best “ideas” come from readers like you who point me to weird online articles or odd items in the news. I’ll read the article, shake my head for a while in disbelief, get all my door locks changed, and scribble off the week’s column.

This week, I was sent one such news story via a Google link, and I was hooked in less than ten words: “It’s unclear when the woman took off her clothes…”

It gets better.

“It’s unclear when the woman took off her clothes,...

Kentucky Fried T-Rex

(Some knowing is not worth knowing)
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Ever wanted to murder something? Here’s a handy tip: Google the term “weird facts.” I guarantee you you’ll kill a perfectly good weekend.

I did.

This is what normal people would call a waste of time, but what humor columnists refer to as “billable hours.”

And so, in order to claim another tax deduction, I’ll share my discoveries with you. Every statement presented below is a confirmed fact, according to my exhaustive online research, which I plan to do.

At least, “confirmed fact” is the...

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.

For fringe-teetering liberals, tha...

I HEART UR TEETH LOL

(There is such a thing as too much progress)
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Okay. I have now, officially, seen it all. Hang up the phone, put out the lights: ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. Yes, thanks to the miracles of modern technology, you can now share, with all your friends online, all the fascinating details about…

…brushing your teeth.

I suppose it was just a matter of time. I guess it was inevitable, in a world as self-centered as ours has become: please “like” me on Facebook; be sure to “follow...