Poor Poor Pitiful Me

Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter Americans across the spectrum were shocked, dumbfounded, and ultimately (like watching a rattlesnake) fascinated by ex-President Donald Trump’s social media post announcing that he was to be arrested on Tuesday and telling his followers that they should “Protest, take the nation back”—which was read by some as an …
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Kickass and Baby Bump Photo

Image by Phyllis Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper recruited the photo artistry of Phyllis in updating the “baby bump” photo of five years ago when he posed with “expecting” granddaughter in-laws Lindsey, Ari and Becky; with the keeper’s “bump” indicating at the time that he might be pregnant …
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Kickass Has Been Hacked

בר, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, passes along the information that the keeper has apparently been “hacked” on Facebook, and since he is not sure what that means, he is appealing to Phyllis to save him from whatever nastiness is to follow.  It is the keeper’s unsophisticated assumption that …
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Kickass and Winterscat Glaciers

Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, supports the keeper in pointing out that Wisconsin’s glaciation era has returned, as it does every winter, and there are now great dirty glaciers at the edges of parking areas and cul-de-sacs everywhere. These annual glaciers–known as “winterscat” to the scientific community, carry the …
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The Pen in Hand Guide to the Movies: And the Winner is….

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Reflections on the Academy Awards Well, the viewing world—18.7 million people—survived another Academy Awards presentation. The program itself, a three plus hour marathon of Hollywood stargazing, Vegas style theatrics, straight-out kitsch, high fashion, and sometimes genuine unabashed emotion, is, as always, eminently predictable …
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Kickass Remembers Roundy

Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, notes the keeper’s observation that it is not too far past St. Pat’s Day to remember Roundy Coughlin, the one-of-a-kind newspaper columnist who was with the State Journal when the keeper came on board there sixty-plus years ago. Roundy, with the help of his …
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Kickass and Phyllis’ Birthday

Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper this morning in wishing Phyllis a very happy birthday, noting that she is much younger than the keeper, but then so is everybody. Phyllis’s young-at-heart spirit makes her chronological age meaningless.  This is a woman who has hiked in every national park …
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New Growth

Artwork by Rae and Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter Typically, during the second week of March, I plant the seeds for my garden, mostly tomatoes and peppers, in the depths of my basement. This year, we’ve just finished digging out from a winter storm that dumped over ten inches of snow on us, but down …
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