Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper in an update that includes the following: *Phyllis is at home recovering from her midnight heart attack, artery stent in place and feistiness intact. *Reports of a very elderly man, who uses a walking stick, being lost in the …
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Month:June 2023
Kickass and Phyllis Heart Attack
Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper in reporting that Phyllis experienced a middle-of-the-night heart attack and is currently recovering at UW Hospital after the insertion of a stent in a totally clogged artery and medication for another that was 70 percent clogged. Phyllis anticipates being released today …
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Another Breath of Fresh Air
Illustration by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter Life seems more hectic, frantic, and stressful than ever before. Not only do we have the usual worries about money, health, and our kids, but we also have additional anxieties concerning climate change, political extremism, mass shootings, raging pandemics, government dysfunction (maybe not such a new problem) plus …
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Get Well Soon, Phyllis Stokes…
Photo by Bill Stokes Best Wishes from The Pen in Hand Blog…
Kickass Rejects Horseshit
Redneck Revolt, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper’s impatience with an allegedly enlightened populace’s unwavering allegiance to some of the rules that were written back when a major traffic problem was horse shit in the streets. That there are laudable basic precepts to live by in …
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Kickass and Fallingwater
lachrimae72, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper’s efforts to rid his cluttered mental closet of trash has finally taken up his thinking that Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Fallingwaters” house in Pa. is an offense to a beautiful natural stream and would justifiably be illegal in Wisconsin. Building …
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The Pen in Hand Guide to the Movies: Magic Under the Stars
RoyBuchanan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:112_Drive-In.jpg By Geoff Carter Whenever I’m near my hometown, I go past the site of the old Starlite Drive-in, which they torn down a while ago. I still miss the sight of the titanic blue structure towering on the horizon, and always remember the place where I spent a …
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Kickass Says Something Nice
See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, tries to stay out of the way as the keeper sorts through the childhood advice that he has tried to live by, and hereby eliminates the following: “If you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all.” Most …
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Kickass and Unnatural Selection
Lorie Shaull from St Paul, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper and Phyllis in noting the anniversary of one of the more egregious indications that the human species is destined to do itself in by unnatural selection whereby tribal decisions are made by the …
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Kickass and Chickenless Chicken
Narek Avetisyan /Narek75/, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper, ever anxious to contribute to the advance of the species, accepts news of lab-made chicken now on the market–expensive and “tastes like chicken”–by joining the chickens in celebrating the fact that they–the chickens, can not only …
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Kickass and Talk Replacement
Attribution: Eric Afyouni, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, delights in engaging the keeper in “what-if” situations and has posed the question of “what-if” the keeper and his ilk were denied the ability to talk–since so much talk does not rise above the sheer BS level–and were limited to …
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Fool Me Once….
Illustration by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter The United States has an impressive legacy of leadership, boasting war leaders like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and FDR, and nation builders like Jack Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower. We have also elected notable scholars like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, ferocious defenders of democracy like John Adams …
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